By Kris Nygren
If someone had told me last year that the most innovative initiative we would be involved with in 2012 would be conceived by ACC, I would probably have laughed it off. Yet, for the past four months we’ve been involved with ACC’s Idea Nation initiative and it’s shaping up to be one of the most courageous and creative approaches to a big, hairy problem I have ever seen. Read more »
By Shailesh Manga
I recently relocated to the US of A so watched the All Blacks win the Rugby World Cup from afar. It was not only nerve-racking but a good reminder about the importance of not just having a game plan, but a plan for the entire tournament.
This is not just a necessity for rugby but also for conducting research and design. Reflecting on my experiences, I am often asked to come up with an approach to “win a game” but not to “win the tournament”. This can result in tactical approaches which may not always be the best for a product or service in the long term.
Card sorting is a well-established technique for figuring out how to classify and label information so that it’s easier to find. It’s a great way to gather insights about the nature of the content and your users’ mental models.
However, while card sorting can help generate an information architecture (IA), it doesn’t guarantee that content is easy to find on your website. Card sorting helps figure out ‘what should go together,’ but the results from a card sort usually require substantial massaging to form an IA and that IA still needs to be proven to work.
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