September 14, 2022
4 min

Different ways to test information architecture

We all know that building a robust information architecture (IA) can make or break your product. And getting it right can rely on robust user research. Especially when it comes to creating human-centered, intuitive products that deliver outstanding user experiences.

But what are the best methods to test your information architecture? To make sure that your focus is on building an information architecture that is truly based on what your users want, and need.

What is user research? 🗣️🧑🏻💻

With all the will in the world, your product (or website or mobile app) may work perfectly and be as intuitive as possible. But, if it is only built on information from your internal organizational perspective, it may not measure up in the eyes of your user. Often, organizations make major design decisions without fully considering their users. User research (UX) backs up decisions with data, helping to make sure that design decisions are strategic decisions. 

Testing your information architecture can also help establish the structure for a better product from the ground up. And ultimately, the performance of your product. User experience research focuses your design on understanding your user expectations, behaviors, needs, and motivations. It is an essential part of creating, building, and maintaining great products. 

Taking the time to understand your users through research can be incredibly rewarding with the insights and data-backed information that can alter your product for the better. But what are the key user research methods for your information architecture? Let’s take a look.

Research methods for information architecture ⚒️

There is more than one way to test your IA. And testing with one method is good, but with more than one is even better. And, of course, the more often you test, especially when there are major additions or changes, you can tweak and update your IA to improve and delight your user’s experience.

Card Sorting 🃏

Card sorting is a user research method that allows you to discover how users understand and categorize information. It’s particularly useful when you are starting the planning process of your information architecture or at any stage you notice issues or are making changes. Putting the power into your users’ hands and asking how they would intuitively sort the information. In a card sort, participants sort cards containing different items into labeled groups. You can use the results of a card sort to figure out how to group and label the information in a way that makes the most sense to your audience. 

There are a number of techniques and methods that can be applied to a card sort. Take a look here if you’d like to know more.

Card sorting has many applications. It’s as useful for figuring out how content should be grouped on a website or in an app as it is for figuring out how to arrange the items in a retail store.You can also run a card sort in person, using physical cards, or remotely with online tools such as OptimalSort.

Tree Testing 🌲

Taking a look at your information architecture from the other side can also be valuable. Tree testing is a usability method for evaluating the findability of topics on a product. Testing is done on a simplified text version of your site structure without the influence of navigation aids and visual design.

Tree testing tells you how easily people can find information on your product and exactly where people get lost. Your users rely on your information architecture – how you label and organize your content – to get things done.

Tree testing can answer questions like:

  • Do my labels make sense to people?
  • Is my content grouped logically to people?
  • Can people find the information they want easily and quickly? If not, what’s stopping them?

Treejack is our tree testing tool and is designed to make it easy to test your information architecture. Running a tree test isn’t actually that difficult, especially if you’re using the right tool. You’ll  learn how to set useful objectives, how to build your tree, write your tasks, recruit participants, and measure results.

Combining information architecture research methods 🏗

If you are wanting a fully rounded view of your information architecture, it can be useful to combine your research methods.

Tree testing and card sorting, along with usability testing, can give you insights into your users and audience. How do they think? How do they find their way through your product? And how do they want to see things labeled, organized, and sorted? 

If you want to get fully into the comparison of tree testing and card sorting, take a look at our article here, which compares the options and explains which is best and when. 

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1 min read

Moderated vs unmoderated research: which approach is best?

Knowing and understanding why and how your users use your product is invaluable for getting to the nitty gritty of usability. Delving deep with probing questions into motivation or skimming over looking for issues can equally be informative. 

Put super simply, usability testing literally is testing how usable your product is for your users. If your product isn’t usable users often won’t complete their task, let alone come back for more. No one wants to lose users before they even get started. Usability testing gets under their skin and really into the how, why and what they want (and equally what they don’t).

As we have been getting used to video calling regularly and using the internet for interactions, usability testing has followed suit. Being able to access participants remotely has allowed us to diversify the participant pool by not being restricted to those that are close enough to be in-person. This has also allowed an increase in the number of participants per test, as it becomes more cost-effective to perform remote usability testing.

But if we’re remote, does this mean it can’t be moderated? No - remote testing, along with modern technology, can mean that remote testing can be facilitated and moderated. But what is the best method - moderated or unmoderated?

What is moderated remote research testing? 🙋🏻

In traditional usability testing, moderated research is done in person. With the moderator and the participant in the same physical space. This, of course, allows for conversation and observational behavioral monitoring. Meaning the moderator can note not only what the participant answers but how and even make note of the body language, surroundings, and other influencing factors. 

