UX Case Study: Process of Information Architecture
For Museum of Art & Design NYC
Overview
I have been hired by a contemporary art museum in New York City to assess the usability and functionality of their desktop website and their competitors. To understand my client’s website I used following process methods:
Card Sorting;
Card sorting is interactive, engaging and generally more interesting than a traditional interview. I found it particularly helpful for this client’s website.
I conducted one open and one closed card sort with at least 30 representative pages from the client’s website to analyze the existing information architecture and identify how it could be improved.
- Open Card Sorting — Used 3 participants
Participants organize cardsinto as many groups as they want and assign their own labels to the groups (Generative)
- Closed Card Sorting -Used 3 participants
Participants are given both cards and category labels and group the cards to the categories that make sense to them (Evaluative)
○ First conducted an open card sort using the site’s existing pages to generate ideas for improvement.
○ Next, analyzed results from the open card sort to determine categories for the closed card sort.
○ Then conducted a closed card sort to evaluate your recommended changes from the open card sort.
○ Finally, analyzed results from the closed card sort to determine final site structure.
A card sorting method can be extremely helpful, because it allows you to see how users are screening through and prioritizing your information in their minds. This exercise can give very useful insights into how to create an information hierarchy and hence develop an effective story flow for your client’s website.
Card Sorting Observation, Insight & Suggestions
Observation (Open Card Sorting)
- I conducted to use 46 cards total to 3 participants for Open card sorting: Participants took a long time to figure it out how to sort cards.
- Participants were hesitated a long time to sort following cards: LOOT: MAD about Jewelry, Artist Studio, Artslife, Report & Bulletins, MAD Ball, Title I: Arts Access and Burke Prize,
- For the most part, participants named the Primary categories quickly.
Insight (Open Card Sorting)
- Participants were hesitant because they were not sure what was the context of following cards, they expressed that they were not sure what it was: Example: MAD Ball. Burke Prize, TItle I: Arts Access
- 2 participants expressed that card sorting was harder than they thought.
- 1 Participants said it was too many cards
Observation (Closed Card Sorting)
- After Open Card Sorting data, I synthesized 6 Primary categories. There were 4 extra Primary categories were written by one participant each so I did not include to the final decision.
- Participants was able to speed up card sorting (Closed) more than Open card sorting
- Some Participants are not sure where to put secondary categories. Example, they put the card ‘Annual Fund’ to ABOUT category instead SUPPORT category
Insight (Closed Card Sorting)
- Participants expressed that having a hard time to made a decision with few cards.
- One participant questioned about the card ‘ FAQs ‘meant, I realized that some users are not familiar with acronyms.
- Three Participants were questing about MAD Ball, Burke Prize, Title I: Arts Access (from the website Secondary menu categories)
Create Sitemaps; (Original client’s website & Revised Website after Card Sorting data)
Created two sitemaps, one of my client’s existing website structure and another which reflects recommended changes based on my card sorting data. Both sitemaps should represent primary and secondary levels of navigation.
User flow:
User flow is the path taken to a prototypical user on a website or app to complete a task. A flow presents an overall picture and gives an opportunity to create a more seamless user experience. In my personal experience, keep in mind of User flow is key to better User Experience Design.
I used User Flow base on primary persona through the client’s website, user flow includes the task, a heading, and a legend indicating and use of key shapes. Use flow has to include at least one decision point with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ pathways.
Competitive and comparative feature analysis;
I chose 3 competitors and 1 comparator to analysis, I used 10 relevant features to compare
Competitors: MoMA, The Hello Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art
Comparator: New York Aquarium
Features I chose for the analysis:
- Variety Programs (ex: Exhibitions, events, performance etc)
- Membership
- Facility Rental
- Accessibility
- Group Tours
- Audio
- Family(Kids) Programs
- Summer Camp
- Internships
- Resource Materials
Heuristic Evaluation & Summary of Insights;
A heuristic evaluation is a type of design review that helps to identify
usability problems. It involves evaluators examining the interface and
judging its compliance with recognized usability principles (the
“heuristics”). I used abby method (10) for 4 primary pages of the client’s website to evaluated.
Abby Method;
‣Findable
‣Accessible
‣Clear
‣Communicative
‣Useful
‣Credible
‣Controllable
‣Valuable
‣Learnable
‣Delightful
Score and prioritize each issue according to its severity.
‣ Many use this traffic-light RANKING SYSTEM:
‣ Example of a best practice (Green)
‣ Minor problem (Yellow)
‣ Medium problem (Orange)
‣ Major problem (Red)
Reflection
Information Architecture process was one of the hardest case study I had ever done so far. Using new methods was very exciting but there was really nothing right or wrong about it. I spent many hours for the case study but it seemed there was no a perfect result. Nevertheless, I learn how card sorting data can be applicable to IA(Information Architecture) process and understanding the website structure to revise the sitemap was a great method to analyze the website structure. Base on the persona, created User Flow and evaluated who was your business competitors and comparators was an essential key to better UX design for any business. Heuristic method was one of newest tool for my case study, it was not so straightforward to evaluate any data. Nonetheless, these methods add a lot of insight to my case study.