[Sigia-l] card sorting: dealing with multiple placements

[Jonathan Broad]

Derek R wrote:

>>| Your comments valorize "field research" over the full
>>| panoply of user-research methods that derive more
>>| generically from qualitative research techniques
>>    
>>
>
>Which comments?
>
Well, it must have been:

> You must understand that the goal of MLIS degree programs is to produce
> good *librarians,* not good field researchers.

But that's unfair, since in context you mean something more like "users of ethnographic methods".  So let me expand my comment to say that you valorize ethographic methods over heuristic, survey, and more controlled user-observation methods.

>Face-to-face, so to speak, in the natural environment is always,
>naturally, better!
>
By what measure?!  I agree that it is a wonderful method, if you have 
the means, and your project has a complex target market and a low 
tolerance for error.  But it's also an elephant gun sometimes.  The only 
measure of success I accept for research methods is: do they deliver 
good user experience within budget.  Ethnographic research 
('in-the-field') isn't always the best means to that end.

BTW, do libraries constitute natural environments?  If not, why would or 
wouldn't an office cubicle qualify instead?  If so, wouldn't you have to 
admit that most librarians have oodles of 'face-to-face' experience 
observing information-seeking and question-formulating behavior 'in the 
wild'?

>Well, as I think anyone who can identify with my
>go-to-the-library-and-ask-a-librarian example should illustrate, the
>skill of the librarian is, always has been, and continues thru teaching
>to be, *conciliatory.* I cannot deny that any profession contains
>individuals who have specialized interests. Obviously, if your
>profession is sweeping floors and you observe a lot of dirt coming in
>the building thru one particular entrance and notice that particular
>entrance is missing a door-mat, well, you put a door mat there and save
>a lot of unnecessary sweeping but that doesn't mean you're "using
>user-centered design methods," that you've "been trying...since day
>two," etc. and the rest of it. You're just a human-being. You don't want
>to sweep so hard. You want to get home to your beautiful wife and
>children, watch TV, get-off-your-feet, etc.
>
Umm...I was talking about the 'librarians' (a more inclusive group than 
those who work in libraries--it's not our fault that we're the only 
profession named after our most well-known workplaces) who actually 
built and designed the OPACs in the first place.  So your comment is 
only interesting in that your population sample here reveals some of the 
limits of your methods, ethnographic or no.

You obviously have your own meaning in mind when you say *conciliatory* 
(so *derogatorially*, I might add), so you should just spell it out.  I 
take you to mean something like 'friendly', although even that goes 
against the grain of the word.  I even checked dictionary.com as you 
usually require, but gained to insight into why you insist on this word.

>In short, I think *you* are one who is valorizing. You're making
>librarians and their profession into a great deal more than they even
>are today, never mind the past. Anybody can go to their local library
>and test this themselves. Go to your local library, go up to the
>librarian, ask them how they've been trying to introduce 'user-centered
>design methods' into their library. They will look at you like you're
>from the moon! "Huh?" "What?" "Can I help you find a book?" That's what
>they'll say. Does that story sound familiar? Let's be serious about
>this, now, and not valorize.
>
Your dripping disdain is probably doing a sufficient job of discrediting 
your arguments, but I press on.  Let me note some of the people in the 
world who could claim to be a librarian: librarians, indexers, 
catalogers, library automation engineers, IAs, people with MLISs, 
information retreival experts, LIS researchers, etc etc.  As I said, 
pity we who are named after our building.  Do all lawyers work in 
courthouses?  How would they like to be called 'courthousers'?

*All* librarians are not user-centered designers (did I say that?  I 
think just that reference librarians epitomize what such designs should 
shoot for).  Some are (me, for example).  Not all ethnographers would 
know what 'user-centered design' was either, right?  So?

But librarians, in general, as a community (with a very large body of 
research literature behind it), have been familiar with user-centered 
design principles (both explicitly and implicitly) for a good long while 
(don't make me do a lit review, please).  By implicitly here, I mean 
that libraries themselves are information systems that users enter and 
experience.  Their architecture, signage, layout, and organization are 
all designed and redesigned on the basis of very contextual 
understandings of their use.  You don't need a formal methodology to 
have a good ethnographic understanding of library-users qua 
information-seekers, if you spend enough time in a library!

