We had the opportunity to sit on a User Experience panel for TechStars a couple of weeks ago. TechStars is an organization that mentors 10 start-up companies each summer and Slice of Lime is one of their sponsors.

The panel was comprised of my business partner, Jeff Rodanski, and the CEO of Viget, Brian Williams. We covered a bunch of issues around user experience within the context of a startup and used past clients like Jibbitz and PhotoVu as examples.

The main takeaway we wanted people to have was that simply creating the functionality of a website without consideration of target audience and goals can limit your chance of success. In other words, Kevin Costner is a Liar - if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.

In every project we do, we focus on target audience and goals above all else. Whether it’s information architecture, design, or development, we always refer back to these two things.

Goals

• What is the primary action you want people to take when they come to your website?
• What do you want people to do before leaving your website?
• What are your broader company goals?

Target Audience

• Research your target audience if you’re not already familiar
• What is you target audience like? How computer literate are they?
• What are their likes/dislikes?

We usually start our clients off with a questionnaire that focuses on goals and target audience to help us through strategy conversations.

If the project is more complicated, we may also do industry research or focus groups to get more insight into the target audience.

As we get into information architecture and wireframing of a website, we make sure to always reference the goals of the project and the target audience. Is this user flow going to make sense to our audience? Do the elements on this page really address the action our client wants a user to take?

We go through iterations for most steps of the process. When reviewing designs, we recommend our clients not only offer their gut reactions, but that they also collect feedback from people in their target audience.

Focusing on goals and target audience in relation to user experience may seem straight forward - and it is. As obvious as it may seem, we’ve seen companies approach projects with a “functionality-first” approach many times. In our opinion, functionality should support your goals and target audience, not the other way around.

It was a pleasure sitting on the panel and getting the chance to organize these thoughts for the amazing startup companies TechStars has assembled this year. Many thanks to David Cohen for hosting.

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