Why information architecture is important for designers

In-person moderated user testing is a valuable part of any research project. Meaning you can see first-hand how your users interact with your prototypes and products. But in-person isn’t always a viable option. What to do if your project needs user testing but it’s just not possible to get in front of your users personally? 

‍

Let’s talk unmoderated user testing. This approach sidesteps the need to meet your participants face-to-face as it’s done entirely remotely, over the internet. By it’s very nature there are also considerable benefits to unmoderated user testing.

‍

What is unmoderated user testing? 💻👀

‍

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

‍

The key differences are:

‍

• You can’t ask follow-up questions
• You can’t use low-fidelity prototypes
• You can’t support participants (beyond the initial instructions you send them).

‍

Is unmoderated user testing right for your research project?

‍

By nature, unmoderated user research does not include any direct interaction between the researcher and the study participants. This is really the biggest benefit and also the biggest drawback. 

‍

Benefits of unmoderated usability testing 👩🏻💻

‍

• Speed and turnaround  - As there is no need to schedule meetings with each participant, unmoderated testing is usually much faster to initiate and complete. Depending on the study, it may be possible to launch a study and receive results in just a few hours.

• Size of study (participant numbers) - Unmoderated user testing also 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 the ability to make contact with participants within your country or across the globe. 

‍

If you’d like to know more about the benefits of unmoderated usability testing, take a look at our article five reasons you should consider unmoderated user testing.

‍

Limitations of unmoderated usability testing 🚧

‍

• Early-prototype testing is difficult without a moderator to explain and help participants recover from errors or limitations of the prototype.

• Participant behavior - Without a moderator, participants tend to be less engaged and behave less realistically in tasks that depend on imagination, decision-making, or emotional responses.

• Inability to ask follow-up questions - by not being in the testing with the participant, the facilitator can’t ask further questions to get a deeper understanding of the participant’s reasoning. As you can’t rely on human judgment through a moderator being in the room with the participants and the ability to adjust the test in the moment, unmoderated usability testing needs thorough up front planning.

‍

Because of these limitations unmoderated usability testing usually works best for evaluating live websites and apps or highly functional prototypes.  It’s great for testing activities that don’t require a lot of imagination or emotion from participants. Such as testing functionality or answering direct queries to do with your product.

‍

What’s involved when setting up unmoderated usability testing? 🤔💭

‍

1. Define testing goals

With any usability testing, it pays to define your goals before getting underway with setting up the software. What do you want to know from the participants? Goals vary from test to test. Understanding your goals upfront will help you to make the correct tool choice.

‍

2. Define your demographic

With a clear understanding of your goal, now it’s time to consider which participants are right for your study. Think about who they are, their demographic, and where they live. Are they new users or existing? Are they experts or novices?

‍

3. Selecting testing software

As unmoderated studies, are done remotely, the software used to faciliate the study plays a key role in ensuring you get useful results. Without a facilitator, the software must guide the participants through the session and record what happens. Take the time to test software and select one that is right for your study.

‍

4. Write your own tasks and questions

Think through your goals and what you want to achieve from the testing. Many of the unmoderated testing services include study templates with generic example tasks. Remember they are templates, and your tasks and questions should be specific to your particular study. Any task instructions guiding the participants should be clear and directive.

‍

5. Trial session

You’ve done all of the upfront work, now it’s time to test that it works, the software does what you expect and the instructions you have written can be followed. Doing a test run is crucial, especially with unmoderated usability testing, as there won’t be a facilitator in the testing to fix any problems.

‍

6. Recruit participants

Having defined your target audience and demographic, now is the time to recruit participants. Ensuring you have some control over the recruitment process is important, either through screening questions or recruiting your own. There are services that  recruit from a pool of willing participants. Thiscan be a great way to get a wide range of users.

‍

7. Analyze results

You are likely to accumulate a lot of data from your unmoderated testing. You’ll need a way to organize and analyze the data to derive insights that are valuable. Depending on the type of usability testing you do will vary the type of results. Quantitative testing gives data-driven results and direct answers. Whereas qualitative testing through audio or video recordings of participants’ actions or comments will need time to analyze and look at behavioral observations. 

