User Behavior Analysis through Card Sorting

🌳 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

💡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 Optimal UserZoom (now part of UserTesting) 🍏 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: UserZoom (now part of UserTesting) UXtweak® 🎯 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) https://lnkd.in/dFdsWPea ✔ Tree testing: A complete guide(+ video) https://lnkd.in/dPwB96-y ✔ Information architecture design: step by step https://lnkd.in/dT92ExhC 🖼️ Card sorting vs tree testing by Maze #UX #design #uxdesign

Card sorting is a versatile UX research method that reveals how users naturally categorize information, offering invaluable insights for structuring your digital products. Here are five key aspects to understand about card sorting: 1. Understand Users' mental models Card sorting helps uncover users' mental models by allowing them to organize topics into groups that make sense to them. This understanding is crucial for creating an information architecture that aligns with user expectations. 2. Choose the right type of card sort There are different types of card sorting methods, each serving specific purposes: Open card sort: Participants create and name their own categories, providing insights into their natural grouping logic. Closed card sort: Participants sort items into predefined categories, useful for evaluating existing structures. Hybrid card sort: Combines both approaches, allowing participants to use predefined categories and create new ones if necessary. 3. Prepare neutral and clear card labels The phrasing of each card label can significantly influence how users group them. It's essential to use neutral and clear labels to prevent participant bias and encourage thoughtful, conceptual grouping. 4. Analyze and apply the findings thoughtfully After conducting a card sort, analyze the data to identify patterns in how users group information. These insights can inform the design of your site's navigation and overall information architecture, ensuring it aligns with user expectations. 5. Recognize the limitations Ofcourse card sorting is a great method, but not a perfect one (isn't any method?) It may not provide definitive answers or account for all contextual factors influencing user behavior. Therefore, it's best used in conjunction with other research methods to develop a comprehensive understanding of user needs. By incorporating card sorting into your UX research toolkit, you can design more intuitive and user-friendly digital experiences that resonate with your audience. When's the last time you used this method? And what did it gain you?