Web Manager University – Fall 2009
Class Title: Hands–On Card Sorting
| Class Format: | Seminar | ||
| Instructor: | Lisa Battle | ||
| Date | Tuesday, October 20, 2009 | ||
| Time: | 9:00 am – 12:00 pm EST | ||
| Place: | U.S. Courts Building, Washington, DC | Directions to U.S Courts | |
| Fee: | $50 federal, state, or local U.S. government; $75 for non-government participants | ||
Seminar Description
We all want our websites to be "intuitive" and organized in a way that seems natural to our users. But how do you make sure you know how your users expect the content to be organized? A great technique for finding out how your users think is card sorting. You can use this technique to gather valuable insights into what categories people expect to see and why, what terminology to use in your headings and links, and much more.
This seminar will be a very practical, hands-on introduction to card sorting. We'll use a case study and in-class exercises so that you'll have examples to use immediately after the class.
What You Will Learn
In this fast–paced, half–day seminar, you'll learn how to plan and conduct a card sort and interpret the results. You'll also get to try the techniques for yourself through hands–on exercises. Topics covered include:
- How to select the right terms for your card sort
- How to facilitate an in-person card sort
- How to analyze results using spreadsheets and cluster analysis
- When to use variations such as "open" and "closed" card sorts
- How to involve remote participants through creative paper–based techniques or online tools
Course Outline
Part 1: Intro to card sorting |
Part 2: Preparing a card sort |
Part 3: Facilitating a card sort |
Part 4: Analyzing results of a card sort |
Part 5: Variations on card sorting |
Breakdown by type of activity:
30 min Discussion
70 min Hands on activity/class exercise
80 min Presentation/lecture
Who Should Attend
Website managers, content managers, and authors who want to learn how to gather input from users about content organization. No prior experience with card sorting is necessary.
Level of Course
Beginner or intermediate.
About the Instructor
Lisa Battle is a principal consultant at Design for Context, which focuses on making applications and web sites easy to use. She has designed usable software, web-based applications, and web sites for clients in a variety of industries and in the federal government, including the Social Security Administration, the National Cancer Institute, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Lisa has more than 15 years of experience in eliciting user needs, designing to support user performance, and leading successful user–centered design projects. Her current work focuses on designing great user experiences based on user interviews, card sorting, contextual observation, iterative prototyping, and user-centered design best practices.
Ms. Battle is President of the DC Metro Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) (www.upa–dc–metro.org), which hosts monthly events and a local conference on usability topics, and is a member of the international committee defining the Body of Knowledge for usability (www.usabilitybok.org). She has presented on accessibility, usability, requirements engineering, semantic web, and strategic design at numerous conferences, including UPA, CHI, HCI International, Society for Technical Communication (STC), ASSETS, Extreme Markup, and the Government Solutions Conference. She is the author of two book chapters as well as articles in Performance Improvement and the IBM Systems Journal. In her six years of consulting with the U.S. Social Security Administration, she was instrumental in institutionalizing usability and creating a center of excellence for user-centered design within that agency. Ms. Battle holds a master's degree in Cognitive Psychology/Human Factors from George Mason University.
