Gaining User Insight: A Case Study Illustrating the Card Sort Technique

Faiks, Angi; Hyland, Nancy

doi:10.5860/crl.61.4.349

Cited by 60 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…21 Card sorting is a usability technique that gives information system designers a better overall understanding of how users think information should be organized and labeled. Card sort data can guide content organization, categorization, decisions on what information should be included or excluded, as well as the terminology and labels that make the most sense to users.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guiding Design: Exposing Librarian and Student Mental Models of Research Guides

Sinkinson¹,

Alexander²,

Hicks³

et al. 2012

pla

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abstract:This article details an open card sort study administered to undergraduate students, graduate students, and librarians at the University of Colorado at Boulder in order to reveal perceptions of library research guides. The study identifies user group preferences for organization and content of research guides, as well as themes emerging from the collected study data that contrast librarian and user mental models. Interested librarians will gain insights into student perceptions and use of research guides in academic libraries today as well as recommendations for guide design.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guiding Design: Exposing Librarian and Student Mental Models of Research Guides

Sinkinson¹,

Alexander²,

Hicks³

et al. 2012

pla

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“…This study focused almost entirely on nomenclature rather than organisation. In contrast, the Cornell University used a card sorting study of its library website, with focus lying more on the organisation of its help topics than on terminology (Faiks and Hyland 2000). Card sorting was found to be a highly effective and valuable method for gathering user input on organisational groupings prior to total system design.…”

Section: Card Sortingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking card sorting to browsing performance – are congruent municipal websites more efficient to use?

Schmettow

Sommer

2016

Behaviour & Information Technology

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Card sorting is a method for eliciting mental models and is frequently used for creating efficient website navigation structures. The present studies set out to validate card sorting by linking browsing performance to the degree of match between the mental model and the navigation structure. First, a card sorting study was conducted (n = 27) to elicit users' mental model of municipal websites. Second, performance was measured for a number of search tasks with varying degrees of congruence with users' mental model (n = 50). Analysis by linear mixed-effect models suggests that the match between mental model and website structure has no effect on browsing performance. We discuss possible reasons and consequences of the failure to validate card sorting for designing navigation structures of informational websites. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…In spite of its success the Gateway has been far from immune to the constant state of flux that is typical of today's information systems. The first major evolutionary change was the introduction of a searchable help system, with an interface organized according to user preferences [16]. The second was the introduction of a proxy server, used to provide access to Cornell-licensed networked resources when they are being accessed from Internet Service Providers other than the one provided by Cornell itself (i.e., AOL, Roadrunner, etc.…”

Section: The Case Of the Cornell University Library Gatewaymentioning

confidence: 99%