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 States See for detailshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

iSchool Todays Topics Recap Process Overview Research & Strategy Design & Documentation (Part I) Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Research & Strategy Research: identify goals & issues User needs Organizational/context Content and other issues Strategy: build and sell the plan Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Context ContentUsers Business goals, funding, politics, culture, technology, human resources Data types, content objects, metadata, volume, existing structure Audience, tasks, user behavior, experience, vocabulary MR, p. 233

iSchool Research: The Soft Side Understanding the business What is the need? Whos in charge? What are we trying to achieve? Understanding the user What are their behaviors? What is the expected experience? Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Research: The Soft Side (How) Understanding the business Interviews Group meetings Understanding the user Surveys Focus groups Interviews... Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Surveys – How To Decide what youd like to know Design the survey Make questions specific Keep it short (< 10 minutes) Consider how youre going to analyze Allow for additional information Collect & analyze results (ideally, automate) Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Surveys - Example Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Surveys - Example Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Faceted Category Google-like Baseline Source: Yee, Swearingen, Li, & Hearst

iSchool Research: The Hard (Content) Side Know the content Collect and categorize (Noahs 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 Lay out steps toward implementation Gather fodder to sell to management Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Content Analysis (Inventory) Gather Representative Sample 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 LLC Taxonomy Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Taxonomy – Walk-Thru Strategies LLC Taxonomy 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 dont 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? © Vanguard, 2005 Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Exercise (Overview) Start with a stack of cards (one item per card) 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 doesnt, priority tasks, how they find stuff, whats easy and whats hard to find) Design the test (range of users, difficulties) Collect data Analyze

iSchool User Studies - Exercise Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Youre involved in a redesign of the site 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? Whats the Output? (see, e.g., Weather.com report, MR p. 281) Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool The Acme Component Organizations IA Plan September 2005, Best Practices Simplifying Information Architecture Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Example Case Study Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Recap Research Why do we do it? How do we do it? Focus areas: users, organization, content Sample methods – surveys, card sorting, studies Deliverables Strategy Purpose Deliverables – presentations & plans Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool Segue: Strategy to Design Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Strategy has two purposes Communicate Articulate (abstract, top-down) Now move toward implementation

iSchool Design and Documentation Deliverables Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Conceptual Diagrams Blueprints (structural) Wireframes (physical) Text (e.g., reports) Presentations and meetings

iSchool Blueprints - Overview Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Can show organization, navigation and/or labeling Range from abstract to detailed Related to site maps

iSchool Blueprints (top-down) Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation M&R p. 299

iSchool Wireframes - Overview Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Get Physical Move from site level to page level Inherently constrained by screen real estate

iSchool Main Page Wireframe Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation M&R p. 308

iSchool XHTML Wireframes © Anders Ramsay 2006 drawing-based … xhtml … Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation

iSchool XHTML Wireframes © Anders Ramsay 2006 Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation © Anders Ramsay 2006 drawing-based … xhtml …

iSchool Copyright © Todd Warfel. These slides may not be reproduced or distributed without prior written consent from Messagefirst Traditional Wireframing Methods FlashHTML Illustrator, ID, Visio Initial Setup ***** Maintenance Reuse Delivery Method ***** Behavior Notes ***** Tool Knowledge ***** RIAs

iSchool Recap Research & Strategy Purpose – Learn, focus, define objectives, get buy-in Deliverables – User studies, taxonomies, plans Design & Documentation Purpose – Define it before you build it Deliverables – Blueprints, wireframes, reports, more plans Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation