[Sigia-l] card sorting by survey?

[Whitney Quesenbery]

At 05:16 PM 10/24/2003 +0100, Laura S. Quinn wrote:
>I've always done my card sorts in person, and just wondering if good
>data can be achieved with users doing it completely on their own.

It's better to be there - no question about that.

But you can also:

Use remote usability methods (you watch them work, and talk on the phone 
during the session)

Debrief afterwards in a follow-up call with a random subset of your 
participants (or all of them) so you can get at the reasons.

Or,  go for large numbers of participants and look for quantitative 
significance.


No technique exists outside of the context of an overall approach to user 
analysis and design. There are no magic bullets.

If you think carefully about the question you are trying to answer, and 
what would make good data to work with, I find the solutions to how to 
collect that data quickly become evident. But, if you start with a solution 
(I will do card sorting), you end up muddling around with variations on 
techniques and quickly lose sight of the real goal: to gather information 
that will help you design confidently to produce something people want to use.




Whitney Quesenbery
Whitney Interactive Design, LLC
w. www.WQusability.com
e. whitneyq at wqusability.com
p. 908-638-5467

UPA  - www.usabilityprofessionals.org
STC Usability SIG: www.stcsig.org/usability