--- title: "A Few Thoughts About... Grav Open Course Hub User Need Statements" date: 02/19/2020 published: true continue_link: true header_image: false taxonomy: category: blog tag: - userneedstatements metadata: 'twitter:card' : summary 'twitter:site' : @hibbittsdesign 'twitter:title' : A Few Thoughts About... Grav Open Course Hub User Need Statement 'twitter:description' : 'Revisiting the user need statements for the Grav Open Course Hub project' 'twitter:image': 'https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/external/KcoHNJ_DViZ-1VNrNNel4li-ek9kPvn49ZXl5LnQWSw/https/media.nngroup.com/media/articles/opengraph_images/user-need-statements.png?width=800&height=419' --- _Recently I tweeted a revised list of user need statements for my Grav Open Course Hub project, and I thought I would share them here:_

Defining the problems (aka opportunities) your product is intending to address is a key item in your experience design toolkit. Once defined through user research, you should revisit these as your product further progresses to help maintain focus and inform any pivots etc.

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020
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In the case of @getgrav Open Course Hub project, I've now got four problem/opportunity statements in the format of User Needs Statements as defined by the Nielsen Norman Group (https://t.co/GN17NK4ZRn)...

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020

1️⃣Amelia, a tech-savvy educator, needs to combine her own Web content in addition to other open resources with the institutional LMS in order to reach the learning and experience goals of her course.

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020

2️⃣Amelia, a tech-savvy educator, needs to create content in a more system-independent format in order to more easily reuse that content on other current and future platforms.

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020

3️⃣Amelia, a tech-savvy educator, needs to have more control and flexibility with her content authoring workflow in order to keep content organized and up to date.

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020

4️⃣Amelia, a tech-savvy educator, needs to support collaborative content authoring of her online course materials in order to benefit from the knowledge and experience of other course facilitators and participants.

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020

Ideally, you should be able to map each of your existing and developing features to one or more of these user need statements. Periodically do additional user research to confirm existing needs and identify any unmet ones.

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020

This is one aspect I love about open source software - a continual dialogue with actual users of my software projects to help direct future development🚀

— Hibbitts Design (@hibbittsdesign) February 18, 2020