Other Media + Quiz

DUE Wednesday, Feb 15 – 4 points
(Thursday NOON deadline)

  • Interview with Gerry McGovern: Focus on User Tasks (27:07-60:45)
    Paul Boag, the author of our textbook, interviewed Jerry McGovern on the importance of focusing on the tasks your site visitors will be trying to accomplish on your website. (You do not need to listen to the whole episode of the podcast, only the interview starting at 27:07.)

Once you have watched or listened to or read these materials, you will need to take a quiz of ten true-false questions. (These questions will be randomly selected from the questions below. You can retake the quiz up to five times. Don’t stress about getting 100% on these quizzes: if you get 80% or better, you will be ready to proceed to the next activity and I will give you the full credit.)

All questions should be prefaced with an understood, “According to the author / speaker …”:

  1. T/F? Gerry McGovern has a thick Russian accent.
  2. T/F? Content is the most important part of a website.
  3. T/F? Good web marketing is about helping people do things.
  4. T/F? The biggest mistake or challenge for large websites is a lack of management.
  5. T/F? Adding one page that supports a small task will usually have no negative impact on the rest website.
  6. T/F? Gerry McGovern mentions the individual support pages in Excel for the INSUM function and for the ADDRESS function as pages that needed to be removed.
  7. T/F? Most organizations have a person dedicated to removing out-dated content from the website.
  8. T/F? Gerry McGovern mentions “Am I eligible for funding?” as a super task on national funding agency websites.
  9. T/F? Gerry McGovern mentions “Find the Bursar’s Office” as a super task on university websites.
  10. T/F? Paul Boag thinks “Programs” is a good word to use in place of “Courses” on university websites.
  11. T/F? Customers are much more in control on the web than in traditional marketing.
  12. T/F? Google Adwords can tell you what search terms people are using across the web.
  13. T/F? Making an list of tasks contained in a large website’s content takes Gerry McGovern one week to do.
  14. T/F? Gerry McGovern had thousands of people vote on what were the most important tasks for the NHS website.
  15. T/F? Gerry McGovern mentions the observation from psychology that people hear their own name over other buzz at a cocktail party.
  16. T/F? Low-level tasks should never removed from a website entirely.
  17. T/F? Gerry McGovern finds that typically 5 tasks get 25% of the votes.
  18. T/F? Gerry believes IKEA has been so successful because they use a particular font in their branding.
  19. T/F? Customers care just as much as web designers about how beautiful a website is.
  20. T/F? Gerry McGovern believes design and usability should be integrated and practiced together.

DUE Wednesday, Feb 15 – 4 points
(Thursday NOON deadline)