1. Task 1: Information Architecture
Brief
Optional Only [~10 minutes]
Although this activity is optional, it’s a good warm-up for the following tasks. Spend 10 minutes thinking about or searching for an example of good IA (which can be IRL or digital). Ask yourself “Did this IA connect me to the content I was looking for?”
If you complete this activity, share what you find in the forum.
I decided to use Etsy (n.d.) as a good example of IA, but as you can see below, it began to descend into more of a critique. It's interesting as on a side note, the navigation also has some elements of contextualization and seasonal customisation. When I visited for this challenge the first navigation item in the Global navigation was "Mother's Day Gifts".
The navigation seen below has a clear hierarchy based on "Ambiguous" Topics referenced in the course content this week (although as a user I felt they were far from ambiguous). I was able to find the correct information by moving from the Global to the secondary and finally the tertiary navigation (figure 1).
Two things I did notice, however:
Searching for skirts in the search bar and clicking on the nav menu item for skirts yielded quite different results, which might be confusing for the user if they've returned for a second visit. This might have something to do with the fact that skirts were under women's clothes but there was no section for skirts for men, so the results of the search wouldn't be an amalgamation of two lists. Shouldn't the results be consistent (I am aware that it's not this simple in reality).
The hierarchy means that a sub-category is missing on men's items (figure 2) but is present on women's (figure 3) it can be confusing. For example, men can wear sandals as well as women, but there are no sandals in men's footwear. If this navigation is dynamic (as in generated by the Database, which means the planning of the nav is heavily tied to IA on the back end) then one would assume there are no sandals items for men in the DB, however, if this is a conscious design decision by a UX designer, is this omission inconsistent with a user who may want sandals and have previously got them under footwear for someone else of the opposite sex (i.e. I was shopping for a woman last week, I'm shopping for a man now, I would expect them to be there for the opposite sex) and how inclusive and excluding is it to categories items in this way?
I still don't know where I would look for men's sandals.
2. Task 2: Birth of an Onboarding Experience
Brief
[~40 minutes]
Think about the goal(s) of your UX prototype, the barriers to adoption and user success, and the ways you can elevate and personalise the experience.
Identify the type of the onboarding story you will use.
State the objectives of the onboarding experience.
Draft a flow to support it.
Identify if you need users to sign up/in, and where in the flow you will ask them to do so.
I attempted to draft a flow after brainstorming ideas on what the user would need. I've definitely decided to go down the skills search/match route for the artefact, Drawing from the Phil Persona from week 3, I wanted the onboarding to be a hybrid of both “Benefit” and “Doing” oriented (Brown, 2021). This was in part because I wanted the reluctant Persona of Phil to be reassured by the benefits of volunteering and also get them up and running as soon as possible. It's a fine balance, as I don't want to put too much pressure on Phil to invest too much in the app too early on.
This is by no means the final version, I'm aware that it is very text-heavy on the "Benefits" screens and quite demanding in the "Doing" sections near the end. I need to find a way to do both without them being so demanding for the persona. The whole "Doing" process requires searching for current skills, setting their level of expertise, then searching for skills to learn, and prioritising them. This is before the user has even signed up. I think this needs to go out for some user testing to see if this is at all palatable for the user.
3 Task 3: Navigation
Brief
[~20 minutes]
Think about which kinds of navigation design are appropriate for your prototype assignment. Provide a suggestion for each:
Global
Local
Inline
Contextual
Faceted
Supplemental
If one type of navigation design is not appropriate, try and explain why.
3.1 Global and Local Navigation
Global navigation in the context of my design could be a persistent navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. Usually, these are between 4-6 options with an icon, any more and you are in danger of violating WCAG 2.1 touch area guidlines of a minimum height of 44px (w3c.org, n.d.) This presents a challenge as it forces only a few high-level options. Alternatively, I could do a Hamburger style menu with a slide-out draw from one side, that covers the content. This would allow for a visible secondary and tertiary navigation structure. However, I’m not sure it's necessarily needed for an app of this nature. More appropriate will be a robust search feature and recommendations (contextual) based on the user's previous activities.