‍

Wrap Up 🌯

‍

Unmoderated usability testing can be a good option for your study. It may not be right for all of your studies all of the time. While it can be quick to implement and often cheaper than moderated usability testing, it still requires time and planning to ensure you get the data insights you are looking for. Following a checklist can be a great way to ensure you approach your research methodically.

‍

Innovation is at the core of revenue growth - finding new ways to create and capture value. The reason most innovations fail is not because they don’t work (organizations are very good at building products and services with features and benefits), they fail because they don’t create value on dimensions that drive customer choice. If you don’t understand the causal drivers of customer choice, then you’re largely shooting in the dark and at risk of creating something that customers don’t choose above the alternative market solutions.

‍

Chris Green, Head of CX and Innovation at Purple Shirt, recently spoke at UX New Zealand, the leading UX and IA conference in New Zealand hosted by Optimal Workshop, about the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) methodology and uncovering the causal drivers of customer choice in innovation.

‍

In his talk, Chris talks us through JTBD methodology, how to use it, and how it will change the way you think about markets and competition.

‍

Background on Chris Green

‍

Chris has a long and deep background in strategy and innovation. Chris cut his strategy teeth in the UK before moving to New Zealand in 2000 where he led various strategy teams for organisations like Vodafone, Vector, and TelstraClear. He moved to Australia in 2011 where he started to develop his expertise in the emerging field of innovation. He sharpened his innovation knowledge and skills by studying under Professor Clayton Christensen (the godfather of modern innovation theory) at Harvard University and went on to lead one of Australia's leading innovation consultancies where he helped organizations run innovation projects and build innovation capability.

‍

Chris returned to New Zealand at the end of 2021 to lead the innovation practice of Purple Shirt, a UX design consultancy with offices in Auckland and Christchurch. In his spare time, you'll find Chris out on the water learning about foiling boats and boards.

‍

Contact Details:

‍

Email: chris@purpleshirt.co.nz

‍

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-green-kiwi/

‍

Jobs To Be Done methodology and its role in driving customer choice

‍

In this talk, Chris is specifically speaking about UX research in the context of building new products and services, not optimizing existing ones. He answers a critical question - how can we improve our odds of success when we launch something new to market?

‍

Performing UX research for products and services that already exist is very different from totally new ones. Why? Generally, it’s because customers of existing products are good at recommending improvements for things that they already know and use. They are good at this because they have user experience to draw from. The famous Henry Ford quote illustrates this well; “If I’d asked our customers what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses.”

‍

Just because customers are giving researchers helpful and constructive feedback on a product or service, it doesn’t mean you should implement these improvements. In a user-focused discipline, this can sound counterintuitive, but when it comes to new products and services, UX researchers should be careful in relying on user feedback absolutely. 

‍

Chris argues that customer feedback can sometimes lead us in the wrong direction. Assuming that a customer will choose our product if we simply implement their feedback is problematic. Chris stresses the difference between implementing changes that drive improvement versus implementing changes that drive customer choice. They aren’t the same thing. Many businesses continually release new features, but rarely do these new features drive or improve consumer choice. Yes, a new feature may make the product better than before, but does it make it so much better that it makes customers choose your product over others? 

‍

Causal drivers of choice 🤔

‍

When researching new products the most critical thing to understand is this - what causes someone to choose one product over another? If you don’t know the answer, you’re guessing about your product design from the very beginning. 

‍

Traditionally, market research (typically driven by marketing departments) has been poor at finding causation. Market research tends to find correlations between customer attributes and customer behavior (e.g. people in a certain age bracket buy a certain product), but these correlations are quite shallow and do little to inform true drivers of choice. A lack of causal studies can be explained by the fact that they are difficult to conduct. They need to uncover deeper, root causes of human behavior, rather than high-level trends to be truly useful.

‍

So, how can find causal drivers of choice? And why does it matter?

