Designing an effective information architecture

Designing an effective

information architecture

LeanUX

Trent Mankelow Wednesday 19 September 2012

Before we get going…

Today’s session is dedicated to this

New Zealand icon

‘Good information architecture stands the test of time’

This afternoon

A bit about me

A bit about you

Why is information architecture important?

What is information architecture?

How do you ‘do’ information architecture?

Wrap up

Why is information architecture

important?

I have 164 passwords

3,404 contacts in Outlook

1,590 contacts in LinkedIn

318 friends on Bookface

130,000+ emails

Driver’s license

license plate numbers

bank account numbers

passport numbers

birthdays (8 nieces, 2 nephews)

clothing sizes

ETC

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“It’s estimated that there will be 44 times as much data and content coming over the next decade, reaching 35 zettabytes

by 2020.”

- I.B.M.’s chairman, Samuel Palmisano, September 2011

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35,000,000,

000,000,000,

000,000 bytes

The #1 reason you should care about information

architecture? Hard to find information

wastes human life

Benefits of a well organized IA

• Users can quickly complete their task

• Users are more likely to complete their task

• Reduced frustration and increased satisfaction

• Reduced calls to customer support

• Better user experience

• Improved productivity

• Happy customers

So, what is information architecture?

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“The combination of organization, labeling,

and navigation schemes within an

information system.”

- Lou Rosenfeld

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Information

architecture

connects people

to the content

that they are

looking for

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1. Organization

2. Labeling

3. Navigation

4. Search

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1. Organization

Information can be organized into different

schemes and structures

A scheme is overarching philosophy e.g. by role,

topic, date, task, alphabetical, geographical, etc

Structure is about the concrete relationships

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For example, there are lots of ways to

organize recipes ...

• French

• Italian

• German

• Japanese

–Sushi

–Yakitori

• Chinese

• Breakfast – Hot

– Cold

• Lunch

• Dinner

• Snacks

• Beef

• Poultry – Chicken

– Turkey

– Duck

• Pork

• Vegetarian

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Organization is hard because…

Content can be organized in different ways

We all have different preferences

Organizing information is a subjective task,

because relationships are subjective!

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2. Labeling

The goal of labeling is to communicate efficiently

and effectively

The goal of language is also to communicate

efficiently and effectively

Labeling is hard because:

There is limited space on the page

Language is slippery – its ambiguous and confusing

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Labels should be

Concise

Consistent

Distinguishable

In the users’ language

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3. Navigation

Good navigation design should show users:

Where they are

Where they’ve been

Where they can go

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Make it obvious where users are

Show users their context (e.g. highlighting their

location in the navbars within the site or process)

“Giving users a table of contents does much more than simply provide users with a means of navigating the content. The table of contents expresses the hierarchical relationships of your content, and by so doing gives users a sense of your content’s overall story and structure.” - Tom Johnson

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Make it obvious where users can go

Allow users to easily browse to what they need

Make it obvious what’s clickable

Show what’s related and relevant

Surface things users might not know about

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Make it obvious where users have been

Use consistent labeling

Make visited in-page links a less saturated colour

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4. Search

Most users tend to start browsing over searching

5% - 30% of users start with search (3 studies since 2005)

But search is important because:

It is often used as the fallback option

It is useful for visitors who know what they are looking

for

So, how do you do information

architecture?

Organization and labeling

V

STEP ONE: KNOW your users!

Generative

Evaluative

Quant Qual

Open card sorting

Tree testing

Closed card sorting

Usability testing Analytics

Contextual inquiry

User interviews

Surveys

Focus groups

FOCUS GROUPS aren’t enough!

More than 60% of

participants testing a new

kitchen appliance

indicated that they were

“likely” or “very likely” to

buy it in the next 3

months.

8 months later, only 12%

had.

Generative

Evaluative

Quant Qual

Open card sorting

Tree testing

Closed card sorting


Contextual inquiry

User interviews

Surveys

Focus groups

paper testing sample.wmv

Generative

Evaluative

Quant Qual

Open card sorting

Tree testing

Closed card sorting


Contextual inquiry

User interviews

Surveys

Focus groups

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An example ‘ideal’ approach

1. Research

a) Review user feedback

b) Review web analytics

c) Tree test existing tree

2. Create

a) Conduct open card

sorting

b) Workshop candidate IAs

3. Evaluate

a) Tree test candidate IAs

b) Usability testing

Card sorting

Card sorting – step-by-step

1. Plan the study

2. Agree with stakeholders a set of ‘cards’ representing

current (and future) website content and functionality

3. Recruit representative users

4. Have the participants sort the cards into groups that

they think belong together. When they have finished

sorting, they create a name for each group

5. Analyse the card sorting results to find the patterns in

how people group the cards and label the groups

1. Plan the study

Why are we running this study?

What do we specifically want to find out?

Who should we test?

When will we test?

Where / how will we test?

2. Write cards

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1 21 41 61 81 101 121 145 167 207 268 403

% of card sorts completed by

participants

Number of cards

Number of cards versus completion rate

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

20000

1 11 21 31 41 51

Total participant numbers

Minutes

Number of participants who complete a card sort within an hour


Include a prominent link on your website, on the

pages the targeted users will visit

Email the link to your users

Your invitation has to clearly state the proposition

in one short phrase e.g. "5-minute survey - win an

iPad”

How many participants?

