[Sigia-l] top level navigation by user type

[Austin Govella]

On Tuesday, stephanie hornung wrote:
> i'm doing a consulting project for a government agency, and am dealing
> with several specific sets of user groups .... i've
> found that a lot of government websites are organized by these user
> groups, and the person i'm working under at the agency wants to design 
> it
> this way, but i'm not sure its the best idea.  does anyone have any
> information/opinions regarding how well this type of navigation works?

Structurally, if you sort the users by group on the home page, then you 
send each user to their own little sub-site. And they navigate. But if 
you don't separate by groups, then the users will navigate only the 
part of the site that applies to them, effectively a sub-site.

In my mind, the end structures look remarkably the same.

If you have overlaps in content or functionality, then it would be 
better to organize by goals and tasks. The goals and tasks will most 
likely chunk themselves into groups loosely related to your main user 
groups.

Also, and I'm rambling now, it seems like some of the content 
government officials need (reports, charts, stats, and figures) would 
be of use to some of your citizens. Why would you bury this stuff where 
only the elites can find it?

It's IA oppression!

--
Austin