Week 8 Day 2: Open Card Sorting Exercises

Today's class was devoted to open card sorting.  We all participated, both as testers/observers & sorters.

I was one of the first round testers.  I tested three participants, observing, keeping notes, & taking photos.


Participant 1: LeAnne

My first participant divided the site into 8 main divisions: Home, Room Rates, Package Deals, Special Events, Gallery, Location, About Us, & Policies.



Participant 2: Alyssa

My second participant divided the site into 18 main divisions: Home, Welcome, Make Reservations, Special Offers, Special Events, Gallery, Guest Comments, Press, Awards, Location, Local Attractions, City Events Calendar, History, About Us, Policies, Terms of Use, Partners/Links, & Contact Us.


Participant 3: Michelle

My last participant divided the site into 8 main divisions, similar to the first subject, though Home is not part of the nav, rather where all the divisions branch from.  These 8 main divisions were as follows: Welcome, Room Rates, Special Events/Offers, Gallery, Local Attractions, Policies, About Us, & Contact Us.


As I look forward to the upcoming closed card sorting tests, I definitely want to keep my main divisions at 8 or fewer to make it easier to navigate.  Right now I'm looking at defining those as Home/Welcome, Rooms/Rates, Gallery, Special Offers, Policies, & Contact/About Us.

Week 8 Day 1: Setting Up for Card Sorting

To begin class, a few students (including myself) did an overview their site's organization & content audits for the class.  Next, we went over the content audits of those in our row to give more input.

Most of the class though was spent setting up for our upcoming card sorting exercises.  I reviewed my content audit & copied most of the content (top-level navs, major subdivisions, & minor subdivisions) onto 3x5 notecards, though without differentiating between their designations.  Those not included individual photos in the gallery & exterior links within the "Local Attractions" category.

Week 7.5 Outside of Class: Completed Content Audit

Above are samples of my completed content audit for the Pier Hotel, color coded by main division, major subdivision, minor subdivision, universal link, semi-universal link, & duplicates.  The full document can be viewed here.

1. What content do you have? 

The Pier Hotel's website content provides a thorough overview of their hotel including rooms, rates, area, photos, as well as embedded maps, booking services, & reviews from outside sources.

2. How is the site & its content organized?

It is actually decently organized with main divisions & subsequent subdivisions (though at first it is difficult to distinguish them).  There are, however, a number of redundancies, both between the major subnav & content links & between top-level navs & bottom nav, as well as inconsistencies between subnavs & content & a number of dead links.

3. Who do you think creates the content?

I think the majority of the content on the site is created in-house, including the written descriptions & photos.  The exceptions would be the embedded features; the booking service may also be in-house, but the maps are through Yahoo!Maps & the reviews via TripAdvisor users.

4. Where do you think the content is housed?

I think most of the content is house solely within the website with the exception of the booking service (the url is a bit hard to trace back), the maps (via Yahoo!Maps), & the reviews (via TripAdvisor).

Jessica Hische Lecture

Thursday I had the distinct pleasure to attend Jessica Hische's Society of Design lecture at the Whitaker Center in Harrisburg.  I have been a fan of her work for the past year or so, so this was an especially exciting lecture.

While a portion of her lecture was focused on type design (& of course an obligatory portfolio showcase), she had some great things to say about life & career as well.  One of the biggest points she brought up (& something she is somewhat well known for) is procrastiworking.  Procrastiworking, she says, is a guide to your calling; not to be confused with procrastinating, procrastiworking is the work you do while putting your other work off.

Some other great points she brought up included...

• Diversify your projects to avoid burn out
• Diversify the things that satisfy you; don't put all your eggs in the same basket
• Find what you like about your job now (whether that be your actual paying job or what you do as a student) & find a way to do that more

Week 7 Day 2: Beginning the Content Audit

Week 7.0 Outside of Class: Further Disorganized Website Exploration

First pick is St. Petersburg's The Pier Hotel for confusing navigation.  To book a room, I've got to scroll all the way to the bottom.

Second is Spicer's Paper.  While they have a clear primary navigation, I'm pretty confused by their secondary nav.  Oh, & the search bar is hidden behind an interactive, semi-transparent tab.

Week 7 Day 1: Disorganized Site Reviews

In class we discussed our disorganized website examples with our professor to narrow down which site we would ultimately "redesign."  For mine, my professor pointed out the examples were either more design flaws than organization or would not have enough content for the project.  I spent the rest of class browsing through more sites to find one to redesign.

Week 6.5 Outside of Class: Disorganized Website Exploration continued

Over the weekend, I decided to use the following three sites as my examples of poor user experience.

Yale's Art Department site

Sidebar present but additional links & calendars found throughout.

Artist site for Jaewon Seok

All-around hard to navigate.

Cardiff Contemporary's homepage

Good design, ambiguous navigation.

Week 6 Day 2: Disorganized Website Exploration

In class there was a brief discussion about our society's attachment to technology as compared to ages ago & our compulsion to check phones, social media sites, etc. numerous times per day.

There was then a brief presentation on web design, a little introduction to our next project, the gist being that web design combines user experience, visual design, & development.

We then began to explore for our next project, finding examples of websites with poor user experience.

Week 6 Day 1: Final Flowchart & Critique

This is the final flow chart project. We re-worked everything to fit onto the page and connected our visuals to the actual events in the flow chart for greater cohesion. The field was reworked to give a fuller view of gameplay and the clock to be more uniform. The title was also changed to make it more dynamic and attention-grabbing. We decided to add icons into the entire flow chart for things like kick, pass, & run so that they were even more easily & quickly identified.

Printed & mounted version of our final flowchart

In class we had the final critique on our project. LeAnne & Alyssa represented the group for the presentation & talked mostly about our progress and outcome of the flowchart and the overall process of the gameplay as represented in the flowchart.  As Alyssa summarized it,

 We started with brainstorming ideas and creating a lot of lists for various things. This is when we decided that football is such a complicated sport and we need to eliminate to only the most important aspects of the game. Next we split up the group each focusing on a different flow chart for a player, the coin toss, or the overall game itself. As a group then we found the best way to explain the sport after much brainstorming. We finally came up with using swim lanes in a stair step pattern to show the downs of a game. Since football is so repetitive it was important that we showed that each down there is the same outcomes and everything eventually ends in a score or a turnover.

Most people thought the flow was done very well and, for a complicated sport, did a nice job explaining the most important things. A few comments touched upon connecting our penalties with visuals of some sort (perhaps ref hand signals, which is something we had attempted early in our process), another on allowing the player flowcharts stand out. However, we wanted to integrate the player flowcharts since football is such a player-driven sport, each with their own responsibilities (though we only touched upon the quarterback & defensive linemen). The biggest critique, though, was also on the color scheme. Granted, the colors did print differently on the final piece then on the test print, & seeing it as a whole--a large whole at that--the colors don't necessarily communicate football. Our main goal in using these colors was to stay away from the cliche green field & yellow field post kind of thing. Like stated in the critique, it really depends on the user and what they perceive from the colors.