Designing for Multiple Audiences

Include Subsites

Nielsen defines subsites as, "a collection of web pages within a larger site that have been given a common style and a shared navigation mechanism" (223). He advises that subsites be used to organize large chunks of information in a complex website. Subsites could also be useful to organize information for different audiences in the same website.

Farkas and Farkas seem to support this method of designing a site for multiple audiences. They suggest that the audience should be divided into segments and that appropriate links should be provided for each segment as is often done on university home pages (46). Combining this suggestion with Neilsen's subsites, the links for each audience segment might be organized into subsites. Each subsite should have the feel of an independent website, but would offer users global navigation.

The website designed for the Water Quality Monitoring Laboratory using subsites might open on a very general home page that simply explains what the lab is and how the website is organized. From that page, users would be asked to select an audience group to enter the site. Each audience group could then have a unique home page designed to match the needs of that group. Content could be selected and written specifically for the user. Once inside the subsite, users could be offered navigation options to return to the initial page and select a different audience group.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency successfully uses this type of design. The opening page offers news and other general interest links. On the left navigation bar, a menu button gives users the opportunity to select a more specific audience group. When the user clicks on the button, a menu containing eight different audience types appears. Users can select from kids; students; teachers; concerned citizens; industry; small businesses; state, local, and tribal; and researchers. After an audience type is selected, a home page for that group appears. The subsites for each group are designed specifically for that audience, and therefore have a different appearance. The subsite home page for kids shows a brightly colored drawing of a clubhouse and a child playing with links arranged in the picture. The subsite home page for teachers shows a photo of an older woman surrounded by small children in a classroom. The links surround the photo, but are not part of it. The look and feel of each subsite is consistent from its home page to interior pages. Each subsite includes a link back to the EPA opening page.

The advantages this method offers are similar to the advantages of using a login screen. Subsites allow you to design a series of sites for individual audiences and keep the information in a single large website. However, subsites allow all users to access all information. No information is hidden from any user; the subsites simply provide an organization scheme while focusing the information on the needs of each audience individually.

Subsites may cause problems with situational awareness. Farkas and Farkas emphasize that users must be aware of where they are within the site to navigate successfully (151). This awareness, called situational awareness, is established through visual cues that indicate what level the page might be on (home page, first level link, second level link, etc.), and through the navigational interface. A user might easily attain situational awareness within a subsite, but s/he might have a hard time seeing where s/he is in relation to the entire site. If the user entered a subsite from a search engine, s/he might not even realize that the subsite's home page is not the top-level page in the site. The subsite's home page looks like the traditional top-level page, and except for a link to the opening page, the navigational interface provides no additional clues. Further complicating the problem, other subsites in the website might use different visual cues to help the user see where s/he is in the subsite. This lack of consistency may hinder a user's sense of where s/he is in the site.

abstract, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, works cited

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