Avi Parush

Welcome to the first issue of volume 4 of JUS! This issue is partly devoted to the technique of card sorting. In their invited editorial, Jed Wood and Larry Wood, reflect on the origins of card sorting and how it has evolved to being a popular technique in usability work. They then go on to […] [Read More]

Jed Wood, Larry Wood

History and Assumptions Card sorting was originally developed by psychologists as a method to the study of how people organize and categorize their knowledge. As the name implies, the method originally consisted of researchers writing labels representing concepts (either abstract or concrete) on cards, and then asking participants to sort (categorize) the cards into piles […] [Read More]

Celeste Lyn Paul

Abstract Open card sorting is used by information architects to gather insights from users to incorporate feedback into an information architecture. In theory, it is one of the more inexpensive, user-centered design methods available to practitioners, but hidden costs make it less likely to be conducted properly and affect the quality of results produced. The […] [Read More]

Shannon Riley, Veronica Hinkle, Barbara S. Chaparro, PhD

Abstract This study reports on the usability of three commercially available electronic card sort applications (CardZort, WebSort, and OpenSort) by researchers (Study 1) and by end users (Study 2). Both groups of participants conducted a series of tasks representative of their user group with each program. Researchers focused on the set up and analysis of […] [Read More]

Shazeeye Kirmani

Abstract This paper identifies the factors affecting heuristic expertise and defines levels of expertise permissible to conduct an evaluation. It aims to standardize skills or define heuristic expertise worldwide and also suggests ways to improve issue categorization. An online heuristic evaluation competition was hosted on the World Usability Day website in November 2007 by Usability […] [Read More]