INFM 700 Session 4 Techniques and Technologies Paul

INFM 700: Session 4 Techniques and Technologies Paul Jacobs The i. School University of Maryland Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3. 0 United States See http: //creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3. 0/us/ for details

Today’s Topics ¢ Recap ¢ Process Overview ¢ Research & Strategy ¢ Design & Documentation (Part I) Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

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

Research: The Soft Side ¢ Understanding the business l l l ¢ What is the need? Who’s in charge? What are we trying to achieve? Understanding the user l l What are their behaviors? What is the expected experience? Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

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

Surveys – How To ¢ Decide what you’d like to know ¢ Design the survey l l ¢ Make questions specific Keep it short (< 10 minutes) Consider how you’re going to analyze Allow for additional information Collect & analyze results (ideally, automate) Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Surveys - Example www. surveymonkey. com Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Surveys - Example Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Google-like Baseline Faceted Category Source: Yee, Swearingen, Li, & Hearst http: //bailando. sims. berkeley. edu/papers/flamenco-chi 03. pdf i. School

Research: The Hard (Content) Side ¢ Know the content l l l ¢ Know the user-content interface l l Process Collect and categorize (“Noah’s Ark”) Analyze (e. g. , type, format, metadata) Other (e. g. , benchmarking, content mapping) l Search log analysis/statistics Studies Other (e. g. , card sorting) Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Research: End Goals ¢ Understand the goals of our project ¢ Understand the user and the content l l Define the most important user needs Determine the best organization of content Identify issues Work toward organization/labelling/navigation schemes ¢ Process Research & Strategy Lay out steps toward implementation ¢ Gather fodder to sell to management Design & Documentation i. School

Content Analysis (“Inventory”) ¢ Gather “Representative Sample” l l l ¢ 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 l l 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”) i. School

Taxonomy Building ¢ Taxonomies are at the heart of site organization l l ¢ Guide site organization and navigation Make stuff easy/easier to find Taxonomies are at the heart of user studies l Find out how people conceptualize information Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Taxonomy Research - Methods Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Taxonomy Strategies LLC i. School

Taxonomy – Walk-Thru Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Taxonomy Strategies LLC i. School

Research Exercises ¢ Card Sort ¢ User Testing Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Card Sorting ¢ What is it? l l 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 i. School

Card Sorting ¢ Why would we want to do this? l l 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 i. School

Card Sorting – After Sorting ¢ Record the results l l ¢ Spreadsheet? Pictures/graphs Analyze/cluster l l l Identify groups Identify outliers Identify issues Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation ¢ Organize the content ¢ Document ¢ Re-test i. School

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 Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation were suggested by the comments? § Were there similar or related comments across interview groups? © Vanguard, 2005 § If there were similar or related comments across interview groups, what new or improved capabilities did they suggest? i. School

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 i. School

Exercise - Instructions ¢ Group items into categories that make sense ¢ Assign a label to each group (write this down separately for now) Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Exercise – Closed - Instructions ¢ Assign items to the following categories: Prospective Students Faculty & Staff Research Student Affairs Alumni & Friends Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation Programs About i. School

Exercise - Analysis ¢ What did we learn about the i. School site? ¢ If this were real, … l l ¢ 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 i. School

User Studies ¢ Why do we do user studies? ¢ How do we do user studies? l l Process Research & Strategy l l 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 Design & Documentation i. School

User Studies - Exercise ¢ 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) l l Process l Research & Strategy l Design & Documentation l Determine what you need to know Identify a user Present the instructions to the user Have them do the test Analyze and report i. School

From Research to Strategy ¢ What have we learned from our research? ¢ What do we do next? Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Strategy ¢ Goal of IA Strategy ¢ Elements of IA Strategy (e. g. , TACT) l l l Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation ¢ 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) i. School

September 2005, Best Practices “Simplifying Information Architecture” The Acme Component Organization’s IA Plan Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

Example Case Study http: //terpconnect. umd. edu/~psjacobs/RUMM_Handout_or__final__paper. pps Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

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

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

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

Blueprints - Overview ¢ Can show organization, navigation and/or labeling ¢ Range from abstract to detailed ¢ Related to “site maps” Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

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

Wireframes - Overview ¢ “Get Physical” ¢ Move from site level to page level ¢ Inherently constrained by screen real estate Process Research & Strategy Design & Documentation i. School

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

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

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

Traditional Wireframing Methods Flash Initial Setup Maintenance Reuse Delivery Method Behavior Notes Tool Knowledge RIAs HTML Illustrator, ID, Visio ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** i. School Copyright © 2004 -2006 Todd Warfel. These slides may not be reproduced or distributed without prior written consent from Messagefirst http: //messagefirst. com

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