[Sigia-l] Comments >> Card Sorting, etc...

[Jamie Coates]

Hi folks. I have been monitoring this newsgroup for a while and felt 
the urge to pipe in after seeing so much laborious comments, topics, 
and ridiculous over usage of vocabulary.

First, haven't we beaten the horse dead on the card-sorting topic? How 
much more can we say about it. After all it’s not rocket science. I 
would hate to see the instructions given to install a light bulb from 
the same people that go on about this topic.

Second, in regard to "usability professionals must disappear," I agree 
with some of the points made in the newsletter. In brief, UXD's, IA's 
or whatever we are called, spend too much time trying to advocate their 
value to a company and/or project. Lets face the hard truth, what we do 
is just ONE part of the bigger equation. Usability Design and 
Information Architecture are micro specialties but are not any more 
important than the role that the software engineers, project managers, 
etc. fulfill. A lot of the comments that I have seen in this newsgroup 
come off sounding like whining children constantly saying "we are 
important too...." I propose we stop the whining (job titles, project 
activities) and put our specialty(s) into correct perspective. It’s a 
tough economy and we need to adapt and not pigeon hole ourselves into 
one small corner.

Finally, I agree with the comment made about breaking the field into 
two extreme roles: (1) Design (2) Implementation. It’s extreme but 
simple. Best of all just about anyone can understand this instead of 
the overly complicated roles and duties that we talk about without end.




> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 13:15:00 +1000
> From: Tania <tania_peakusability at optusnet.com.au>
> Reply-To: tania_peakusability at optusnet.com.au
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigia-l] Card sorting - do not like but what else is there?
>
>>
>>
>> Quoting from
>> http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000248.html :
>>
>> 	"I recently came to the conclusion that I don't like card
>> 	 sorting as a technique for determining an information
>> 	 structure. I'm only now starting to realise why."
>>
>> 	"I have noticed that participants don't really look
>> 	 at the cards and try to form sensible groups
>> 	 ...Instead, they try to get rid of most of the cards
>> 	 as quickly as possible..."
>>
> Having done quite a bit of card sorting recently I am inclined to agree
> with Donna.  I think that the congnitive processes and decisions used 
> to
> sort cards are different to those used when navigating on a website.
> For instance, despite being very careful with wording on cards (to not
> lead test participants to particular groupings) I have found in a 
> recent
> project that participants often sort by user group (even if the user
> group is not written on the cards) yet when they are navigating a
> website, they tend to be more topic or task focussed (a general "no no"
> in my book).
>
> We recently developed an IA as a result of card sorting with over 20
> users.  The results showed a fairly consistent pattern which actually
> mixed user groups "For businesses" and topics "Apprenticeships" within
> the IA.   However, when we later tested the IA using scenarios, all the
> business participants went to the "Apprenticeships" section (presented
> at the end of the mnu)  for information about apprenticeships for
> businesses (as I suspect it was more closely aligned with their 
> specific
> goal) instead of going to the "For Businesses" section  which had
> employer specific information about apprenticships and was presented
> before the other option in the menu.   It was interesting that business
> test participants actually sorted the information one way but then went
> to the wrong area when we tested the IA they effectively came up with.
>
> Having said that, I still use card sorting for lack of an alternative
> apporach at least it provides some insight into users' mental model.  I
> would be interested to know of any alternative approaches.
>
> Tania Lang
> Peak Usability
> Brisbane, Australia