Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ceptual difficulties associated with recovery from
severe mental illness and long term unemploy-
ment. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
standards for web-design and accessibility do
not include design features tailored to meet the
needs of people recovering from mental illness
(W3C, 2005). Instead, these standards concentrate
on the machine-dimension of human computer
interaction. As such, they focus on web-access
protocol development and browser privacy issues.
Despite the Web Access Initiative (WAI) there are
no web enabled work searching systems designed
for people recovering from mental illness (WAI,
2002). e-WRAP was developed to provide a tailor
made web based resource to assist people recover-
ing from mental illness gain employment. Project
team members were users, carers, practitioners and
academics with expertise in the areas of mental
health, psychology, social work and information
communication technology. The team's first task
was user analysis.
experience with the user group. The individual
interviews supplemented the contextual interviews
with further information provided on web-based
employment services designed to provide open,
flexible and distributed access for people who
may experience difficulty in returning to work
after a long absence. An immediate challenge for
the project team was to provide evidence of the
need for a more specialized web-mediated work
searching system designed specifically for people
recovering from mental illness if the project was
to proceed.
The project team held many focus group
meetings with users and experts. An outcome of
these meetings was the need to focus on easily
accessible information related to employment
as well as support and education concerning
mental health and well being. This was in order
to enhance the self-confidence of people (all age
groups) recovering from mental illness who may
have been out of work for many years, or have
never experienced paid employment. There was
general consensus that the design needed to ensure
that navigation was kept simple and that a person
could take regular breaks and easily return to the
site. It was suggested that in order to return to
the Login Screen, the user should only need to
press a Close button to finish a session. Re-entry
should be made possible again by repeating a
simple Login procedure. It was suggested that
touch screen technology be used to facilitate easy
access to information. This meant that the system
should function without a keyboard and mouse.
The outcome of much discussion with a user focus
group, was that the Home Page should welcome
the user through an audio greeting that could be
toggled to a textual description as an alternative.
Key job seeking options were identified during
the focus groups.
user analysis
Contextual interviews were conducted with
people who were recovering from mental illness
by observing and discussing the approaches and
strategies they used when looking for work. Use-
ful information was gained on work searching
strategies and the varied paper and web resources
available. Of particular note was the range of web
resources accessed designed for the general popu-
lation and the lack of sites designed specifically for
people recovering from mental illness. Valuable
information was also gained on type of Internet
access and levels of comfort with accessing and
navigating these sites, concentration and frustra-
tion when using them, as well as the suitability
of the content and design features.
Individual interviews were conducted with us-
ers as well as experts in the fields of information
communication technology, mental health and
vocational rehabilitation and employment. These
experts were chosen due to their knowledge and
task analysis
A task analysis enabled identification of the
processes and tasks associated with the goal of
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