Microsoft Surface: A New Computer Generation
Posted by Silvia | Filed under Interaction Design, Technology, User-centered Design
I think it’s the first time in my life I see something like this happen: A Microsoft release that impressed from apple to penguin lovers. For who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, Microsoft has announced their newest product: Microsoft Surface.
I, particularly, never understood that fanaticism of certain people to the point of catching Bill Gates and his multibillionaire Microsoft and throwing them into fire (ok, I understand more or less, but for me that only happened with religious fanatics and Marilyn Manson fans). Anyway, I bet everyone will be impressed with what they are to see.
Everything started when I read Microsoft would announce a revolutionary product. I confess I thought: “it will be just a mobile phone, something like the Apple iPhone, but less refined.” And I confess again, I got surprised when I saw the Microsoft toy. Actually it looked like a table, but in reality, it was not just a table, but an interactive computer-table!
Microsoft Surface is basically a computer in the format of a table, integrated with a 30″ touch screen: you don’t have to use mouse and/or keyboard, but your own delicate (and of course clean) fingers or any other object at hand. You and your friends can touch the screen at the same time and it will react to all the commands.
There are some features in the Microsoft surface that make me pleased as interaction designer, mainly the gestural commands and the object recognition system.
The gestural commands put the user definitively on control of the machine. Gestures (and no more in between devices) are responsible for the interaction with the system. This makes me remember my grandma holding a mouse for the first time and asking why she had to use such thing if it was much easier to touch the screen, like on the ATM machines.
The object recognition system makes possible a great integration with portable devices such as: digital cameras, cell phones, smart phones and PDAs. You just have to put them on the table to access their content.
Watch the video below to get an idea what the future (and Microsoft) promises.
You watched it and now you’re there completely excited, aren’t you? Well, forget it for now. This toy will only be available in the winter 2007, just for Microsoft partners as hotels, casinos and restaurants for the delightful price of 10 thousand bucks. Drool at will!
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Design starts with Proposition (ergo Usability)
Posted by Silvia | Filed under Usability, User-centered Design
by Leisa Reichelt - View Article
Here’s a typical story.
A project is in its final phases when it gets to the part of the Gant chart that says ‘usability testing’, and so they do.
People come in and are asked to perform tasks, and so they do, with greater or lesser degrees of difficulty. And yet, something else is wrong.
It’s not so much that they *can’t* use your website, it’s just that they don’t want to.
People ask me all kinds of questions about usability. What are the most common usability problems? What’s the best way to make sure our site/application/system is usable? That kind of thing.
It’s pretty clear when they ask these questions that they’re thinking on the presentation layer. Is that button in the right place? Is it big enough? Has it got the right label?
Now, don’t get me wrong, the presentation layer is important, but it’s not the biggest usability problem I see in my work. The biggest problem is that you’re designing something that people don’t care about. You’ve got your proposition wrong.
What’s your proposition? Well, basically it’s the value you’re offering to your customer. Are you offering something they want? Are you solving *real* problems for them? You’d be amazed how often this is not the case, and how often people don’t know about this until they’re about to launch their product or, worse still, once it has launched and is failing.
The diagram above is one that I pull out fairly often these days (it’s another one I’ve borrowed from Flow). It talks about how you need to design from the proposition down. You need to get the value offering right, then look at the model for delivering that value to clients at a conceptual level, then start looking more at what elements go on a page, what functionality is included, how it is structured and ordered. Unless you have all of these in order, it doesn’t really matter where your buttons go or what they’re labeled. Appearance level usability is the most superficial, easily remedied and perhaps even least important of all of the levels of design.
If you’ve got a flaw in your thinking at the top of the chain, then no amount of surface usability is going to save your product.
So, how do you approach this kind of Proposition design and usability? It’s pretty simple really, you test your proposition. This kind of testing (or really, research) is more about talking than tasks, and it’s about understanding your customers better and checking whether you are conceptually on the same page as they are.
I’ve been involved in several projects just in the past twelve months where doing this kind of research has saved companies tens of thousands of pounds (double that if you’re talking dollars) in *not* designing and developing functionality that either was unwanted by their customers or was designed to solve the wrong problems.
