[Sigia-l] requiring users to identify the audience category they are in

[Kenneth Bryson]

Hi there,

Below is an eight-year-old message from the sigchi list.  I would like
to pose this question again, in relation to my job at the City of
Toronto (http://www.toronto.ca).  Does anyone know of any research that
can help answer this question?  The eight-year-old answers warned
against this but didn't provide any research to back it up.

==========

Date:         Wed, 28 Oct 1998 20:44:36 -0700
Sender:       "ACM SIGCHI WWW Human Factors (Open Discussion)" <[log in
to unmask]>
Subject:      requiring users to identify the audience category they
are in

Have any of you investigated how users respond when confronted with
webpages that require them to identify the audience category they
belong to
in order to obtain access to things intended for members of that
audience
category?  I'm looking for info about cases where such a requirement
was
determined to work well and cases where it fared poorly.

========



Specifically, our site requires users to self-categorize into
'residents' 'visitors' or 'business.'   However, I feel this is a
mis-labeling scenario.  Not only do the top level categories not provide
any real clue as to the content they categorize, much of the content is
actually cross-linked between numerous categories.  

I tried to think of other sites that do similar labeling and the only
thing I could think of is ecommerce, where you need to choose whether
you are a man, woman, or child.  Even there, the real question is, what
type of clothing do I want, not what type of person am I.

Finally,  I know many other municipal sites use the same labeling
scheme, but, as my boss says, "we did it first and they're just copying
our award winning site" (which it was in 2000 but hasn't changed
since).

Thoughts?

-kb



--
Ken Bryson
User Experience Architect, Web Services
Creative Services
Corporate Communications
City of Toronto

Tel: 416-338-2780
Fax: 416-392-7999
kbryson at toronto.ca