Card Sorting in Service Design

🌳 Designer’s Guide To Tree Testing. How to test and improve navigation before designing a single pixel on the screen ↓ 🚫 Good navigation is irrelevant with broken content. 🚫 Good content is irrelevant if people can’t find it. ✅ UX often happens before a single pixel is designed. ✅ Card sorting helps understand user’s mental model. ✅ Tree testing is a reliable way to test navigation early. ✅ First, list all key jobs/tasks of your products as cards. ✅ Bring 15–30 customers to group tasks with card sorting. 🤔 People are good at sorting, but very bad at naming things. 🚫 Don’t make it compulsory to sort and name everything. ✅ Instead, track sorting patterns and develop navigation. ✅ Choose top 10–12 representative tasks for your product. ✅ Set up tasks/groups in Treejack, UserZoom or OptimalSort. ✅ Invite 25–50 participants and give them these tasks to do. ✅ Ask them to choose where they would go in navigation. ✅ You will need 3–4 testing rounds to get 80% success rate. ✅ Also: measure directness, time spent, first click, destination. One detail that often gets overlooked is to regularly run check-ins and get sign-offs from stakeholders — throughout the entire process. There must be an agreement that selected tasks indeed accurately represent the product to avoid turnarounds down the line. Plus, by getting green light, you build confidence and trust early on. You will need it. Once you have reached 80% success rate, extend and expand your navigation groupings as necessary. Chances are high that you will need to run card sorting and tree testing for level 2 navigation. You might not need to scrutinize navigation for all sub-levels 3 or 4, but some of them definitely will need your attention. I love how reliable and straightforward tree testing is, although finding the right labels for the right groups is often quite challenging. But once you achieve high success rates, it might not matter that much how exactly the navigation will look — as long as the destination page gives users what they need. Useful resources: Practical Guide To Tree Testing, by Page Laubheimer https://lnkd.in/eMJr52js https://lnkd.in/eJcyn-QC Tree Testing Step-By-Step, by Lyssna https://lnkd.in/eDqZZNyb How To Write Your Tasks, by OptimalWorkshop https://lnkd.in/emJKaDqF A Practical Guide to Information Architecture (free PDF), by Donna Spencer https://lnkd.in/d6idGghj ❖ Recommended books on IA: ⦿ Top Tasks Methodology: A How-To Guide, by Gerry McGovern ⦿ Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories, by Donna Spencer ⦿ Everyday Information Architecture, by Lisa Maria Marquis ⦿ Content Strategy for the Web, by Kristina Halvorson, Melissa Rach ⦿ Envisioning Information, by Edward R. Tufte ⦿ Information Architecture, For The Web and Beyond, by Peter Morville, Jorge Arango, Louis Rosenfeld #ux #design

In a recent UX project, focused on a collaborative productivity platform, card sorting played a pivotal role in understanding how users in B2B scenarios mentally organize content. The idea was to identify navigation patterns that align with the task flow expectations of users. During card sorting sessions with a diverse set of B2B users, labeled cards representing various toolsets were organized based on individual criteria. This process unveiled insights into how professionals in B2B settings naturally group content, whether it be task-oriented or feature-centric. However, relying solely on card sorting posed challenges in determining a definitive navigation structure. Given the varied preferences in content grouping among B2B users, additional research and critical analysis were essential to finalize the design. Following the insights gained from card sorting, tree testing was employed to assess the proposed navigation structure on a wireframe level, especially crucial for B2B contexts. Using tools like Treejack, participants navigated through a simplified text-based structure to locate specific features, helping to confirm the proposed structure's effectiveness. In B2B scenarios, where task flow efficiency is critical, tree testing may yield areas for refinement, ensuring ease of findability for professionals using the product/ service/ feature. Employing both card sorting and tree testing provided a comprehensive understanding of how to structure content for B2B users: a) Card sorting acted as a discovery tool, generating ideas for content organization based on the mental models of professionals. b) Tree testing rigorously evaluated the proposed navigation structure's effectiveness in a controlled environment, ensuring it aligns with B2B workflow expectations. When applying these methods to B2C scenarios, such as a consumer-facing e-commerce platform, card sorting becomes valuable for uncovering how individual consumers mentally organize products and features. The focus shifts towards user preferences and ease of use, aiming for an intuitive structure that resonates with a broader audience. In startups, where agility and responsiveness are crucial, card sorting can be instrumental in quickly understanding user expectations. Startups may leverage the insights gained to iterate rapidly and align their product with evolving market demands. On the other hand, MNCs, with their established user base and complex product suites, benefit from tree testing to evaluate navigation structures. This helps ensure that the proposed design meets the expectations of a diverse user demographic within a multinational setting. Would love to hear out diverse POVs, which were actually the trigger in the first place that inspired me to put this piece together. Image Courtesy: NN Group

💡Card Sorting and Tree Testing: when and how to use tools Card sorting and tree testing are valuable UX research methods for designing information architecture. 🍎 Card sorting Card sorting helps you understand how users perceive and categorize information. It’s used to create or the structure of a website or app (content organization) Types of card sorting: ✔ Open card sorting: Participants organize cards into groups and name each group. Best for discovering how users think about content and creating initial IA. ✔ Closed card sorting: Participants organize cards into predefined groups. Useful for validating an existing IA or when you have specific categories in mind. ✔ Hybrid card sorting: Combines open and closed methods, where some categories are predefined, and participants can create new ones. When to use card sorting: ✔ To understand users' mental models and terms your target audience uses. ✔ When designing or redesigning a website or app's navigation system. ✔ Early in the design process, to gather insights for structuring content. Tools for card sorting: Maze OptimalSort UserZoom 🍏 Tree testing Tree testing evaluates the findability of topics in your website or app's information architecture. It’s used to validate and refine the IA by seeing how well users can navigate through a text-only version of the site structure. Participants are given tasks to find specific items or information. Success rates, time taken, and paths taken are analyzed to identify problem areas. When to use tree testing: ✔ After creating an initial IA through card sorting. ✔ To test and refine the effectiveness of your navigation labels and structure. ✔ Before fully implementing a new or revised IA. Tools for tree testing: Treejack (by Optimal Workshop) UserZoom UserTesting Common workflow with card sorting & tree testing: 1️⃣ Initial UX research and card sorting ✔ Start with user research to understand your audience and create a user persona.  ✔ Conduct open card sorting to gather insights on how users categorize information. ✔ Analyze results to create an initial draft of the IA. 2️⃣ Refine IA draft with tree testing ✔ Use tree testing to evaluate the draft IA ✔ Identify areas where users struggle to find information. ✔ Iterate on the IA based on tree testing results. 3️⃣ Validation and implementation ✔ Implement the finalized IA in the website or app. ✔ Continuously monitor user feedback and behavior to make iterative improvements. ✔ Conduct additional rounds of tree testing if necessary to refine the IA. 📖 Guides: ✔ Card sorting in product design (+ video tutorial) https://lnkd.in/dFdsWPea ✔ Tree testing: a complete guide(+ video tutorial) https://lnkd.in/dPwB96-y ✔ Information architecture design: step by step https://lnkd.in/dT92ExhC 🖼 Card sorting vs tree testing by Maze #UX #design #IA