Working this out when you have a few pencil sketches or a couple of visio wireframes with a few days invested is an awful lot better than working it out when you get to the ‘usability testing’ line in your Gant chart.
So, if you really want my advice about usability, it’s that it starts right at the very beginning. Before a line (or a box) has been drawn. If you’re not designing the *right thing* then no amount of design expertise is going to get you a really usable product.
Talk to the people you’re designing for.
You’ll save lots of time and money and look really smart.
Amen.
Narrative Design Process
Posted by Silvia | Filed under Interaction Design, User-centered Design
If you didn’t read it yet, you should give a look at the article by Zapata at BoxesandArrows. He writes about the narrative design process with the help of wireframes.
Really interesting article. If you want to read click here.
Research is a Method, not a Methodology
Posted by Silvia | Filed under User-centered Design
by Dan Saffer
All projects should include research.
That’s the current thinking in design research and user-centered design. Indeed, many of my Adaptive Path colleagues won’t do a project unless it includes some research to uncover the goals, motivations and needs of potential users. More and more, however, I’ve found my views about the importance of research have become less dogmatic. On several recent projects, I’ve conducted no research at all — or at least very little of it — and those products seem to have turned out fine and are well liked by users. Luck? I’m not sure.
What I am sure of is that there’s only a loose correlation between research and the final outcome of a product. Microsoft spent at least two years researching Vista; Apple did no research that I know of on Mac OS X. Now, obviously there are many factors (technology, business, marketing, etc.) that go into the creation of a product or service, and it’s probably unfair to judge products in this way, but there are few other ways for designers to evaluate the value of research except through the success of the final product.
Brilliant insights into users’ needs are effectively useless — just proverbial trees falling in an empty forest — unless they reach those users in the form of a successful product.
And what about projects that build upon other projects — which is to say, most projects? Is it necessary to conduct research simply to add a feature to an existing piece of software, or a new section to a website? Perhaps. Or, just as likely, perhaps not.
Most experienced designers have enough expertise to get many products 80% designed without ever doing research, and sometimes that 80% is all that’s needed. Research can be a useful tool, but it can also be an ineffective waste of time. Good designers make good designs, not research. Even with good research, you can follow users (and time and money) down some serious rabbit holes, never to return.
When to Use Research
Here are some research guidelines that I use for my projects. Only use design research when:
1. You don’t know the subject area well. I’m not an expert in investment banking, so if I had to design a product for investment bankers, I’d need to learn about what they do and why they do it.
2. The project is based in a culture different to your own. Chinese culture isn’t the same thing as the culture of the United States. Or India. Or Western Europe. Cultural differences can cause differences in behavior and expectations for a product.
3. You don’t know who the users are. This should be self-explanatory, but amazingly enough, many companies don’t know who uses their products or why. If you find that your view of the users is different from the stakeholders’, you might want to establish a consensus around that — the type of clarity that only research can provide.
4. The product is one you’d never use yourself. Luckily, as an affluent white male in my 30s, I have a lot of products directed at me. But I’m not a doctor or nurse, and I’m not likely to use medical devices, so if I was working on a medical device project, I’d have to rely on research to teach me how the device would be used. Note, however, that this approach can make for some narrowly focused products, which only work well for a small group of people.
5. The product contains features and functionality that are for specific types of users, who are doing specific types of work, work you don’t necessarily do yourself. MS Office contains a bunch of features that I would never use, but if they were removed, key power users would scream bloody murder. Sometimes you have to conduct research to understand the nuances of a specific feature, as well as its importance to a specific group of users.
6. You need inspiration. Sometimes you get stuck and an afternoon away from your computer screen can spark ideas and provide unexpected directions to take a product.
7. You need empathy. Some types of people and groups are harder to identify with than others. Illinois Neo-Nazis for example — not that I’d ever do a project for them. But what about the elderly or infirm? It’s difficult to understand their situation unless you know about it.
8. You don’t have much expertise. Admitting this is humbling, but necessary. Research might not make you a good designer, but it might make you a better designer by exposing you to new things and preventing you from making simple mistakes that a more experienced designer would avoid as a matter of course.
A Tool, Not an Approach
It could be argued that these “Only When” guidelines I just outlined apply to every design project and every designer. Which is true, to a degree. Who, for instance, doesn’t need inspiration and empathy?