So you are not even close to hitting the mark here.  The point you 
missed and continue to miss is that reference librarians (and many other 
types of librarians, such as indexers) *are* information interfaces.  
Professional librarian-designers and researchers *are aware of* 
user-centered interface design methodologies.  See?

>>| All the classification "systems" that seem to really bother
>>| your postmodern sensibilities _were never intended for 
>>| consumption by the end-user_.  They were originally
>>| designed by librarians, for librarians -- for librarians who
>>| were to spend considerable time mastering them
>>    
>>
>
>Well, this is my point about these systems, isn't it? That they have no
>use to the actual user. That is, they are practically useless.
>
No...read carefully. 

They *are* extremely useful--to this day--to librarians. 

And librarians are useful to users as a result.

>>| The point is that librarians themselves were supposed to
>>| be the interfaces between information and users
>>    
>>
>
>Librarians were only mediators to prevent stealing, so that the public
>would not run off with all the books! The librarian profession, from the
>beginning, was chiefly for inventory control.
>
Tee hee!  That's funny, although I don't think you meant it as a joke.  
Which is, of course, sad.  

Compare: The purpose of ethnography, from the beginning, was chiefly to 
lull native populations into a false sense of security while collecting 
evidence of the emptiness of their lives without Christ.

Actually, I'm not sure that my counter-distortion isn't actually more 
accurate.

Anyway, take a walk through the Library of Congress someday, look around.

>>| librarian is the...interface
>>    
>>
>
>That's great, except there is a better way. Machines can perform tasks
>much faster and more reliably than a Jane or Joe.
>
Fast, cheap, good--pick two.  You missed the 'quality' requirement.

No, the real problem is that you can't clone enough Janes or Joes to 
deal with all the information coursing through the world's veins today.

The day I see a machine index a complex document as well as a human is 
the day I retreat to my bunker and wait for John Connor to rescue me 
after Judgement Day.

>>| We should completely isolate the user from 
>>| the actual organization of the collection
>>    
>>
>
>You should, rather, completely and without delay or circumstance,
>retrieve the item requested -- and that is good organization.
>  
>
That shows how much you know about reference.  People don't ask a 
librarian for help finding a *book*.  They'll do that themselves.  They 
are looking for *information*.  And their question sounds like "I saw 
this statistic, about that guy who was Secretary of State--no, wait, it 
was a picture--and she didn't have a hat on or anything, but it said 
something about the future of agriculture in Maine.  How would I find 
that picture?".

Automate that! ;)

>>| [Librarians] are trained to listen very carefully, elicit clarifying
>>| information, and then *iteratively* and *interactively* [perform
>>| their professional duties]
>>    
>>
>
>The same can be said of the floor-sweeper I talked about earlier. These
>are human qualities, found everywhere in all professions, not just
>'special magic' held by librarians.
>
I explicitly denied that I was attributing to librarians any "ancient 
wisdom" in these matters.  I'm well aware of the many other fields and 
disciplines that have converged on the ideas of user-centered design and 
contributed to the expansion and refinement of those techniques.  Since 
you didn't quote this part of my email, I'm not going to comment further.

Well, a bit.  I just ask you to think about what reference librarianship 
actually is (hell, go shadow a reference librarian at a special library 
in a nearby university for some ethnographic practice), and realize that 
it *does* represent an interesting kind of experience in observing 
users' information-seeking behavior.  Not magic.  Interesting.  About as 
interesting as the perspective of ethnography, to my mind, and that's no 
slight on either party.

>>| I for one have gladly added ethnomethodology to my toolset
>>| of "means" to "the end" of a good user experience
>>    
>>
>
>Well, just be careful how that tent is pegged-down. Ethnomethodology is
>not a check-list to followed.
>
Now who's putting on the mantle of the magician?  Neither is librarianship.

Conciliatorially,
Jonathan