This has also meant that traditionally, the participant pool has been limited to those that can be available (and close enough) to make it into a facility for testing. And being in person has meant it takes time (and money) to perform these tests.

As technology has moved along and the speed of internet connections and video calling has increased, this has opened up a world of opportunities for usability testing. Allowing usability testing to be done remotely. Moderators can now set up testing remotely and ‘dial in’ to observe participants anywhere they are. And potentially even running focus groups or other testing in a group format across the internet. 

Pros:

- In-depth gathering of insights through a back-and-forth conversation and observing of the participants.

- Follow-up questions don’t underestimate the value of being available to ask questions throughout the testing. And following up in the moment.

- Observational monitoring noticing and noting the environment and how the participants are behaving, can give more insight into how or why they choose to make a decision.

- Quick remote testing can be quicker to start, find participants, and complete than in-person. This is because you only need to set up a time to connect via the internet, rather than coordinating travel times, etc.

- Location (local and/or international) Testing online removes reliance on participants being physically present for the testing. This broadens your ability to broaden the pool, and participants can be either within your country or global. 

Cons:

- Time-consuming having to be present at each test takes time. As does analyzing the data and insights generated. But remember, this is quality data.

- Limited interactions with any remote testing there is only so much you can observe or understand across the window of a computer screen. It can be difficult to have a grasp on all the factors that might be influencing your participants.

What is unmoderated remote research testing? 😵💫

In its most simple sense, unmoderated user testing removes the ‘moderated’ part of the equation. Instead of having a facilitator guide participants through the test, participants are left to complete the testing by themselves and in their own time. For the most part, everything else stays the same. 

Removing the moderator, means that there isn’t anyone to respond to queries or issues in the moment. This can either delay, influence, or even potentially force participants to not complete or maybe not be as engaged as you may like. Unmoderated research testing suits a very simple and direct type of test. With clear instructions and no room for inference. 

Pros:

- Speed and turnaround,  as there is no need to schedule meetings with each and every participant. Unmoderated usability testing is usually much faster to initiate and complete.

- Size of study (participant numbers) unmoderated usability testing allows you to collect feedback from dozens or even hundreds of users at the same time. 


- Location (local and/or international) Testing online removes reliance on participants being physically present for the testing, which broadens your participant pool.  And unmoderated testing means that it literally can be anywhere while participants complete the test in their own time.

Cons:

- Follow-up questions as your participants are working on their own and in their own time, you can’t facilitate and ask questions in the moment. You may be able to ask limited follow-up questions.

- Products need to be simple to use unmoderated testing does not allow for prototypes or any product or site that needs guidance. 

- Low participant support without the moderator any issues with the test or the product can’t be picked up immediately and could influence the output of the test.

When should you do which? 🤔

Each moderated and unmoderated remote usability testing have its use and place in user research. It really depends on the question you are asking and what you are wanting to know.

Moderated testing allows you to gather in-depth insights, follow up with questions, and engage the participants in the moment. The facilitator has the ability to guide participants to what they want to know, to dig deeper, or even ask why at certain points. This method doesn’t need as much careful setup as the participants aren’t on their own. While this is all done online, it does still allow connection and conversation. This method allows for more investigative research. Looking at why users might prefer one prototype to another. Or possibly tree testing a new website navigation to understand where they might get lost and querying why the participant made certain choices.

Unmoderated testing, on the other hand, is literally leaving the participants to it. This method needs very careful planning and explaining upfront. The test needs to be able to be set and run without a moderator. This lends itself more to wanting to know a direct answer to a query. Such as a card sort on a website to understand how your users might sort information. Or a first click to see how/where users will click on a new website.

Wrap Up 🌯

With the ability to expand our pool of participants across the globe with all of the advances (and acceptance of) technology and video calling etc, the ability to expand our understanding of users’ experiences is growing. Remote usability testing is a great option when you want to gather information from users in the real world. Depending on your query, moderated or unmoderated usability testing will suit your study. As with all user testing, being prepared and planning ahead will allow you to make the most of your test.

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1 min read

Create a user research plan with these steps

A great user experience (UX) is one of the largest drivers of growth and revenue through user satisfaction. However, when budgets get tight, or there is a squeeze on timelines, user research is one of the first things to go. Often at the cost of user satisfaction.  

This short sighted view can mean project managers are preoccupied with achieving milestones and short term goals. And UX teams get stuck researching products they weren’t actually involved with developing. As a result no one has the space and understanding to really develop a product that speaks to users needs, desires and wants. There must  be a better way to produce a product that is user-driven.  Thankfully there is.