But I want to shift assumptions about research: Namely, stop thinking of it as a necessary approach to design and start thinking of it as just a helpful tool. Saying that research is required for every project would be like saying that all projects need wireframes or content analyses, which just isn’t the case. Yes, research is good for many types of projects (as outlined above), but it isn’t always a necessity.
“Research can help us improve our hunches. But research should inform our professional judgment, not substitute for it.” Like other tools in the designer’s toolbox, research should be used only when necessary, not applied to every project unthinkingly.
Measure the right things to define success
Posted by Silvia | Filed under Interaction Design, User-centered Design
by David Fore
The job of interaction designers is to provide pleasure and power to people through the design of products, services, tools, and processes that satisfy their goals. With the discipline of interaction design still in its infancy, some people believe the medium in which we work is pixels. But this is manifestly untrue. On the way to coming up with a design of an artifact such as a sales tool or an infusion pump, we must examine, and often change, the nature of roles, processes, and workflows. True, many of our recommendations are ultimately manifested in software displays and controls with which people interact. But by simply locating a widget on this screen rather than that one, we are profoundly, if not subtly, altering people’s perceptions of their work…and often the outcomes as well.
Activities such as describing roles, values, priorities, business processes, workflow models, domain object models, toolsets, business rules, and the like are the bread-and-butter of interaction designers. Sure, you need to collaborate with others to get this work done—particularly the pick and shovel work, as well as change management—but interaction designers are uniquely skilled at synthesizing complex data, resolving contending points of view, and communicating processes.
Often designers are asked to begin their work with activities such as task analysis and eye-ball tracking studies. However interesting the data yielded by such research, it is time-consuming and often misleading. Partly this is a matter of confusing tasks with goals, while ignoring context. Assigning much meaning to quantitative behavioral studies can be a little like assuming that the guy with the drill in his hand wants to do harm to the woman lying there in the chair. Sure, he might be a madman. But more likely he’s a dentist and she’s his patient.
Focusing on such measurements is most dangerous when your organizational change team lacks people with design skills. You carry out a task analysis that records how people use CD players, but it will only tell about how people use CD players. It will give no insight into what people like about music. The result of such an effort? Perhaps the design of a better CD player…but you’re never going to come up with iPod. You just can’t get there from here.
So then why do so many people put stock in these methods? I daresay it’s because eyeball movement can be tracked and measured. Which is to say, if it can be counted, it must be important. And if the conclusions of the study lead your efforts astray, you can blame the data, leaving your judgment unquestioned.
Moreover, many business and technology managers simply don’t believe in the existence of someone with the skills and insight necessary to take a qualitative and creative approach to defining complex problems and designing appropriate solutions. And so they content themselves with incremental process improvements, the unofficial slogan of which is: Change is good so long as it resembles what we’re already doing. But an organizational change initiative staffed, in part, by interaction designers can adopt a more productive slogan: Change is good so long as it satisfies the goals of people and the objectives of the organization.
This is no pedantic distinction. The difference between something designed around tasks and something designed to serve human goals is the difference between breaking ahead of the pack and biting the dust of the lead dogs.
Better Content Management through Information Architecture
Posted by Silvia | Filed under Information Architecture, User-centered Design
By Masood Nasse
Everyone understands the business case for Content Management: Organizations drowning in information can’t learn from, act on, or leverage knowledge and resources trapped in assets that already exist. You lose the content’s value if you can’t find it to use it. To solve problems like these, business often purchases a technology, assuming the former is a feature of the latter. In the content management world, we hear the same kinds of promises from IT stakeholders, again and again:
- Our developers will provide forms that authors will use to update content online (and every one will live happily ever after).
- We will use XML(and every one will live happily ever after).
- We will buy This software from That vendor—off the shelf—and authors will use this to update content. We will customize These options to match our requirements. (And every one will live happily ever after.)
Unfortunately, business often confuses technology for the solution. Forms, XML, and software won’t manage your content. Neither will they help authors create content, nor do they help you leverage content for later use. When Content Management Systems go wrong – and they frequently do – you can end up with terrible nightmare scenarios:
- Authors write content, and try unsuccessfully to use the CMS.
- IT updates content in relevant format and uploads for authors to review. The authors make power point presentations with changes and mail them to IT.
