RE: [Sigia-l] Online card sorting tool WebSort

From: Donna Maurer (donna_at_maadmob.net)
Date: Mon Mar 08 2004 - 18:15:35 EST

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Actually, I would have found this more useful than the sorted result. Two
things have happened:

1. you have found out that some people have no use for or interest in
particular content. If there is any repetition of this, that would tell you
something interesting about content, culture, acceptance of the solution...
2. the sort is not very useful as you know that the participant doesn't really
care about the content, so won't have thought through how it should be grouped
to help them achieve tasks

You mentioned in your other message that you asked this person to do the sort
to represent "groups of people in the company that likely shared similar kinds
of tasks". Participants actually can't do this - people can't effectively
represent other people - they can only represent themselves (and even then,
people are not good at representing themselves). This is why user-centred
design involves watching people work rather than asking them about their work...

But it is funny when people give you these types of comments...

Donna

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 16:01:22 +0000, Victoria Hodgson wrote
> My favorite ever card sort response:
>
> A long-time mainframe software engineer took about 10 seconds to
> deal the 40 cards into two piles. He then pointed to each pile in
> turn and said, "These are things I care about, and these are
> [expletive deleted]."
>
> His assessment was thoroughly correct, but nearly entirely useless
> for my purposes. *grin*
>
> After an hour and a hoagie sandwich, I had a much better sort from
> him complete with five categories (all of which could be mentioned
> in polite company.)
>
> "Right" is so subjective.
>
> Torrie Hodgson, MLS
>
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