What is user research and why should project managers care about it? 👨🏻💻

User research is an important part of the product development process. Primarily, user research involves using different research methods to gather information about your end users. 

Essentially it aims to create the best possible experience for your users by listening and learning directly from those that already or potentially will use your product. You might conduct interviews to help you understand a particular problem, carry out a tree test to identify bottlenecks or problems in your navigation, or do some usability testing to directly observe your users as they perform different tasks on your website or in your app. Or a combination of these to understand what users really want.

To a project manager and team, this likely sounds fairly familiar, that any project can’t be managed in a silo. Regular check-ins and feedback are essential to making smart decisions. The same with UX research. It can make the whole process quicker and more efficient. By taking a step back, digging into your users’ minds, and gaining a fuller understanding of what they want upfront, it can curtail short-term views and decisions.

Bringing more user research into your development process has major benefits for the team, and the ultimately the quality of that final product. There are three key benefits:

  1. Saves your development team time and effort. Ensuring the team is working on what users want, not wasting time on features that don’t measure up.
  2. Gives your users a better experience by meeting their requirements.
  3. Helps your team innovate quickly by understanding what users really want.

As a project manager, making space and planning for user research can be one of the best ways to ensure the team is creating a product that truly is user-driven.

How to bring research into your product development process 🤔

There are a couple of ways you can bring UX research into your product development process

  1. Start with a dedicated research project.
  2. Integrate UX research throughout the development project.

It can be more difficult to integrate UX research throughout the process, as it means planning the project with various stages of research built in to check the development of features. But ultimately this approach is likely to turn out the best product. One that has been considered, checked and well thought out through the whole product development process. To help you on the way we have laid out 6 key steps to help you integrate UX research into your product development process.

6 key steps to integrate UX research 👟

Step 1: Define your research questions

Take a step back, look at your product and define your research questions

It may be tempting just to ask, ‘do users like our latest release?’ This however does not get to why or what your users like or don’t like. Try instead:

  • What do our users really want from our product?
  • Where are they currently struggling while using our website?
  • How can we design a better product for our users?

These questions help to form the basis of specific questions about your product and specific areas of research to explore which in turn help shape the type of research you undertake.

Step 2: Create your research plan

With a few key research questions to focus on, it’s time to create your research plan.

A great research plan covers your project’s goals, scope, timing, and deliverables. It’s essential for keeping yourself organized but also for getting key stakeholder signoff.

Step 3: Prepare any research logistics

Every project plan requires attention to detail including a user research project. And with any good project there are a set of steps to help make sense of it.

  1. Method: Based on your questions, what is the best user research method to use? 
  2. Schedule: When will the research take place? How long will it go on for? If this is ongoing research, plan how it will be implemented and how often.
  3. Location: Where will the research take place? 
  4. Resources: What resources do you need? This could be technical support or team members.
  5. Participants: Define who you want to research. Who is eligible to take part in this research? How will you find the right people?
  6. Data: How will you capture the research data? Where will it be stored? How will you analyze the data and create insights and reports that can be used?
  7. Deliverables: What is the ultimate goal for your research project?

Step 4: Decide which method will be used

Many user research methods benefit from an observational style of testing. Particularly if you are looking into why users undertake a specific task or struggle.

Typically, there are two approaches to testing:

  1. Moderated testing is when a moderator is present during the test to answer questions, guide the participant, or dig deeper with further questions.
  2. Unmoderated testing is when a participant is left on their own to carry out the task. Often this is done remotely and with very specific instructions.Your key questions will determine which method will works best for your research.  Find our more about the differences.

Step 5: Run your research session

It’s time to gather insights and data. The questions you are asking will influence how you run your research sessions and the methods you’ve chosen. 

If you are running surveys you will be asking users through a banner or invitation to fill out your survey. Unmoderated and very specific questions. Gathering qualitative data and analyzing patterns.

If you’re using something qualitative like interviews or heat mapping, you’ll want to implement software and gather as much information as possible.

Step 6: Prepare a research findings report and share with stakeholders

Analyze your findings, interrogate your data and find those insights that dive into the way your users think. How do they love your product? But how do they also struggle?

Pull together your findings and insights into an easy to understand report. And get socializing. Bring your key stakeholders together and share your findings. Bringing everyone across the findings together can bring everyone on the journey. And for the development process can mean decisions can be user-driven. 

Wrap Up 🥙

Part of any project, UX research should be essential to developing a product that is user-driven. Integrating user research into your development process can be challenging. But with planning and strategy it can be hugely beneficial to saving time and money in the long run. 

