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01.14.04
 By
Jared M. Spool
Here, in the nether-regions of the Greater Boston area, we have
a linguistic habit of leaving the letter 'R' out of words like 'car'
(pronounced caa) or 'Harvard' (pronounced haavaad). It's what makes
us special.
Around our office, CAA has another meaning: Category Agreement Analysis.
This turns out to be a 'wicked good' (another New England-ism) technique
to help designers arrive at a usable information architecture.
CAA, like its big brother, card sorting, helps determine what the
top-level categories for a site should be. Also like card sorting,
CAA tells us what category structure is most natural to users. |
Card
sorting, which involves writing the content on index cards and asking
users to sort them into logical piles, with the piles becoming the
architecture of the site, tells us how to organize content. CAA is
similar, except there aren't any cards.
Instead, the primary CAA instrument is a survey. To prepare the survey,
you write down the most important content elements in a list. For
example, if you are working on a technical support site, you might
list all the different types of questions people want answered (possibly
gathered from your call center logs). If you're working on an intranet
site, you might list content elements, such as the travel expense
policy or critical sales information.
The survey consists of each item listed separately in the left column.
In the middle column, you place a box for the user to fill in which
you label "Main Category." In the right column, you place another
fill-in box labeled "Second-level Category (if necessary)".
Then, to complete your data collection, all you need to do is distribute
the survey to users. We find that you can get decent results from
the survey with 100 users, but 300-400 is better. In addition to getting
more users, varying your distribution techniques (such as using remote
offices or handing out surveys in your retail stores) will help you
get the perspectives of the broader community.
Once you've collected the data, analysis is quite simple. For each
element in your content list, you count the different categories that
users suggested, looking to see if you get 70% or better agreement
on the top 2 or 3 terms.
For example, when we asked people where they'd expect to find Iguana
Food on a pet supply site, 53% told us they'd expect the major category
to be "Reptile". (We were pleasantly surprised that 53% of Americans
knew that iguanas were reptiles.) Another 20% suggested "Food". The
73% agreement of these two terms told us that a category called "Reptile
Food and Supplies" would do very well.
Contrast that with what people told us when we asked for the major
categories for "Recordable Audio CDs" at a site selling computer supplies.
The most agreement we got was 19% for "Accessories". (Almost everything
a computer supplies site sells, such as cartridges, mice, and cables,
can be called "accessories".) 16% said "Storage", 13% said "CDs",
another 13% said "Media", and 10% said "Audio". There was no consensus
on any of the categories.
When you have consensus on one or two category names, the users are
telling you clearly what the category for that content should be.
Our research shows that you can use that category with confidence
because users will understand what is found when they click on it.
However, as in the case of our recordable audio CD's, if you don't
have consensus, you need to gravitate to a different strategy, where
you explain in the categories what users will find underneath. In
essence, your top-level design has to teach users where they can find
the specific content they are seeking.
If you've done card sorting before, CAA is different in two ways.
First, a typical approach to card sorting is you list the categories
and ask users to sort under them. Another popular alternative is that
you have users name the categories after they've put cards in the
piles.
Instead of presenting the user with a notion of structure and telling
them the names of categories, CAA is more fluid. It uses a spontaneous
word-association style, not restricting the users to designing a category
structure. With CAA, you're looking to measure the agreement on terms,
not create the design of entire hierarchy.
Second, CAA uses far more participants. Card sorting, which is time
intensive to set up and run, is really only practical with a dozen
or so participants. CAA takes advantages of sampling a larger portion
of the population.
Both techniques complement each other and you can use them together.
When creating a new design, you might start with CAA to get a sense
as to what you're dealing with -- do users have agreement on the top-level
terms? Then, if they do, you can use card sorting to help work out
the details of the hierarchy.
CAA is a good way to identify the key terms that users think of when
dealing with the content on your site. You can quickly employ this
easy technique without much setup or analysis cost. It's a wicked
good tool to put into your designer's toolbox.
About the Author:
A software developer and programmer, Jared founded User Interface
Engineering in 1988. He has more than 15 years of experience conducting
usability evaluations on a variety of products, and is an expert in
low-fidelity prototyping techniques. Visit http://www.uie.com/
for more usability information. You can reach Jared by calling our
office or by sending mail to jspool@uie.com.
Read this newsletter at: http://www.thedevweb.com/2004/0114.html |
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| From
the Forum: |
| Content Updater |
Hi all,
This may seem a odd question, how do you create a Content update page so you can log into a special page within your domain and update content of other pages?
I would prefer a PHP based script if there is one available, i have searched but to no avail.
Can anyone help? ...
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