3.2 Inline
The use of inline in my design may be appropriate for articles or help sections rather than the main area, Although some of the dashboard elements that I’m thinking of adding may benefit from inline navigation to other related screens.
3.3 Contextual
Usually used for larger, e-commerce sites or sites with a high amount of categorisation, I may not use breadcrumbs in the app. However, I think the use of “You may also like…” or a similar technique to inform the user of other volunteering opportunities may be appropriate at the right moment, such as after they have completed a project or on the dashboard.
3.4 Faceted
I think I could use a filter/sort on the search functionality in the app. The search will be the primary way to find so this will need to be a robust area of the app. I will need to think of the appropriate thing I would like to filter and how to organise the content f the volunteer opportunities - closest match, most imminent, most interested by others.
3.5 Supplemental
I will not be using supplemental navigation in the footer, but I might add one in the primary navigation or a place in the user profile area. I feel like I need more data to make these decisions though as these are really only hypotheses.
4. Card sorting
Brief
[~60 - 90 minutes]
Consider the navigation you decided on for your product.
Make a list of all the content you intend to have in your product.
Make sure the content is of similar granularity – ie could any be considered category labels (eg fruit / vegetables / pulses), whereas others are simply content items (eg bananas / carrots / chickpeas)?
Take all the content items, and conduct a card sort – either use physical cards, or a tool like OptimalSortLinks to an external site.*.
Synthesise your results – there are lots of helpful articles on how to do this on the OptimalSort website.
This was a real struggle of a task for me and one I think highlighted a lot of deficiencies in my concept and my approach so far. The first problem was to decide WHAT to do the sort on. The initial thought was the main navigation. From the above exercise, I felt that this was only going to be between three to five items so If the card sort came back with more than this then I would have to think of a clever way of presenting this. Could I use a menu that would slide in from the side, or would one of the persistent items on the nav bar have a sub-menu that popup in from underneath ( I’d seen this on Golden, one of the volunteering Apps I looked at)? To even start this process I felt I needed to get all my research material together to see if I could at least work out what I wanted to learn. The video Getting started with card sorting with Donna Spencer helped to some degree but it was the part when she references the same level of detail that gave me concern (Spencer 2016). I still wasn’t sure about the structure of my app. I still hadn’t nailed down the flow, I wasn’t sure if some elements were going to be on multiple screens or one big screen. I was starting to feel overwhelmed.
I decided to bite the bullet so to speak and produce a list based on categories I identified from my design studio sketches and brainstormed some related terms, and I’m glad I did. I’m also glad I used the recommended tool OptimalSort by Optimal Workshop (n.d.). Not only was I able to get 18 participants fairly quickly, but I was also able to use the analysis tools provided for some insights and recommendations IA and navigation structure. I decided to do an open card sort, because I was still unsure on the overall structure of the app.
4.1 Categories and Standardisation grid
Using the techniques described in the video by Donna Spencer I looked at simplifying my categories and then using it combined with the Standardisation grid (figure 6) to come up with the top-level categories below. The subcategories for these seemed to fit nicely with the concept. I was really encouraged by this because I was beginning to doubt my idea and this gave me a real boost.
About Me
Skills
Events (search for)
Opportunities
Volunteering
Skills
Organisations
4.2 Similarity Matrix
The Similarity Matrix (figure 7) yielded similar results, however, there really wasn’t a way to use it to group the content together in as useful a way as the technique above. I found this better for coming up with the top-level, categories that could potentially be used for primary navigation. I liked that news was in there but missed that organisations weren’t. I could see organisation as a way for someone to pursue an organisation they’d like to align with, but this could also be incorporated into the search functionality.
Profile
Skills
Opportunities
News
Event (search for)
Social
4.3 Dendrograms
I felt like the dendrograms (figure 8) didn’t produce the same caliber of results as the other tools. I’m not saying for other projects they would not work, but for mine, where the structure was wide open, I felt like it did not convey the structure I was going for.
