Activity 2: Manual Card Sorting

The structure of the UWSMUG site needs to be carefully considered to ensure its navigation is logical and easy to follow. As part of the exercise to determine the best layout I will be collecting data from a number of card sorting exercises using myself and 3 other students from UWS.

Step 1: Create cards for the resources needed on the UWSMUG site.

Home, About UWSMUG, Contact, FAQ, News, RSS Feeds, Event Calendar, Members Only, Forums, Tutorials, Photo Galleries, Podcasts and Downloads

Step 2: Sort cards into 2 groups, those that should be publically (P) available and those that need to be password protected (M).

Step 3: Sort cards into top-level (T) categories and related sub categories (S).

Resultant Structure Recommendation – broken down into public and member only content
Publicly Available Pages – viewable by everyone

                        * Note: (-)  = sub-directory

Staff and Students (Members) Only Pages – requires username and password to access

Summary

The most important thing to consider regarding navigation for the UWSMUG site is the separation of public and password protected content for staff and students. Additionally if too many pages are listed within the navigation it can become very complicated so the use of top level and sub level links is recommended. When using sub categories it is important that these links contextually belong to the category of the top-level link they are attached to.

Project Proposal | Manual Card Sorting | Automatic Card Sorting | Data Gathering