NASA’s Web Architecture and Content

Authors

Nicholas Edward Green, Jesse Axelrod Marciano, John Perry Nelson, Drew Cronin Wethern

Sponsor

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Advisors

Fred J. Looft, Brigitte Servatius

Term

October – December 2015

Project Outcomes

Final Report

Abstract

This project was completed for the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters to determine the current state of NASA’s webspace. As per the Federal CIO, NASA currently supports 3092 website URLs. Our team randomly selected 312 websites from NASA’s webspace and surveyed their responsible NASA employee for information about the website. With the survey data, our team developed personas from each of NASA’s target audiences. Our team conducted user experience testing with these personas to observe the effectiveness of NASA’s websites in serving their target audiences. This project resulted in data on the current state of NASA’s webspace, the potential effectiveness of tested websites, and evidence that persona driven user testing could be a useful technique for NASA in the future.