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1 min read

Affinity mapping - an introduction

User research is key to discovering the inner workings of your users’ minds – their emotional, organizational, informative needs and desires. These are all super important to creating a user experience that is intuitive and meeting your users’ needs in a way that means they feel loved, cared for and considered. All the deep understanding stuff that keeps them coming back!

Qualitative research allows you to collect verbatim data from participants that give insights into why they do or feel things. You can even get into whether ‘Dee’ understood how the website worked or why ‘Andrew’ would (or wouldn’t) revisit the app outside of testing.

Gathering these awesome insights is one step. Analyzing and organizing these is a skill and talent in its own right. And armed with the right tools or methods it can be immersive, interesting and a great way to get under the skin of your users. Let’s take a look at affinity mapping as a method of analyzing this data - as a tool it can help researchers visualize and easily group and theme data.

Affinity mapping is used outside of the UX world and can be done independently, however is a great analysis method to use collaboratively. For researchers, it can be a great tool to collaborate and engage the team and potentially stakeholders. Bringing people together to identify, discuss and resolve user experience issues. 

Here we’ll lay out what affinity mapping is, specifically why it’s useful for user research and set out key steps to get you underway. 

What is Affinity Mapping? 🗺️

By definition, affinity mapping is the process of collecting, organizing, and grouping qualitative data to create an affinity diagram.

Put simply it is a tool to group, map, sort and categorize information. A tool where you’ll look at the information and patterns of your qualitative user research and work to group these together to make sense of them. It helps you to find patterns, similar outcomes and insights that allow you to draw conclusions and collate results in a cohesive manner, then report to the wider team in a way that makes sense and provides a clear road to applicable and achievable outcomes.

What is an Affinity Diagram? 🖼️

An affinity diagram is what you have once you have gone through the affinity mapping process. It is the final ‘diagram’ of your grouping, sorting and categorizing. An ordered visual sorting of insights and information from your user research. And the place to filter or funnel observations and information into patterns and reach final outcomes. 

Allowing you to see where the key outtakes are and where there may need to be improvements, changes or updates. And from here a roadmap can be decided.

An affinity map using Reframer by Optimal Workshop

Essentially the mapping part is the process of creating the diagram, a visual sorting of insights and information from your user research. So how do you make affinity mapping work for you?

1. Start with a large space

This could be a table, desk, pinboard or even a whiteboard. Somewhere that you can stick, pin or attach your insights to in a collaborative space. Becoming more common recently is the use of shared digital and online whiteboard tools.  allowing people to access and participate remotely.

2. Record all notes

Write observations, thoughts, research insights on individual cards or sticky notes.

3. Look for patterns

As a group read, comment and write notes or observations. Stick each of the notes onto the board, desk or whiteboard. Add, and shuffle into groups as you go. You can keep adding or moving as you go.

4. Create a group/theme

This will start to make sense as more sticky notes are added to the map. Creating groups for similar observations or insights, or for each pattern or theme.

Create a group/theme using affinity mapping

5. Give each theme or group a name

As more notes are added there will be natural groups formed. Openly discuss if there are notes that are more difficult to categorize or themes to be decided. (We’ve outlined some ideas for UX research themes in another section below.)

6. Determine priorities

You’ve tidied everything into themes and groups, now what? How do you decide which of these are priorities for your organization? Discussion and voting can be the best way to decide what outcomes make the most sense and may have the biggest impact on your business.

7. Report on your findings

Pulling together and reporting on the findings through your affinity diagram process should be key to putting actionable outcomes in place.

How to define research themes 🔬

Commonly, user research is digested through thematic analysis. During thematic analysis, you aim to make sense of all the notes, observations, and discoveries you’ve documented across all your information sources, by creating themes to organize the information. 

Depending on your role and the type of research you conduct, the themes you create for your affinity diagram can vary. Here are some examples of affinity groups that you could form from your UX research:

  • User sentiment and facial expressions when completing certain tasks
  • Frequently used words or phrases when describing a product or experience
  • Suggestions for improving your product or experience

Wrap up 🌯

Qualitative user testing and the resulting observations can be some of the best insights you get into your users’ minds. Filtering, organizing and ordering these disparate and very individual observations can be tricky. Especially if done in silo.

So, draw a team together, bring in stakeholders from throughout your organization and work collaboratively to sort, organize and categorize through affinity mapping. This opens the doors to discussion, buy-in and ultimately a collective understanding of user research. Its importance and its role within the organization. And most importantly the real-world implications UX research and its insights have on organizational products and output.

Seeing is believing

Explore our tools and see how Optimal makes gathering insights simple, powerful, and impactful.