User-Centred Design and Evaluation of Information Architecture for Information Systems

Abstract

Information Architecture plays a central role in the usability of Information Systems. It is vital that organisations employ appropriate methods to know their users when designing and evaluating Information Architecture in their systems to make them more effective. This chapter presents concepts and techniques to help organisations apply user-centred methods to design and evaluate Information Architecture in their Information Systems. The discussion is centred on the card sort technique, presenting its main variants and their applicability. The chapter also presents a worked example with the application of the Card sort technique to organise the content of the authors' university website, with data collected from 38 participants. By means of the discussion of the worked example, the chapter presents how to prepare a Card sort, recruit participants, run the study and analyse the results to be applied in the design and evaluation of Information Architecture of Information Systems.