Stewart,
>'Card Sorting'
>I've seen workshops on this and so far can't see the use of card sorting for the majority of
websites.
I've experience card sorting from both sides. Some years ago my beautiful stand alone Quality
website had to be moved to a corporate content management system. The consultants putting the
system together invited 'users' (mostly management types, very unrepresentative of users as a
whole) along to a card sort session. In the end it became clear that the card sort was not an
exploratory, information seeking activity but a method by which the consultants could
manipulate the organisation into accepting their version of what the site should be. By a
'co-incidence' the model arrived at was one that was like many that the consultants had done
before and as far as I was concerned the initiative was at least a lame duck (if not a dead
one) from that point onwards.
I will be using a version of card sorting for a redesign of my current site but for me it does
not rate as important as observing and talking to real users in the place that they work.
>'User Profiles'.
>This is jack, he's 22 and he drives a Ford. Great - so there is a real user called jack?
Apparently not. The problem with may >profiles I have seen is they have nothing to do with the
real information. They are marketing profiles full of assumptions and >prejudice and therefore
useless in the pragmatic world of building a web site.
I am fairly new to IA and am still deeply troubled by this use of 'personas'. I have heard
people say that it can be expensive - wouldn't it be cheaper to talk to 'real' people? In my
work and personal life I am constantly amazed by what people say and how they act - even people
very close to me. I think there is something deeply patronising about a group of people sitting
up in a tower somewhere trying to imagine what I would think or how I would act. You won't find
out anything real that way.
In my work life I use (lets call them) 'personals' - representative users of a user group who
are real people. They are very informally interviewed in their work space and I observe them
while still chatting to them. I would rate information gained this way as 10,000 times more
useful that me sitting in my office imagining what 'they' might do.
Sorry this has also turned into a rant but I think that those who rant also perform a great
service in getting everyone in the IA world to constantly question their assumptions,
(End of rant)
Patrick C. Walsh
Patrick C. Walsh,
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