user informational needs

I met with Mary Moore last week and it looks like the educational materials and contact info on the Web site are, for the most part, up to date. She went over for me the kinds of questions she encounters, what kind of info people are commonly looking for, and what the process usually is for them to find the answers to typical questions. The upshot of it all is that most of the answers are in fact on the site, but people don't understand how to find them, and often they also don't understand what the terminology means. For example, people often need breast screenings, not mammograms, but they don't know what screenings are and thus can't find the contact info on the site--we decided to get around this by setting up a button that says, "Free Mammograms" and pulling people in that way, to explain the difference later, rather that trying to educate them first.

I showed Mary Moore the map on the Houston Web site and we agreed that a simple Google maps function is all that we really need in Austin. We like the idea of the form they use to sort, but Mary Moore says that since everything is county-specific, we need only forms that have a dropdown list of services in each county. I should have enough PHP to build this, from the info on the site in other places and some additional resources that she gave me.

Another concern is the rapidity of change in these services, especially out in the outer counties, but I think that planning to update the site at each grant period will be a good way to ensure that someone reviews all of the info at least twice a year. Additionally, since Komen funds the majority of the services, we are going to limit the services listed (where possible) to the grantees, so that we can guarantee their quality.

We also discussed forms to capture more information about how educational resources are used. Because people tend to call or email her directly for scheduling presentations and health fairs, Komen has no way to track the distribution or the cost of materials given out. Removing her contact info and replacing it with a form seems like a good idea, but I am ambivalent about deliberately making it more difficult for people to reach us. I may take this to Ramona, and/or see if there's a less annoying way to capture the info Mary Moore wants.

Finally, Mary Moore also stressed the need for it to be as clear as possible that Komen is the engine behind many of these services, and to relate all this to the Race for the Cure. The Race raises the money to fund all of these clinics and hospital departments, but now on the site there are no crosswalks from Race to Grantee info (such as how to apply) to info for individuals who need services. It will be a challenge to develop these without getting people hopelessly lost! Or rebuilding too many pages. I hope to have some outlines for some of the indivigual pages done soon, to get Mary Moore's input. I also bought the IA polar bear book and am referring to it for guidance on how to set up the navigation to try and link these multiple concepts without further confusing everybody.