- IT reviews the PowerPoints and uploads the changes.
- Authors approve the changes, and IT uploads the final version to the site.
To prevent these kinds of scenarios, we try to customize off-the-shelf systems or develop our own, but… IT and business, focused on issues with technology and business process neglect the system-wide ecology that governs how those technologies and processes will be used. To implement a successful content management system, we have to go beyond business process and technology and understand how the organization, as an organism, interacts with and uses its content. Four factors are crucial to ensuring an organization can successfully manage its content:
- Who will interact with the system? Who will create and manage the content? Also, who will need to find and use the content later?
- What are we managing? What is mission-critical? What kinds of data do we need to manage?
- How is the system managed How is the content authored, approved, and managed? How does the CMS enable your business processes?
- How is the content used? Who will use it, when, and why? How does this integrate with your Information Architecture?
Framing content management in this way helps move the discussion away from business processes and technology. Several familiar methods and tools can help organizations answer these questions and understand how content is created and managed into the system, as well as found and used out of the system.
Who uses your CMS? Authors, approvers, and users.
One of the first steps in implementing a CMS should be to identify the CMS users: who will author and publish content? Gather data through user research and modeling. Scenarios can reveal how the system will really be used, and personas can help business and IT better understand the goals, skill-sets, and motivations that directly impact how successfully the content management system will be used. The following questions can be useful during user research:
- What tools are used to author content? At one large research University, instead of composing content using the CMS’s forms, instructors copied and pasted existing content from old syllabi written in Word.
- How is content authored? At a financial services consultancy, all content was painstakingly crafted by copywriters. In one city council campaign, content appeared as bullet points in emails (or on a whiteboard) that were translated and uploaded by (seemingly) random volunteers.
- Do the authors and managers understand and use the information architecture? At a large development bank, authors rarely categorized content because they didn’t understand the interface (or its importance).
Understanding how people use the content is equally important.
- Who uses the content? In that city council campaign, the website was written for potential voters, but it was mostly used by reporters and precinct captains.
- How do they use the content? At a large government agency, the system stored versions to help in production of final documents, but writers used stored versions to find examples to copy and paste from.
- When do they use the content? One music publication published reviews of new releases as a stream of new content, but access was most common for users researching albums long-after they had come out.
In addition to helping you better understand your users, personas and scenarios can help you test and validate how the effectiveness of the CMS.
What are we managing? Handling mission critical content
What data really needs to be handled by a CMS? In a utopian situation, the database can manage any type of data or content. In reality, it does not work that way. Content management systems usually do not handle all types of data effectively, so you must prioritize critical data and workflows.
- Where does the content come from? Is it created in-house? Does it arrive in feeds from outside providers? At a large entertainment website, most content came from licensed feeds from outside providers, but in important cases, content was created by onsite editors.
- What formats do you need to manage? Large enterprises typically manage office documents created, like Word or WordPerfect files. Do you need to manage multi-media files? PDFs? Flash? Implementing search or a decent taxonomy for these formats is a different ball game altogether, and many content management systems simply do not have the ability to manage them efficiently.
- How often does the content need to be managed? It often does not make financial sense to manage content that is updated on an infrequent basis. Content management systems typically do not have the ability to present brand vehicles – like annual reports – in formats that are aesthetically pleasing and reflect the company’s branding. That job is best left to your creative and marketing team.
- What content is most important? Critical tasks deserve special attention. Regardless of how frequently critical content tasks must be completed, their importance may require the system allow you to manage their content quickly and flawlessly.
Along those same lines, it may be better to handle a few types of content well, than to handle all types badly.A broad inventory that lists types of content, sources, and formats can help you understand the potential scope of content you need to manage. Rating the importance of each type of content can help you prioritize what the system must handle, as opposed to what would be nice. Along the same lines, task analysis of both common and critical tasks at your organization can further illuminate types of content to focus on.
Conclusion
To implement content management system that really works, business and IT must think beyond internal processes and technology. If your organization keeps in mind the users who will interact with the content as well as the range of types of content, then your CMS is much more likely to succeed. However, users and content are only the inputs that go into your CMS. Understanding the content lifecycle is the final missing piece.
