Discussion list for the AIfIA Tools initiative

[Larry Wood <WoodL AT byu.edu>]

Hi,

Because it appears this list is reasonably small, and because I'm a 
usability person, rather than an IA person, per se, let me introduce 
myself.  I am a cognitive psychologist by training and am currently a 
professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young 
University.  I have an applied interest in Usability and User-Centerd 
Design and have taught courses in that area for 18 years.  As a 
result, three years ago, I was asked to reduce my faculty appointment 
to 1/3 time and spend 2/3 of my time consulting with the Office of 
Information Technology on campus to help make all the student and 
faculty services websites more usable.

The campus website(s) were developed by administrators (e.g., the 
registrar's office) and IT people with very little feedback from 
students or faculty.  I'll bet you're surprised (:>). As a result, 
the labeling and organization are very much from an administrative 
perspective.  So, one of my first reactions was to try to get some 
data on labels and organization that made more sense from a user's 
perspective.  That led me to getting more acquainted with 
card-sorting as a tool/methodology to assist with that.  As a result, 
I (and my son) have developed a web-based front-end to IBM's carding 
tools, EZSort 
(http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/410), which we 
have called WebSort.  Those interested can read about it at: 
http://www.acm.org/chapters/nuchi/2002/09mtg_websort/WebSort.html. 
It is available for others to try out, if interested.

Developing that tool has sparked my interest in research on various 
issues surrounding the use of card-sorting techniques, as well as 
further development of tools.  One of my colleagues in UPA (Usability 
Professionals' Association), Whitney Quesenbery, made me aware of 
your organization, so I queried Lou Rosenfeld to see if any of you 
folks were interested in and/or using card sorting techniques.  That 
led to Erin's invitation to join your tool initiative and this group. 
Because our tool is quite simple at this point, my son Jed (who is 
full of energy) is chaffing to begin adding various features to it. 
I have been holding him off until we can find an opportunity to do a 
studies ourselves or cooperation with others where a missing feature 
is actually needed.  That way we would be able to determine how 
useful such functionality might actually be.  In terms of AIFIA tool 
initiative, I'm looking forward to learning more about IAers and what 
kinds of tools would be useful in supporting IA work.

- Larry Wood