Join Us
Project Management
Organisations
Personal
Why Volunteer
Create a volunteer opportunity
Skills
The “Join Us” in particular irked me, but I I am happier with the categorisation from the first two tools.
4.4 3D Clusters
Another tool by OptimalSort is 3D cluster view (figure 9). This seemed to also produce results that didn’t quite resonate with the concept as filter five categories did not provide a skills category which was key to my concept.
Find opportunities
The reasons
About Me
Events
The impact you have.
Reflections
This module has not been an easy one for me. I’ve struggled to get into a rhythm and I feel a disconnect this brief, which is odd because I volunteer myself. I also felt my insights from the user interview felt light-weight and superficial and there was more apathy to the concept of volunteering than I thought; are these even my target users? Perhaps I need to take a second look at my user interviews to see if there is anything else I missed. Or am I trying to do too much with this concept?
I had a group session with Carlos this week that turned into a one-to-one (no one else turned up). This was a really helpful session. One massive takeaway was that I need to ensure I’m not ”boiling the Ocean” as Carlos put it (Santana 2023). The idea of skills matching may be enough in this respect. Perhaps instead of continuing to ideate, I need to focus down. One way I may be able to do this is by using a diversified instead of adding new elements, another suggestion by Carlos. I could use Tom's preference for digital-only volunteering opportunities as the diversified, allowing me to focus the app on Phil while incorporating elements of Tom. I would also need to do a second card sort to nail down the categories after I’ve done a bit of research on the types of digital volunteering activities. Having gone on Volunteer Match (n.d), there have done a tremendous amount of work on their categorisation for all different types of volunteering opportunities (figure 4). This would definitely require a card sort again once I have identified which ones could be digital. My only concern with this direction is this seems to move the concept away from being involved in the local community and turns the user into a freelance volunteer. Maybe I need to stop looking at this as a negative and perhaps I need to keep my own biases in check. I still have Morozov’s high-minded musing on the ethical implication of gamification on volunteers rattling through my brain from the other week, but he is not the final authority on digital design.
References
BROWN, Clementine. 2021. ‘Week 5: Designing Successful Onboarding.’ Canvas Falmouth University [online]. Available at: https://learn.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/283/pages/week-5-designing-successful-onboarding [accessed 21/02/23].
Etsy. n.d. Etsy United Kingdom - Shop for handmade, vintage, custom, and unique gifts for everyone. [online] Etsy Inc. Available at: https://www.etsy.com/ [accessed 20/02/23].
Optimal Workshop. n.d. optimalsort. [online] Available at: https://www.optimalworkshop.com/optimalsort/ [accessed 20/02/23].
SANTANA, Carlos. 2023. ‘UXO720 UX Design - Week 5 Group Session 2 - Sunday 26th February 2023 | 15:00 GMT’ [Online Group Session]. UXO720 for MA User Experience Design. Falmouth: Falmouth University, 26 February 2023.
SPENCER, Donner. 2016. Getting started with card sorting with Donna Spencer, YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVWznB8RLp0 [accessed: 21/02/23].
w3.org. n.d. Understanding SC 2.5.5:target size (level AAA) . Understanding Success Criterion 2.5.5: Target Size | WAI | W3C. Available at: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/target-size.html [accessed 24/02/23].
VolunteerMatch. n.d. search. About Us. [online] Available at: https://www.volunteermatch.org/search [accessed 20/02/23].
Figures
Figure 1: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023 . Analysis of Etsy's Hierarchy
Figure 2: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Sandals on Women's section on the Etsy website
Figure 3: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Sandals absent on Mens section on the Etsy website
Figure 4: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023 wireframes for onboarding
Figure 5: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Results of Categories and Standardisation grid on OptimalSort
Figure 6: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Results of Similarity Matrix OptimalSort
Figure 7: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Results of Dendrograms on OptimalSort
Figure 8: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Results of 3D Clusters on OptimalSort
Figure 9: VolunteerMatch. 2023. The MySkills Categories. Retrieved From https://www.volunteermatch.org/ [accessed 20/02/23].
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