Ten Guidelines for User-centered Web Design
Posted by Silvia | Filed under User-centered Design
By Aimée Truchard
Most users don’t really read Web pages. Instead, they scan text for specific pieces of information in a process called information retrieval. With user-centered design (UCD), you can improve the usefulness (relevance) and usability (ease of use) of Web sites by considering information retrieval and other factors.
- Who are the users of this Web site?
- What are the tasks and goals of these users?
- What experience levels do the users have with
- Computers?
- The Web?
- This interface and interfaces like it?
- The domain (subject matter)?
- What are the users’ working or Web-surfing environments?
- What hardware, software, and browsers do the users have?
- How can the design of this interface facilitate users’ cognitive processes? How do the users discover and correct errors?
- What are the users’ preferred learning styles? How much training, if any, will the users receive?
- What relevant knowledge and skills do the users already possess?
- What functions do the users need from this interface? How do they currently perform these tasks? Why do the users currently perform these tasks the way they do?
- What information might the users need and in what form do they need it?
- What do users expect from this Web site? How do users expect this interface will work?
After answering these questions, you can begin developing, designing, and testing your Web site. In UCD, your development cycle includes stages for both usability design and testing. Be sure to get user feedback throughout development and don’t settle on a final direction or design too soon. Usability testing is the only way you can know if your particular site meets these users’ needs.
Ten guidelines for Web-page design
1. Visibility—Make important elements such as navigational aids highly visible so users can determine at a glance what they can and cannot do. Visibility helps users predict the effects of their actions.
2. Memory Load—Make screen elements meaningful and consistent across the site to reduce memory load. In this way, users don’t have to remember what the elements mean from one page to another. Relate new items and functions to ones the user already knows.
3. Feedback—Provide immediate feedback when a user performs an action. For example, when the user clicks a button, something on the screen should change so the user knows the system has registered the action.
4. Accessibility—Users need to find information quickly and easily:
- Offer users a few ways to find information such navigational elements, search functions, or a site map. However, offer only a few options at a time to avoid confusion.
- Organize information into small, digestible pieces using a schema or hierarchy that is meaningful to the user.
- Make it easy for users to skim; provide clues that allow users to find the information by scanning rather than reading.
5. Orientation/Navigation—Help users orient themselves by providing the following navigational clues:
- Descriptive links
- A site map
- Obvious ways to exit every page
- Clearly visible elements on each page that inform users where they are in relation to other pages and how to navigate to other pages
Use frames sparingly, if at all. Frames confuse many users because the Back button, printing, and bookmark functions do not work like they do on non-frames pages. Approximately 60% of Web users employ the Back button as their primary means of navigation. Usability issues surface when the Back button doesn’t work the way they expect.
6. Errors—Minimize user errors by avoiding situations in which users are likely to make mistakes. Also try to accommodate incorrect actions by users so they can recover quickly. For example, if you anticipate that users might look for certain information on one Web page that actually appears on another, you can include descriptive links to the page they need.
7. Satisfaction—Make your site pleasant to use and view. Users’ satisfaction with the interface influences their
- Perception of ease-of-use.
- Motivation for learning how to use the site.
- Confidence in the reliability of the information in the site.
8. Legibility—Make text easy to read. When developing online documentation, use
- Sans serif fonts rather than serif fonts, especially in body text.
- Non-ornamental fonts.
- Roman characters rather than italic.
- Medium-sized fonts—9 to 11 points for sans serif fonts and 11 to 12 points for serif fonts often work well for body text.
- Mixed case for text rather than all capital letters.
- Line lengths less than 50 to 60 characters long to facilitate scanning.
- High contrast between text and background colors to increase legibility. Dark text against a light background is most legible.
9. Language—You can improve usability by incorporating the following stylistic elements:
- Concise language
- Everyday words instead of jargon or technical terms
- Active voice and active verbs
- Verbs instead of noun strings or nominalizations
- Simple sentence structure
Because the Internet crosses cultural and national boundaries, be careful with ambiguity. The following stylistic elements can be misinterpreted easily:
- Humor (Humor does not translate well across cultures. At best, it is not understood; at worst, it can offend.)
- Metaphors
- Icons
- Idioms
- Puns
10. Visual Design—The aesthetics of your interface play an important role in communicating information and tone to your users effectively. As you develop your site, consider the following visual design strategies:
- Create pages that are interesting yet simple and uncluttered.
