Pat’s Point of View

In my recent IA tutorial for OZCHI08, I told my students about performing low-fi usability testing on a draft information architecture. I introduced them to a technique which Donna Spencer called Card Based Classification Evaluation (CBCE) and is known to other people as tree testing or task-based information architecture testing (which really doesn’t have the same ring to it).

(Incidentally, CBCE is an evolution of closed card sorting but crucially different. I quite like Donna’s explanation for the need for such a technique from about the time she coined the term: Categorising information and finding it are two entirely different tasks, with entirely different cognitive processes. The only way to test whether a classification will allow people to find information, is to ask them to find information…You don’t learn it by asking them to place information in the classification. Hence just using closed card sorting won’t do.)

As usual, some people quickly tired of my affection for fiddly index cards and asked if you can do this electronically or even online. It reminds me of that line in Star Wars where the dude says to Vader “your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes”…and you know what happened to that guy. Rather than crush their throats with my mastery of the Force, I explain that there are some advantages to good old cards:

• Cards are quick and easy to create and modify
• Cards remove the distractions associated with ‘using a computer’
• Cards allow a greater affinity between participant and facilitator
• Cards function consistently for all participants (whereas software may not)
• Cards can be made by anyone (eg don’t require special skills or software)
• Cards are cheap

However, I must admit there are situations when something more computery might be more useful, such as:

• You need to include remote participants (eg widely dispersed target audience)
• You intend to involve a large number of users in the testing (eg more than 20)
• You want to spend less time recording results into an electronic format (ok I’m reaching now)

You can use one of the many card sorting tools—either desktop software or online—but there are also a few dedicated tools. For example, Treejack which Sam Ng from Optimal Workshop showed at OZ-IA this year. It’s quite a nice tool and would do nicely for getting that all important user feedback on your design decisions early (and possibly later) in the IA design process.

Of course, one can use something like PowerPoint or Dreamweaver if one likes, it all depends on the resources at your disposal and the capabilities of your test participants—you might be a FileMaker whizz but there’s no point sending out a test app built in it if your users can’t open it.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any other suggestions.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 5:04 pm and is filed under IA, Usability. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to leave a comment, find out more about me or follow @patrickkennedy on Twitter.

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