Web standards and guidelines

Parentzone case study: User-centred design in practice

Parentzone is a website aimed primarily at parents and carers, with educationalists and education managers as secondary users. The site provides information to help parents get more involved in their children’s education.

A user-centred design (UCD) approach helped consultants Flow Interactive both to review how well the current Parentzone site was meeting its target users' needs and to restructure and redesign the website. User-centred design aims to integrate end users in the design process, using them to drive decision making throughout. This involves a repeated cycle of design and user testing.

Find out more about the user-centred design approach employed in this usability study.

Flow Interactive diagram shows proposed stages in the usability study of Parentzone: Research; initial design; prototype; user test; document; LTS implement design; user test new site.

Usability study aims

This study took place from December 2005 to January 2006. It aimed to answer the following questions:

  • When and why would users come to Parentzone?
  • What are users' expectations of Parentzone and are those expectations fulfilled?
  • How do users respond to the information layout, navigation, content and tone of Parentzone?
  • What priority do users place on different types of information?
  • What are the drop-out points?

User-centred design integrates end users in the design process ... using them to drive decision making throughout.