- Use graphics to illustrate and inform, increase the user’s satisfaction and motivation, and aid navigation. Avoid using graphics that only serve as decoration.
- Use graphics that are small in file size so they download quickly.
- Make the most important elements the most visually prominent.
- Treat text as a graphic element.
- Make preliminary page layouts using a grid.
- Group related elements close to each other so users can associate the elements just by looking at the placement.
- Use white space to visually organize the page, to emphasize important elements, and to give users’ eyes some resting space.
- Use invisible table lines (white space) instead of visible lines.
If you must use lines, use light and thin ones.
Use color conservatively. Although color can engage users, it can distract them unnecessarily or be misinterpreted. Also keep in mind that some users have equipment that only supports monochrome. Try your design in monochrome first, then add a few colors.
Card sorting: a definitive guide
Posted by Silvia | Filed under Information Architecture, User-centered Design
by Donna Maurer and Todd Warfel
“Card sorting is a great, reliable, inexpensive method for finding patterns in how users would expect to find content or functionality.” Card sorting is a technique that many information architects (and related professionals.) use as an input to the structure of a site or product.
Card sorting is a user-centered design method for increasing a system’s findability. The process involves sorting a series of cards, each labeled with a piece of content or functionality, into groups that make sense to users or participants. According to Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, card sorting “can provide insight into users’ mental models, illuminating the way that they often tacitly group, sort and label tasks and content within their own heads.
”Card sorting is a great, reliable, inexpensive method for finding patterns in how users would expect to find content or functionality. Those patterns are often referred to as the users’ mental model. By understanding the users’ mental model, we can increase findability, which in turn makes the product easier to use.
Why?
Card sorting is a quick, inexpensive, and reliable method, which serves as input into your information design process. Card sorting generates an overall structure for your information, as well as suggestions for navigation, menus, and possible taxonomies.
While card sorting might not provide you with final structure, it can help you answer many questions you will need to tackle throughout the information design phase. For example, more than likely there will be some areas that users disagree on regarding groupings or labels. In these cases, card sorting can help identify trends, such as:
- Do the users want to see the information grouped by subject, process, business group, or information type?
- How similar are the needs of the different user groups?
- How different are their needs?
- How many potential main categories are there? (typically relates to navigation)
- What should those groups be called?
Card sorting can help answer these types of questions, making you better equipped to tackle the information design phase.
Method
There are two primary methods for performing card sorts.
- Open Card Sorting: Participants are given cards showing site content with no pre-established groupings. They are asked to sort cards into groups that they feel are appropriate and then describe each group. Open card sorting is useful as input to information structures in new or existing sites and products.
- Closed Card Sorting: Participants are given cards showing site content with an established initial set of primary groups. Participants are asked to place cards into these pre-established primary groups. Closed card sorting is useful when adding new content to an existing structure, or for gaining additional feedback after an open card sort.
Advantages
- Simple – Card sorts are easy for the organizer and the participants.
- Cheap – Typically the cost is a stack of 3×5 index cards, sticky notes, a pen or printing labels, and your time.
- Quick to execute – You can perform several sorts in a short period of time, which provides you with a significant amount of data.
- Established – The technique has been used for over 10 years, by many designers.
- Involves users – Because the information structure suggested by a card sort is based on real user input, not the gut feeling or strong opinions of a designer, information architect, or key stakeholder, it should be easier to use.
- Provides a good foundation – It’s not a silver bullet, but it does provide a good foundation for the structure of a site or product.
Disadvantages
- Does not consider users’ tasks – Card sorting is an inherently content-centric technique. If used without considering users’ tasks, it may lead to an information structure that is not usable when users are attempting real tasks. An information needs analysis or task analysis is necessary to ensure that the content being sorted meets user needs and that the resulting information structure allows users to achieve tasks.
- Results may vary –The card sort may provide fairly consistent results between participants, or may vary widely.
- Analysis can be time consuming – The sorting is quick, but the analysis of the data can be difficult and time consuming, particularly if there is little consistency between participants.
- May capture “surface” characteristics only – Participants may not consider what the content is about or how they would use it to complete a task and may just sort it by surface characteristics such as document types.
