In order for a social network to succeed, they must have a focused audience definition on the types of Users to build their site towards; otherwise, they could just be spending time building features no one will use. Social networks have all types of Users but some of the main ones include:

• The Socialite. They use online social networks to communicate with friends and meet new people. They publish information about themselves frequently and are typically members of other social network sites.
• The Private User. They use social networks to reconnect with old friends and strengthen connections with existing friends and typically not to meet new people.
• The Entrepreneur. They use social networks to help promote their business ventures as well as for social purposes. An example of this is MySpace, where an lot of independent bands, comedians, and businesses have a profile.
• The Dater. They use social networks to establish new contacts with the goal of possibly starting a personal relationship. Example sites include eHarmony.com
• The Lurker. They use social networks to view information about their friends and others but rarely participate.

In my opinion the Socialite, Private User, and Lurker would be the most prominent Users for Pownce. Let’s look at the Private User in more detail and create a Persona for this type of User.

The Private User Persona
Here is a short summary on Mandy, a potential User for the next great social network.

Mandy Wright

• Law Clerk / Legal Assistant

Personal Description

• 25 years old
• She has been a law clerk ever since graduating college, primarily working for small law firms.
• She takes law school part time while working and hopes to eventually run a firm one day.
• Because of her busy schedule, she rarely has free time to hang out with friends.

Technological

• Mandy has a year old Sony notebook that she mainly uses for school work, browsing the web, and chatting with friends.

Web Use

• Mandy has used the web since high school.
• She typically browses the web to look at and shop for clothes.
• She is a member of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster but keeps her information private and only accessible to friends.
• Occasionally she will write a blog but that information is also kept private for friends only.

Goals

• Mandy would like to do a better and efficient job keeping in contact with her friends.

Tasks

• One task Mandy typically does is try and get together with her friends for dinner. She currently does this by logging on to MySpace and sending a separate message to each of her friends. She will also email, text message, or call some friends.

Current Problems

• Mandy does not have that much free time so anything that would save her time would help. Right now, when she wants to contact a specific set of friends, she has to post to everyone in the group. She also has to use different forms of communication because not all of her friends are on the same social networking site or not on any.

Desires

• Mandy sometimes wants to communicate with only a certain group of friends.
• She also wants to easily update friends that are not on the same social network without doing additional work.

Healthopeda.com (fictitious site) considers itself the “best online health resource for people of any age and any health level who want to achieve a state of optimal wellness.” Their primary source of revenue at this point is ads.

This case study focuses on designing Healthopedia for Information. A Healthopedia Design for Emotion case study was also done.

Healthopeida.com’s Primary Persona
Jenny Davis

Age: 36
Location: Manhattan, New York
Occupation: Owns interior design business

At 36, Jenny looks 26 and claims to feel 17. She loves that people never believe her when she tells them her real age.

Things were different a few years ago. Jenny remembers her 30th birthday as the low point in her life. Although she had a wonderful family, a loving husband and profitable interior design business, she had a host of health and beauty issues. She was 30 pounds overweight, depressed and chronically fatigued. She also suffered from digestive issues, and her fair skin, which had been damaged by too much time in the sun, was beginning to show significant signs of aging.

She took this as a wake-up call and began educating herself about health and wellness issues. She subscribes to many health-oriented magazines, and is always interested in checking out health-oriented websites, although if the site doesn’t show its value right away, she usually won’t stick around.

Jenny’s Goals

• Fight aging
• Learn about methods and products that will help her optimize her health
• Don’t waste her time on things that don’t work
• Connect with and learn from others who are also interested in health

Card Sort
A card sort was conducted involving 8 participants. After gathering all the data, and entering it into an excel spreadsheet, I analyzed the patterns and standardized categories, which produced statistics to help determine the information architecture.

Findings
There were high agreements on an About, Articles, Discussion Forum, and Quizzes & Polls section. The difficulty was deciding between a general Healthy Living category versus a specific gender/age group health (ex. Women’s Health) which had a mixed agreement between the sorters. I looked at competitor sites such as WebMD and Yahoo! Health to get an idea of how their information architecture worked and after careful evaluation,
decided on using Healthy Living since it was a broader topic and the specific gender/age group could be grouped underneath it as a secondary navigation. In the end, I decided upon a global navigation of Home, Health Articles, Healthy Living, Community, and Quizzes & Polls.

Requirements
Next, I researched and identified content and features for the system based on Jenny’s goals. The following is a list of general requirements with the goal number the requirement satisfies in parenthesis.

• Site shall contain health articles (1, 2)
• Site shall contain daily health tips (1, 2)
• Site shall allow Users to subscribe to an RSS feed of the latest articles, healthy living reviews, tips, or a personalized feed (1,2,3)
• Site shall contain a community discussion forum, blogs, and Ask the Doctor feature (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Site shall contain Healthy Living product and method reviews with User ratings and comments (ex. Amazon) (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Site shall contain interactive quizzes and daily polls (2)
• Site shall allow for member login/registration to personalize the site and participate in the community (1, 2, 4)
• Site shall be able to personalize homepage based on User settings and/or past actions (1,2,3,4)
• Site shall contain a search box on each screen (1,2,3)
• Site shall contain unobtrusive advertisements that are relevant to health (Company’s Source of revenue)

Conceptual Framework
Looking through the findings from the card sort and the requirements, I thought about and sketched possible ways to organize the content.

I decided on a global top navigation scheme, where horizontal secondary navigation would appear when rolled over. Although I really liked the use of tabs for the global navigation, I didn’t want Users to have to click in order to see the secondary navigation. I decided since this site was designed for information, I would use tabs in the main content to allow for more information to be seen on the homepage.

Featured articles and product reviews can also be expanded or minimized to see a short summary and many shortcuts to particular topics, features, and information are placed throughout the site.

When I finally had a look and feel I was satisfied with, I used Photoshop to put together the design of the homepage.

User Benefits
With Jenny as the primary User of the website, I needed to be sure that not only would she be able to access and find the information that was important to her but also that the site would provided a benefit that would make her continue to use the site.

By having a feature that would personalize Jenny’s experience based on her input and/or past actions, Jenny would be able to have her own personal member area where the topics and that were important to her would appear and constantly be updated.

Daily polls and tips would keep the content fresh and interesting and a big emphasis on a community of others interested in health would promote sharing and advice. Product and method ratings and reviews would make it easier to find out what really works and what other’s think. Search would be predictable, like Google Suggest, to assist the User in getting optimum and accurate results.

Final Word
The design of Healthopedia as an information source was the result of a primary persona and limited card sort findings. The persona helped portray a person to design the site for and focus on her goals. The card sort data gave an idea of how Users picture the site’s navigation and terminology. More studies of the brand, interaction design, and usability testing would be needed in order to produce a more complete site; however, the preliminary design shows that data about the Users, their goals, and how they think can and should be used when considering the design of a website or any product for that matter.