Presented by Joe Sokohl at Documentation and Training Life Sciences, June 23-26, 208 in Indianapolis. Ever have a project fail? You met with your project team, you talked with the customer, you reviewed technical requirements. But did you talk to your users? Just as one diagnosis doesn’t fit all patients, one application’s approach doesn’t work for all users. Know who accesses your information and uses your applications. Only then choose your features. Using a case study of a multinational project covering four countries, 10 business units, and tens of thousands of content elements, we’ll explore personas, scenarios, and other user-centered techniques. We’ll look at identifying users as well as segregating content according to users and regulatory needs. What was involved in this cases study? First we analyzed the 10 business units and their approaches and definitions of business goals. Next we analyzed industry standards for medical devices and their usage. But that wasn’t enough. We interviewed 40 people in 4 countries, and created an information architecture prototype. We then tested this prototype in hospitals, doctors’ offices, and on site where medical devices were in use. Based on this contextual inquiry, we refined the architecture and our understanding of the users. Decisions were then made on what type of content would be both appropriate and legal for each user and in each country. Only with a solid understanding of the users and their goals could we define a flexible, extensible, and usable information and content architecture.