‍

Why it matters 🔥

‍

The best method for uncovering the causal drivers of choice was invented by Professor Clayton Christensen. Chris describes him as the guru of modern innovation theory. He invented Disruption Theory and Jobs to be Done (JTBD) methodology. His fundamental insight was this – researchers shouldn’t be worried about the customer, instead, they should be interested in what they’re trying to achieve. 

‍

Christensen’s JTBD methodology is about understanding the various things that people need to complete in certain contexts. He argues that we, as consumers and customers, all look to “hire” products and services from businesses to get things done. We make a decision to buy, hire, or lease products or services into our lives in order to make progress on something we’re trying to achieve. 

‍

These jobs to be done can be split broadly into three categories (which aren’t mutually exclusive):

‍

• Functional: Tasks that I want to complete
• Emotional: How I want to feel
• Social: How I want to be seen

‍

Value creation opportunities arise when the currently available solutions (products/services in the market) are not getting the jobs done well. This “gap” essentially represents struggles and challenges that get in the way of progress. The gap is our opportunity to build something new that helps people get their jobs done better.

‍

Chris uses Dropbox as a good example of an innovative company filling the gap and addressing a need for people. People found themselves “hiring” different solutions or workarounds to access their files anywhere (e.g. by emailing themselves and using USBs). Dropbox created a solution that addressed this by allowing people to store their files online and access them anywhere. This solution got the job done better by being more convenient, secure, and reliable.

‍

The strategic relevance of “jobs” 🙌💼🎯

‍

Using the JTBD methodology helps to change how you see the competitive landscape, thereby providing an opportunity to see growth where none might have seemed possible. 

‍

Chris uses Snickers and MilkyWay chocolate bars as examples of similar products that on the surface seem to compete against each other. Both seem to sit in the same category, are bought in the same aisle, and have similar ingredients. However, looking at them through a “jobs” lens, they address two slightly different jobs. A Snickers is bought when you need fuel and is more a replacement for a sandwich, apple, or Red Bull (i.e. it is a product “hired” to prepare for the future/get an energy hit). A MilkyWay on the other hand is bought to make people feel better, eat emotionally, and is more of a replacement for ice cream or wine (i.e. a product “hired” to cope with the past).

‍

Chris’s talk helps us to think more strategically about our design journey. To develop truly new and innovative products and services, don’t just take your users' feedback at face value. Look beyond what they’re telling you and try to see the jobs that they’re really trying to accomplish. 

Click, click, click, BOOM! There it is. That thing you were looking for. You couldn’t find it on other websites, but you found it here, and it was easy. You feel like a hero. You thank the website and you leave with a sense of achievement.

‍

What if you could replicate that feeling on your website? What if you could make every user journey so satisfying? By combining information architecture and user flow, you can.

‍

But what are they and how are they different? In this article, we’ll explain how they influence website design and how you can (and should) use them together in your project. We’ll also discuss different user flow research techniques, how they inform great information architecture, and how it doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming.

‍

‍

What is Information Architecture? 🏗️

‍

Information architecture is the system and structure you use to organize and label content on your website, app or product. It relates closely to user experience design, but it’s slightly different. Think of it as the structure or framework upon which user-facing assets are built.

‍

That being the case, if your information architecture has flaws, your website design will have flaws. It determines how information will be accessible, usable and relevant on your website and should be treated as a critical element of your project. How can we ensure that we have our content organized efficiently to promote seamless interactions?

‍

The answer is research. Without research you’re just guessing. The problem with guessing is that, well, you’re guessing. You tend to organize, categorize and label things the way that you (and maybe your team) would organize things. It’s biassed and subjective. In reality, people process information in all sorts of different ways and good information architecture should reflect that. You’ll often hear us say ‘test early and test often’. This mantra helps to avoid any little niggles during the user experience design process. Card sorting and tree testing are a couple of techniques that you can use to test early.

‍

Card sorting is a research technique that asks users to categorize different pieces of information or content. It’s best used when you have specific, information-related questions. For example, you may want to categorize products in an online store in the most logical way. Or you may have a mountain of blog post categories that need refining. Whatever it is, the benefit of a card sort is that you end up with consensus of how your users expect to see information. Card sorts can even be performed remotely using tools such as OptimalSort.

