INFM 700: Session 4 Techniques and Technologies Paul Jacobs The iSchool University of Maryland Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United St See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ for details
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INFM 700: Session 4
Techniques and Technologies
Paul JacobsThe iSchoolUniversity of Maryland
Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United StatesSee http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ for details
Research: The Hard (Content) Side Know the content
Collect and categorize (“Noah’s Ark”) Analyze (e.g., type, format, metadata) Other (e.g., benchmarking, content mapping)
Know the user-content interface Search log analysis/statistics Studies Other (e.g., card sorting)
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Research: End Goals Understand the goals of our project
Understand the user and the content Define the most important user needs Determine the best organization of content Identify issues Work toward organization/labelling/navigation schemes
Different sources (e.g., marketing, support, HR) Different formats (e.g., PDF, simple HTML pages,
interactive) Different styles/types (e.g. brochureware, overviews,
outlines, detailed documents)
Organize and Annotate What is it? (“descriptive metadata”) How do I use it? (roughly, “structural metadata”) How do I find it? How do I maintain it? Who does it? (“administrative
metadata”)
iSchool
Taxonomy Building Taxonomies are at the heart of site organization
Guide site organization and navigation Make stuff easy/easier to find
Taxonomies are at the heart of user studies Find out how people conceptualize information
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Taxonomy Research - Methods
Strategies LLCTaxonomy
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Taxonomy – Walk-Thru
Strategies LLCTaxonomy
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Research Exercises Card Sort
User Testing
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Card Sorting What is it?
Identify important content from inventory Assign preliminary labels/descriptions/samples to
different pages or content groups Assemble test subjects/users Have them group content into similar “clusters” and
possible assign labels
“Open-ended” sort – start just with the raw content or categories
“Closed” sort – once you have categories, have users assign content to your defined groups
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Card Sorting Why would we want to do this?
What do we learn? What are the alternatives? How does this compare?
What do we do if things don’t “fit”?
When do we use an open-ended sort? A closed sort?
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Card Sorting – After Sorting Record the results
Spreadsheet? Pictures/graphs
Analyze/cluster Identify groups Identify outliers Identify issues
Organize the content
Document
Re-test
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Card Sort – Example Report
Organizing and labeling
The comments from each interview group were mail-merged in MS Word and printed on stickies.
An “open sort” was done to find patterns in and organize the data:
What high-level client tasks were suggested by the comments?
Were there similar or related comments across interview groups?
If there were similar or related comments across interview groups, what new or improved capabilities did they suggest?
Users sort cards into groups that make sense to them
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Exercise - Instructions
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
Group items into categories that make sense
Assign a label to each group (write this down separately for now)
iSchool
Exercise – Closed - Instructions
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
Assign items to the following categories:
Prospective Students
Faculty & Staff
Research
Student Affairs
Alumni & Friends
Programs
About iSchool
iSchool
Exercise - Analysis What did we learn about the iSchool site?
If this were real, … What might we do differently if re-designing? What changes might be recommend?
What did we learn about card sorting?
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
User Studies
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
Why do we do user studies?
How do we do user studies? Decide what we need to know (e.g., what works, what
doesn’t, priority tasks, how they find stuff, what’s easy and what’s hard to find)
Design the test (range of users, difficulties) Collect data Analyze
iSchool
User Studies - Exercise
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
You’re involved in a redesign of the site www.iainstitute.org
As a group, spend 10 minutes looking over the site
Conduct a user study (about 20 minutes) Determine what you need to know Identify a user Present the instructions to the user Have them do the test Analyze and report
iSchool
From Research to Strategy What have we learned from our research?
What do we do next?
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
Strategy Goal of IA Strategy
Elements of IA Strategy (e.g., TACT) What will it do? How? Impact (e.g., use of tools, technology, content, vendors,
people) How much will it cost? What are the risks?
What’s the Output?
(see, e.g., Weather.com report, MR p. 281)
Process
Research & Strategy
Design &Documentation
iSchool
The Acme Component Organization’s IA PlanSeptember 2005, Best Practices “Simplifying Information Architecture”
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