[Sigia-l] My card sorting book is underway!

[Michael Albers]

>But you do bring up a good point. What techniques do we use to
>determine users' mental models when we're designing for rich
>applications


One of the more interesting findings in card sorting was when I had a 
graduate class in usability do a card sort for a book I'm working 
on.  They had all of the level 2 & 3 headings to sort.

They grouped all of the "information" terms together (information 
modeling, information architecture, information retrieval, etc) 
BECAUSE they all had the work "information" in them.  When asked, 
they couldn't define all of the "information" terms, so they just 
assumed they must be related.

Another case of why remote card sorting or otherwise not watching the 
people doing the sort can be a problem.

Mike



-------------------------------
Dr. Michael J. Albers
Professional Writing Program
Department of English
University of Memphis
Memphis  TN  38152