Before the festive holiday kicked in I intended to design a Microsoft Surface Card Sorting application but time ran out without me getting much further than a brief conversation over a cuppa with some user experience colleagues and a few very rough and barely legible sketches of the application interface. To make sure I don’t forget any initial thinking here’s some wee thoughts on the surface card sorting software. Please add your comments or thoughts to these rambles to help shape the software.
Card sorting is an effective exercise for grouping information on a web site. Topics are written on index cards and the participants then organise the index cards in to logical groupings. It offers a valuable insight of the user’s mental models, revealing how they organize information and think the site should be structured. There are two types of card sort - open and closed sort. In an open card sort a users arranges the content in to logical groupings and then gives the stack a category label. In a closed cart sort the user sorts the content in to pre-defined categories. It is common to follow an open card sort with a closed cart sort. Once the categories have been defined a closed card sort allows us to see how users sort content in to these groups. If you want to know more about Card Sorting then for a detailed description read Card sorting: a definitive guide
Card sorting sessions work well enough for me without the need for a computer-based card sorting program. When the target audience is geographically wide spread then card sorting software can be used to conduct remote card sorts. So why am I suggesting more software when there are already a number of card sorting programs and there hasn’t been great adoption of these existing ones?
Card sorting exercises are extremely effective but are costly because they are time consuming to set up, administer and analyse the data. Card sorting software reduces costs but so far the actual user experience is considerably less than that of a hands-on physical card sort. This is where a Surface application comes in. It offers the cost saving without compromising the end user experience.
Before running a card sorting exercise you recruit participants and create a content inventory. These activities happen irrespective of whether it’s a real or virtual card sort. Next, you prepare the cards for the session. There would be minimal cost savings in the preparation although the software does make writing the cards easier. With card sorting software the virtual index cards are generated from the content inventory doc. This also ensures that all the cards are neat and legible. Alternatively this could be done using perforated index cards and mail merge, but not having to print out the cards is a time saver, not to mention more environmentally sound.
The real cost saving Card Sorting software has over hands-on real card sorting exercises is in the data analysis. A computer program records the data so it can be analyzed to provide meaningful results. It is this data analysis where card sorting programs come in to their own and save considerable time and money. A physical card sorting exercise can be carried out and then the data entered in to statistical software for analysis, but this data inputting is time consuming.
My concern with existing software is that it's not easy to use and this distracts the users focus away from the core task of organising the content. A Microsoft Surface Card Sorting application offers an engaging and immersive way for participants to interact and manipulate digital content through touch and natural gestures. The actual physical exercise of sorting index cards in to logical groupings work well for me and Microsoft Surface offers a similar digital experience to physical card sorting.
For an overview of how the Surface application might work, consider the following scenario...
Louise, a User Experience Consultant, places her admin card on the surface tabletop to unlock the card sorting program. The admin card holds basic information such as her name and email address. Several options to run the program in admin or user mode are displayed around the admin card. Louise taps to select the user mode.
The first participant, Simon, arrives and Louise passes him his identification badge. This identifies his name, email address and the project he’ll be doing the card sorting exercise for. Louise has set up multiple projects for card sorting exercises but has assigned one project to Simon. Louise places her card back on the table and selects the Open Card Sort option. A set of virtual index cards are scattered on the desktop. Each card includes a topic. As the facilitator, Louise gives Simon a brief introduction to card sorting and demonstrates how to group the content in to stacks by sifting through the index cards and moving them in to high level groups. Louise places her admin card back on the table and taps the reset option to re-scatter the index cards so Simon can start the exercise. Louise also enables record audio, then lifts her card up and leaves Simon to organize the cards. The participant is encouraged to think aloud. The sound recorder captures their thinking and gives us an insight in their rationale behind the groupings.
Simon sits down at the high-resolution tabletop display and begins to group the content. The interactions are natural and intuitive. Simon drags the card around the table tops. He can rotate them, flip them and arrange them in to stacks. He is unsure about one of the topic labels so flips the card over by tapping the reverse arrow in the cards top right corner. Simon writes a note using a tablet-style pen and then flips the card back over. An icon appears on the virtual card to confirm that a note is attached to this card.
On the table is a virtual stack of blank category cards. Simon drags one of these over to a stack he has created and gives the card a category label. Once the stack has a label Simon can zoom in so that this stack takes over the tabletop display and removes any surface clutter. Simon moves some of the card around in this stack and then pans back out to a view of all the stacks. Simon gets a little confused as to whether it matters how many stacks he creates. Simon taps the Help card and this tells him all he needs to know. He closes this card and continues with the exercise. Simon creates the stacks and then clicks done which sends a message over to Louise who is working in the room outside the usability lab. Louise gets the message and walks over to the table to wrap things up.
The next participant is ready to go straight away as a new session starts without any need to tidy up the index cards. After the day’s sessions are complete Louise goes to the admin interface to analyse the data. She decides not to include some of the sessions in the data analysis. Louise chooses not to include two test sessions, and also excludes Frank who on further analysis was not a good match for their personas. Louise first eyeballs the raw data, then views the matrix of how often content was paired together. Finally, Louise views the dendogram. This is when the magic happens and the clustering algorithms set to work. This is the bit that is going to involve all the head scratching – developing the program to create the dendogram. We’re currently looking at different visual ways to present the data in a meaningful way, so any ideas please add your comments.
That’s where my rambles end for the time being, although I’ll follow up this post with some sketches and more detailed information on the interface and interactions as we starting working this up from rambles in to hopefully a usable cost-saving card sort application.
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