[Sigia-l] Replacement for EZSort

[Laurie Gray]

-----Original Message-----
 * Is it worthwhile building a replacement?

I think so, Trent. I tried to use the tool a couple of years ago for a large
scale study involving cell phone menus. I wanted the web-based format. I ran
into problems with EZSort, and even after trying to come up with
workarounds, we still ran into problems, scrapped the effort and went to a
paper-and-stickynote task.

* What kind of features would you like to see in a new card sorting analysis
tool?

Of course, I'd like all features under the sun in an easy-to-use package,
but what gave me grief on the Ezsort tool were:
*Limited length of items to sort (I don't remember specifically, but I think
there were about 75 items max and I had 100)
*Limited length of text strings - I wanted to provide a description of each
menu item and have them sort the descriptions into categories - I could not
do this because of the text string length.
*Ability to view results in various ways - although I want the participants
to see the long text strings, I did not want to have to wade thru the text
strings. I would like a tool that cross-references the strings and a
reference value and shows me only the reference value on screen, but allows
me (via mouseover, perhaps) to see the entire text string.

Additionally, I think keeping it web-based would be a must-have. 

I really like the ease of use of the mind manager software from MindJet
(www.mindjet.com) and the ability to hide/show details as I desire. So that
might be somewhere to start.

* What would you expect to pay for a tool like this?
Given difficulties we've seen recently in getting software purchases
approved for internal use, I'd love for it to be free, but other software
packages I've seen lately (mind manager and task architect, for example)
have been running around the $300 range. I think this could be entered into
a reasonably-sized project budget with minimal to no pushback from clients,
if the tool was necessary for that project.