1.
Designing an effective
information architecture
LeanUX
Trent Mankelow
Wednesday 19 September 2012

2.
Before we get going…

3.
Today’s session is dedicated to this
New Zealand icon
‘Good information architecture stands the test of time’

4.
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

5.
Why is information architecture
important?

6.
I have 164 passwords

7.
3,404 contacts in Outlook
1,590 contacts in LinkedIn
318 friends on Bookface

8.
130,000+ emails

9.
Driver’s license
license plate numbers
bank account numbers
passport numbers
birthdays (8 nieces, 2 nephews)
clothing sizes
ETC

10.
“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
19

11.
35,000,000,
000,000,000,
20
000,000bytes

12.
The #1 reason you should
care about information
architecture?
Hard to find information
wastes human life

13.
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

14.
So, what is information architecture?

15.
“The combination of
organization, labeling,
and navigation
schemes within an
information system.”
- Lou Rosenfeld
26

16.
Information
architecture
connects people
to the content
that they are
looking for
27

17.
1. Organization 2. Labeling
3. Navigation 4. Search
28

18.
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
29

19.
For example, there are lots of ways to
organize recipes ...
• French • Breakfast • Beef
• Italian – Hot
• Poultry
– Cold
• German • Lunch
– Chicken
– Turkey
• Japanese • Dinner – Duck
–Sushi • Pork
• Snacks
–Yakitori • Vegetarian
• Chinese
30

20.
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!
31

21.
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
32

22.
Labels should be
 Concise
 Consistent
 Distinguishable
 In the users’ language
33

23.
3. Navigation
 Good navigation design should show users:
 Where they are
 Where they’ve been
 Where they can go
34

24.
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
35

25.
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
36

26.
Make it obvious where users have been
 Use consistent labeling
 Make visited in-page links a less saturated colour
37

27.
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
38

28.
Organization and labeling
So, how do you do information
V
architecture?

29.
STEP ONE: KNOW your
users!

30.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

31.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

32.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

33.
FOCUS
GROUPS
aren’t
enough!

34.
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.

35.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

36.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

37.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

38.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

39.
Quant Qual
Open card sorting Contextual inquiry
Focus groups
Generative
User interviews
Analytics Usability testing
Closed card sorting
Evaluative
Tree testing
Surveys

40.
An example ‘ideal’ approach
1. Research 2. Create 3. Evaluate
a) Review user a) Conduct
feedback a) Tree test
open card
candidate IAs
sorting
b) Review web
analytics
b) Workshop b) Usability
c) Tree test candidate IAs testing
existing tree
57

41.
Card sorting

42.
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

43.
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?

44.
2. Write cards

45.
Number of cards versus completion rate
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
% of card sorts completed by
50%
participants
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1 21 41 61 81 101 121 145 167 207 268 403
Number of cards

46.
Number of participants who complete a card sort within an hour
20000
18000
16000
14000
12000
Total participant numbers 10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
1 11 21 31 41 51
Minutes

47.
3. Recruit representative users
 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”

48.
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).

49.
4. Conduct the sort

50.
Closed versus Open?
ç

51.
Which is best: In-person or Online?
In-person Online
• You can ask questions as • Quick results
participants complete the • Can conduct sorts with large
sort to better understand numbers of participants
their thinking • You know that participants
• No software costs are representative if you
recruit via a link on the
website
• Analysis is aided by the
software (no data entry)

52.
Maybe both?

53.
5. Analyse the results
Plans & billing

54.
Strong vs. weak groups

55.
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

56.
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

57.
Tree testing

58.
We first
came
across the
idea in
2003

59.
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)

60.
Tree testing – step-by-step
1. Plan the study
2. Decide on site structures to test
3. Create representative ‘find’ tasks
4. Pilot test
5. Recruit representative users
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

61.
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?

62.
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)

63.
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

64.
Come up with some alternatives as a team

65.
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?

66.
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?

67.
Completion rate of Treejack studies
1.2
1
0.8
Completion rate 0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Number of tasks

68.
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!

69.
5. Recruit representative users
 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”

70.
6. Analyse the results – overview

71.
6. Analyse the results – task-by-task

72.
6. Analyse the results - pie trees

73.
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

74.
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.

75.
Conclusion: IA the Lean UX way

76.
versus
Slow Fast
Millions Tens of thousands

77.
Feedback
V
customers
It’s not how
well you lap,
it’s how fast
you lap
you
Define V
V
Develop

78.
An example ‘ideal’ approach
1. Research 2. Create 3. Evaluate
a) Review user a) Conduct
feedback a) Tree test
open card
candidate IAs
sorting
b) Review web
analytics
b) Workshop b) Usability
c) Tree test candidate IAs testing
existing tree
98

79.
The ‘lightest weight’ approach
1. Research 2. Create 3. Evaluate
a) Review user a) Conduct
feedback a) Tree test
open card
candidate IAs
sorting
b) Review web
analytics
b) Workshop b) Usability
c) Tree test candidate IAs testing
existing tree
99

80.
Resources
Information Architecture A Practical Guide to Organizing Digital Information for
for the World Wide Web – Information Architecture - Others – Nichani (FREE from
Morville & Rosenfeld Spencer http://bit.ly/yEyfFZ)
• 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)

81.
Thank you, you’re
awesome!
trent.mankelow@optimalusability.com
@optimalworkshop
www.optimalworkshop.com