When should card sorting be used?
Card sorting is a user-centered, formative technique. It should be used as an input to:
- designing a new site
- designing a new area of a site
- redesigning a site
Card sorting is not an evaluation technique and will not tell you what is wrong with your current site.
Card sorting is not a silver bullet to create an information structure. It is one input in a user-centered design process and should complement other activities such as information needs analysis, task analysis, and continual usability evaluation. It is most effective once you have completed:
- research into what users need out of the site
- a content (functionality) audit/inventory (for an existing site) or detailed content list (for a new site). For an existing site, it is crucial that the content inventory is examined carefully to include only content that is needed by users.
Card sorting can be useful to demonstrate to people that others think differently.
Preparation
Preparing for a typical card sorting exercise requires the following:
1. Selecting content
2. Selecting participants
3. Preparing the cards
Selecting content
The first step in conducting a card sort is to determine the list of topics. This list should be drawn from a wide variety of sources:
- existing online content
- descriptions of business groups and processes
- planned applications and processes
- potential future content
By including potential future content it becomes possible to create a structure that not only works now, but also will work for future content and functionality. Adding new items in the future should require minimal rework if the structure is designed correctly.
Content selected for the cards can be individual pages, functionality, small groups of pages, or whole sections of the site. Be consistent with your chosen granularity—participants will find it difficult to group content at different levels of granularity.
If you choose to use small groups of pages or sections of the site, ensure that the groups are of items that belong together. For example, don’t include a grouping of “media releases,” as this may not suit users and their tasks (they may prefer individual media releases to be grouped with other pages of similar topic.). Instead, include some individual media releases and see what participants do with them.
The content for the card sort should be representative of the site (or the part of site that you are investigating). It is important to ensure that the content has enough similarity to allow groupings to be formed. If the content chosen is too varied, participants will not be able to create natural groupings.
Selecting participants
Card sorting may be performed individually or in groups. Keep in mind that the exercise will be performed multiple times. So, if you’re using individuals, try and get seven to ten for a good sampling. If you’re using groups, our preferred method, five groups of three participants per group (a total of 15 participants) works best.
Whether you choose to use individuals or groups, the most important aspect of selecting participants is that they come from and are representative of your user group. (If you have multiple user groups, it is important to include a representative sample from each, as they may view the information differently). Scheduling individuals can be easier than scheduling groups of participants, especially if you have individuals located remotely. However, individuals can find it difficult to sort larger numbers of cards, providing less valuable input.
A benefit of group sorts is that they typically provide richer. data than individual sorts. Whereas individuals need to be prompted to “think aloud,” groups tend to discuss their decisions aloud openly. Combine this with the group’s ability to handle larger numbers of cards effectively and their tendency to walk each other through questions about content or functionality, and you have a rich data set with greater insight into users’ mental model.
The number of groups needed may depend upon the size and complexity of the site or product. However, we’ve found that patterns tend to emerge within five groups. These patterns become the basis for the site or product’s information architecture. When inviting participants, it’s not necessary to tell them they’ll be performing a card sort. Instead, simply tell them they’ll be asked to perform a simple task, or exercise that will help you (re)design the site or product. Additionally, let them know they don’t need to prepare ahead of time; they should simply come as they are.
Preparing the cards
Each item on your list should be placed on a card. The labels you use on the cards are extremely important. They should be short enough that participants can quickly read the card, yet detailed enough that participants can understand what the content is. When necessary, the label can be supplemented with a short description or image on the back of the card. Labels may be printed on standard (Avery) mailing labels, or printed by hand. We recommend using mailing labels as this saves time and the labels will be more legible. Mark each card with a letter or number to make analysis easier once the sorting is done.
You can use whatever cards you have on hand, but we recommend 3” x 5” (10cm x 15cm). Index cards are durable, easy to see from a distance, and readily available at office supply stores. You may also use Post-it® notes, but it is our experience that cards are more durable and easier to handle.
Number of cards
While there is no magic number, we have found that between 30 and 100 cards works well. Fewer than 30 cards typically does not allow for enough grouping to emerge and more than 100 cards can be time consuming and tiring for participants. However, we have performed successful card sorts with over 200 cards where participants understood the content well. In addition to the labeled cards, be sure to include some blank cards in case participants need to add something. And don’t forget a pen.
