:: Two-minute taxonomies

Did you ever need to develop an information architecture or taxonomy, but had no budget or time for primary research? I'm sure this is your situation in over half of your projects.

There are some really "down and dirty" tricks to develop meaningful taxonomies for a given topic or concept...check it out:

1. Let's say you need to develop an information architecture for a disease awareness website. Use the Overture keyword tool to find the most popular, related searches to the disease. These popular searches represent what active information seekers are actually looking for related to your topic! Use these topic modifiers as primary or secondary level category headers in your IA.

2. Cheat. If you are designing an e-commerce experience related to music, or other products, use "E-bay categories." E-bay's taxonomies are honed through community submission of auction items. You can bet that these organizational schemes represent the most commonly thought-of subdivisions of any given consumer-goods category.

There is no replacing primary research, but you don't always have to start from scratch. Remember, you can always push for taxonomy validation tests prior to design.

Jonathan Lupo - VP / Information Architecture - Empathy Lab

:: Issues with Focus Group Testing

Conducting focus groups can be a great way to generate ideas, but don't use this technique as a way to document trends in behavior or end-user tasks.

Why?

It's simple. We are social animals. People, in a group setting, have a tendency to influence one another. Whether it is to impress, to encourage, or to blend in, people will act differently in front of others, than they do in isolation.

In a situation where a researcher wants to validate trends in behavior, he/she should study individual behavior, in isolation, and then compare this behavior with data from other 1-on-1 interviews. 1-on-1 interviews ensure that participant responses are not influenced by environmental bias...in other words, other people in the room!

Once again, focus groups ARE a legitimate method of conducting research.

When?

Use focus groups when YOU WANT other people to influence each other. The best use of a focus group is for a creative brainstorm, or to generate ideas.

Jonathan Lupo - VP / Information Architecture - Empathy Lab