You need at least 20 – 30 participants for each round of testing

Tullis, T., and Wood, L. (2004), "How Many Users Are Enough for a Card-Sorting Study?" Proceedings UPA 2004 (Minneapolis, MN, June 7-11, 2004).

4. Conduct the sort

ç

Closed versus Open?

Which is best: In-person or Online?

In-person Online

• You can ask questions as

participants complete the

sort to better understand

their thinking

• No software costs

• Quick results

• Can conduct sorts with large

numbers of participants

• You know that participants

are representative if you

recruit via a link on the

website

• Analysis is aided by the

software (no data entry)

Maybe both?

5. Analyse the results

Plans & billing

Strong vs. weak groups

Card sorting limitations

Participants sometimes like to be clever, and a

good IA is usually boring

We won’t call it ‘Personals’ because it’s a bit of an old word, we want something funky

Card sorting limitations

Participants sometimes like to be clever, and a

good IA is usually boring

Analysis is often time consuming (remember, in

LeanUX a good game is a fast game)

Does not consider users’ goals and tasks

Card sorting doesn’t create an IA – it’s a tool to

assist in the creation of an IA

Tree testing

We first came across the idea in 2003

What is tree testing?

A website is typically organized into a hierarchy (a

"tree") of topics and subtopics

Tree testing provides a way to measure how well

users can find items in this hierarchy

In a tree test, you test the organization and the

Labeling of the IA (not the navigation or the search)

Tree testing – step-by-step

1. Plan the study

2. Decide on site structures to test

3. Create representative ‘find’ tasks

4. Pilot test


6. Analyse the results to see if participants went to the ‘right’ part of the tree

7. Tweak and re-test variations of the tree to see which is best

1. Plan the study

Why are we running this test?

What are we testing?

What do we specifically want to find out?

Who should we test?

When will we test?

Where / how will we test?

2. Decide on site structures to test

It’s very rare for us to only do one tree test in

isolation. Ideally we would:

Benchmark the existing IA

Come up with some alternatives as a team

Iterate – we might tweak and re-test 2 or 3 times

Keep the same tasks from test to test (although you may

add some new ones towards the end)

Benchmark your existing IA

Tree testing the existing hierarchy lets you

benchmark any changes made

Was it better before or after the changes?

How much better or worse?

Which bits performed better, which bits performed

worse?

It identifies those areas of the current site that need

most attention – helps you prioritise your work

Come up with some alternatives as a team

3. Create representative ‘find’ tasks

Create tasks that cover the parts of the tree that

need testing

Look at the analytics – where are people going,

getting lost? What are they Googling for?

What do users say they want from the survey

results?

What do your personas tell you they want?

Tips for writing tasks

Same rules as writing tasks for user tests

Don't lead the witness, don't give away critical terms,

be specific, and ask yourself how participants could

misunderstand the wording

Try out your tasks on an innocent bystander!

Loaded question: how many tasks should you test

with?

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Completion rate

Number of tasks

Completion rate of Treejack studies

4. Pilot test

Ideally pilot with a few people, since people can

read stuff in different ways

Preview the test a few times to get everything right

Launch the test!


Include a prominent link on your website

On the pages the intended users will visit

Email the link to your users

Your invitation has to clearly state the proposition

in one short phrase

We usually use the formula of "5-minute survey - win

an iPad”

6. Analyse the results – overview

6. Analyse the results – task-by-task

6. Analyse the results - pie trees

7. Tweak and re-test variations

Once you’ve digested your results, you need to think

about what would change in your IA

Go back to your original tree in Excel and amend

Add comments as to why you’ve changed things

Add notes where you still have questions

Maybe you need to generate a couple of different

options to test

How long does all this take?

Analysing the last 30 Treejack consulting projects

we’ve done, on average it takes us 46 hours effort

to run a Treejack study (including all the tweaking and

retesting).

Over the 30 projects, we tested an average of 2.2

trees with 239 participants.

Conclusion: IA the Lean UX way

versus

Slow

Millions

Fast

Tens of thousands

V

V

V Feedback

Develop Define

customers

you

It’s not how well you lap, it’s how fast you lap

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An example ‘ideal’ approach

1. Research




2. Create


sorting


3. Evaluate



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The ‘lightest weight’ approach

1. Research




2. Create


sorting


3. Evaluate



Resources

Information Architecture

for the World Wide Web –

Morville & Rosenfeld

Organizing Digital Information for

Others – Nichani (FREE from

http://bit.ly/yEyfFZ)

A Practical Guide to

Information Architecture -

Spencer

• Tree Testing: A quick way to evaluate your IA (http://bit.ly/OcJTN1)

• Card sorting: a definitive guide (http://bit.ly/16rTpL)

• How to: Card Sorting (http://bit.ly/9KQtzO)

• Card sorting: designing useful categories (http://bit.ly/eAzQN)

• Classification schemes and when to use them (http://bit.ly/aUcQPx)

http://bit.ly/yEyfFZ

http://bit.ly/yEyfFZ

http://bit.ly/OcJTN1

http://bit.ly/OcJTN1

http://bit.ly/16rTpL

http://bit.ly/9KQtzO

http://bit.ly/eAzQN

http://bit.ly/aUcQPx

Thank you, you’re

awesome!

[email protected]

@optimalworkshop

www.optimalworkshop.com

Designing an effective information architecture

Technology

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