Execution
The cards have been labeled using Avery labels on 3” x 5” index cards. On the back of each card is a letter/number combination, as well as a short description or image as necessary. The letter/number combination will be used during analysis; the short description or image is provided to clarify titles that might prove confusing. The cards are shuffled prior to participants entering the room. The shuffled cards, a stack of 20 blank cards, and an ink pen are placed on the table. Three participants are brought into the room and given an introduction with some basic instructions, like these:
First of all, we’d like to thank you for coming. As you may be aware, we’re in the initial stages of (re)designing a (web site, product, intranet). In order to make it as easy to use as possible, we’d like to get some input from the people who will be using it. And that’s where you come in. We’re going to ask you to perform a very simple exercise that will give us some great insight into how we can make this (web site, product, intranet) easier to use. Here’s how it works. In front of you is a stack of cards. Those cards represent the content and functionality for this (web site, product, intranet). Working together, you should try and sort the cards into groups that make sense to you. Don’t worry about trying to design the navigation; we’ll take care of that. Also, don’t be concerned with trying to organize the information as it is currently organized on your (web site, product, intranet). We’re more interested in seeing how you would organize it into groups you would expect to find things in.
Once your groups are established, we’d like to have you give each group a name that makes sense to you. You are allowed to make sub-groups if you feel that’s appropriate. If you feel something is missing, you can use a blank index card to add it. Additionally, if a label is unclear, feel free to write a better label on the card. Finally, if you think something doesn’t belong, you can make an “outlier” pile.
Oh, and one last thing. Feel free to ask questions during the exercise if you feel the need. I can’t guarantee that I can answer them during the exercise, but I’ll do my best to answer them when you’re finished.
Facilitating card sorts can be tricky. During the exercise, your main job is to observe and listen. Your secondary job is to keep the momentum going without leading the participants. Take notes on a small notepad to keep track of insightful comments made by participants, or questions that come up during the session. Try to make sure each participant has the opportunity to provide input. If one of the participants tries to “take over” the sort, gently prompt the other participants. If one participant sits back, gently prompt that participant. If the group creates a “miscellaneous” group, ask them if they are satisfied with that group, or if they would like to take another look at it to see if it needs to be sorted further. Make sure not to lead them too much. Once the participants are finished, walk them through a particular task. This helps validate the results. For example, if the site has some type of account management, or profile feature, ask them to walk you through updating their address information.
Analyzing the results/next steps
Analyzing card sort data is part science, part magic. Analysis can be done in two ways: by looking for broad patterns in the data or by using cluster analysis software. When performing analysis on smaller numbers of cards, you may be able to see patterns by simply laying the groups out on a table, or taping them on a whiteboard. You will be able to see patterns through similar groupings and labelling. When performing analysis on larger numbers of cards, we suggest using a spreadsheet.
Enter the results into a spreadsheet, making sure to capture the title and number on each card. If the participants changed the label on a card, record the new label and place the old label in parentheses. Once you’ve entered the data, begin looking for patterns across the groups. Keep in mind the discussions held between the group participants during the sort, as they provide additional insight that might not appear in the spreadsheet. At this point, you are not looking for a definitive answer, but for insights and ideas.Patterns will emerge. These patterns will likely be sensible for the actual users. It is important to note that areas of difference also provide useful insights. Areas of difference tell us about:
- content that participants haven’t understood well
- content that could belong to more than one area
- alternative paths to content (for example, a list of all “how-to” articles could be created)
- how different types of participants see information
There definitely is some magic in the analysis step, and it is difficult to provide exact instructions on what to look for. Allow yourself some time to explore more than one organizational model based on the information provided from your analysis. Remember that it is not necessary to jump straight to a taxonomy at this point. Your card sort results can be supplemented with additional user research and task analysis.
Issues/Variations
There are a range of additional tasks that you can ask participants to do during the exercise, including these:
- Home page content: ask participants to put to one side content that they would use so often that they would want a link on the home page to it.
- Information- seeking task: after the exercise, bundle up the piles of cards on the table so only the top level is showing. Ask participants where they put particular content. (It is worth doing this if you suspect that the participants were not thinking about how they would use the content as they sorted)