Study the socio-economic circumstances of the people, their culture, environment and development goals

This is the most crucial aspect in the web weaving process. Knowing the user will go a long way in making the information delivered via the web site relevant to a target group. A socio-economic study will deepen your understanding of the target group. People and societies are not the same. There are cultural differences that one has to consider. What works in Europe does not necessarily work in Asia. People behave and think differently - this could be attributed to their inherent genetic make-up. More often than not, there is very little field research on the socio-economic circumstances of many communities in developing settings in the preparation of information resources for their consumption - both electronic and non-electronic. There is a general assumption that this is what they want, hence problems with irrelevant information, lending the delivery mechanism to ridicule and questioning its appropriateness in any given setting. One has to evaluate the cultural tendencies of the people and their attitudes to new technologies.

What is often omitted completely by many web site developers especially those that are targeting people in the local settings is an evaluation of the prevailing environment where those people are living. The political environment in many of those countries has to be considered as more often than not people's preoccupations is about who is leading the country, the state of governance and the economic performance of the country. This ultimately determines the social environment and people's priorities and their reaction to any form of new technology. If the technology is going to directly increase their earning capacity, and hence reduce poverty, then that technology will easily have a mass following. A web site and how it is integrated in the lives of ordinary people has be one of the biggest hurdles that needs to be addressed by those using and promoting the technology as an information delivery platform. The circumstances of people who are going to be using the web resource has to be taken into account in all the web development stages.

Details like their income levels, educational attainment, how they live and their day to day needs will determine how the web site is going to be an effective source of information for them. This is why it's crucial to assemble an inter-disciplinary design team. An intensive study should be undertaken that will profile the target audience especially. This will hopefully result in the development of what one can call 'cutting edge' information resources i.e. information that can result in lasting transformations to people and their communities. It is unfortunate however, that many of the people residing there have a lot of socio-economic problems like survival on a day to day basis that the impact of web technologies is trivialised by these mammoth problems that loom and stare in the face.

In this web resource development stage, one has to consider the overall and specific development goals i.e what are the key development priorities of the people. These development concerns are usually in the areas of health, education, economic and social well being.

It is important to analyse the Internet environment surrounding the physical location of the target audience as this will determine the successful utilisation of the web resource over other traditional sources of information and its level of impact. Issues to consider include the level of penetration of the Internet, access speeds, the different modes of access to the Internet, the cost the people incur in accessing the Internet, the sophistication of use of Internet services, the maturity of Internet services and the general telecommunications environment.

Other practical issues to consider is the cost of building the web site and how it is going to be financed and hosted. If it's an organisation that has initiated the web building effort, the organisation is likely to fund its production and host it. If a web site is to provide information for public consumption, usually external funding - whether in the country or outside, has to be sought. Organisations in both the public and private sector have to join hands in the development of web sites that provide public information.

Practical Guideline 1: Define the development needs of the people i.e. list and describe the socio-economic problems that they are facing and the specific human development goals and objectives - short term and long-term.

Practical Guideline 2: List the cultural tendencies of people and their attitude to new technologies, in particular Internet technologies.

Practical Guideline 3: List the social, economic and political environment of the country where the people are living or the industry if the web resource is for people in a particular sector.

Practical Guideline 4: Describe the Internet environment where the beneficiaries of the resource are living. Issues to highlight are the mode of access to the web site, Internet access speeds and cost to access the service.

Need Analysis