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

[Derek R]

Jonathan wrote:
>| Let me expand my comment to say that you valorize 
>| ethnographic methods over heuristic, survey, and more
>| controlled user-observation methods

The word 'controlled' is, of course, the key here. I suspect, for
instance, that the typical yes/no question will produce only 2 possible
answers. That's all neat and tidy and certainty stacks and shelves well,
but how useful, really, is it?


>| [Ethnographic methods] are an elephant
>| gun sometimes

Again, the reasoned response to this question can only be to ask how
serious you are.

To what extent do you value the information on which you base your
'end-user' decisions, as a business? You can take it from there and pick
your weapon-of-choice. (Big game or small game?)


>| Most librarians have oodles of 'face-to-face' experience
>| observing information-seeking and question-formulating 
>| behavior 'in the wild'?

What about my impoverished floor-sweeper? Is he devoid of perception
skills? What of him? 

I bet more people ask the floor-sweeper, sweeping away at the library
entrance, the way to the bathroom, or which way to the information or
reference desk, than the librarian.

The floor-sweeper is also free from the mental distractions the
librarian must carry, like all that LIS information you were talking
about taking years to master, so that, his view is more objective and
candid, actually. He's just there to sweep floors -- a part of the
environment as opposed to a participant in its unfolding.


>| *Conciliatory* ...I take you to mean something like 'friendly'
>| ...I even checked dictionary.com as you usually require, but
>| gained no insight into why you insist on this word
>| http://dictionary.reference.com/search?&q=conciliatory

Well, there is an IA out there who publicizes the idea of 'help' for the
user as something to be glorified. He uses phrases like 'helping the
user' and so on, which all *sound* very nice and sweet and helpful, but,
in reality, we must understand him as being *conciliatory.*

This is no surprise as the person does come from a LIS background and it
this is, presumably, how he has been taught.

Nevertheless, conciliation is NOT the goal of user-research or
user-testing. We do not research or test users in order to discover ways
to appease them, or trick them into becoming subservient to the existing
process or product. Maybe there are researchers and testers out there
who do have conciliation as their research/testing goal, I wouldn't
doubt this, but this is NOT the goal of authentic/good testers or
researchers.

The goal must be to discover, in reality, in actuality, in truth, what
is occurring when the users engage the product or process. We want to
know, with certainty, what assuredly, beyond doubt, genuinely, honestly,
and legitimately is taking place within the engagement.