‍

Tree testing examines how easy it is for your users to find information using a stripped back, text-only representation of your website - almost like a sitemap. Rather than asking users to sort information, they are asked to perform a navigation task, for example, “where would you find today’s best deals?”. Depending on how easy or difficult users find these tasks gives you a great indication of the strengths and weaknesses of your underlying site structure.

‍

As the base structure of your website or app, information architecture has a fundamental influence on how well users access and use your content. It makes sense then that when designing it, you should receive real-world user feedback early on in the piece. Fortunately, there are great online tools like Treejack to quickly and easily test your site structures, categorization and labels.

‍

What is User Flow? 🌊

‍

User flow describes the steps involved for a user to complete a certain task. It lays out what needs to happen for a user to get from starting point to a defined finish line. Why is it important? Because we want that journey to be as efficient as it can possibly be. If it’s not, the user will be left frustrated and dissatisfied, no matter how beautiful the website design is.

‍

At the heart of user flow is, you guessed it, the user. A path that seems obvious to designers might be confusing to an end-user. It’s important to distance yourself from the project and put yourself in the user's shoes. Even better - watch the user. How do they react to a fork in the road? How do they get back on track? Where are they stumbling?

‍

User testing is a great way to observe user flow. But what are you testing? Normally you test based on a user flow diagram. A user flow diagram is generated based on insights from your research from card sorting, tree testing, and questionnaires, for example. It visually outlines the possible paths a user can take to achieve a certain task. The basic structure of a user flow diagram considers the following:

‍

• A critical path
• Entry points
• User end goals
• Success metrics (time to completion, number of clicks)
• Steps the user will take in between

‍

Once you have created a user flow diagram you can test it with your users. User testing can be remote or in person and uses a variety of techniques depending on the constraints of your projects. You may consider testing something rough and conceptual like a paper prototype before producing more detailed prototypes.

‍

How to Use Information Architecture and User Flow Together 🤝🏻

‍

By doing the work upfront to create great information architecture you put yourself in a great position to create great user flow. After all, information architecture is designed based on user research. Performing content audits and creating content inventories help to inform early content decisions, followed by user research techniques such as card sorting and tree testing. This research has a direct influence on user flow, since information and content has been given meaning and structure.

‍

The foundational work in designing information architecture leads to user flow diagrams which, as we discussed, are helpful tools in creating seamless user flow. They bridge the gap between information architecture and final user experience by visualizing pathways of specific tasks. By performing user tests on prototypes, the researcher will inevitably find speed bumps, which may highlight flaws in information architecture.

‍

Information architecture and user flow are integrated. This means there should be a constant feedback loop. Early research and categorisation when building information architecture may not translate to seamless user flow in practice. This could be due to integration factors outside of the digital ecosystem you’re designing.

‍

User flow and information architecture are complementary components of creating exceptional website design. Designers should make a conscious decision to apply both in synchrony.

‍

To Sum it Up 🧾

‍

Understanding the relationship between information architecture and user flow is important for any website design. Information architecture provides the organization and structure of content, where user flow applies that structure to how users execute certain tasks in the simplest possible way. The two are intertwined and, when used effectively, provide a framework to ensure seamless, user-friendly website design.

‍

User research and user testing heavily influence the design of both information architecture and user flow. We want users to feel a sense of accomplishment rather than frustration when using a website. Achieving this requires an investment in understanding user needs and goals, and how they consume and categorize information. This is where research techniques such as content audits, tree testing, card sorting and user testing become invaluable.

‍

We’ve always placed high value on solid research, but don’t be put off by it. The research techniques we’ve discussed are highly scalable, and you can be as involved as you want or need to be. Sometimes you don’t even have to be in the same room! The most important thing is to get outside of your team’s bubble and gain real user insight. Check out our information architecture services to ensure you’re on the right path towards powerful, user-centric website design.