Navigating Help - Testing Information Architecture with Treejack
- 1. © 2015 Autodesk Navigating Help Testing Information Architecture with Treejack Patty Gale Principal Learning Content Developer, Autodesk, Inc. April 15, 2015
- 2. © 2015 Autodesk Can people find what they're looking for? Is the taxonomy and navigation labeling appropriate? Is the help content hierarchy well structured? Goal: In the help system…
- 3. © 2015 Autodesk Online user study: Recruited users Tool: Treejack by Optimal Workshop Method
- 4. © 2015 Autodesk Write text for welcome, instructions, and thank you Design pre- and post-survey questions Get the site map/help hierarchy into Treejack Define tasks for users: what info do you want them to look for? Identify correct answers for each task Run a pilot to identify and iron out wrinkles Create the study (similar to SurveyMonkey®)
- 5. © 2015 Autodesk Send the link to participants Run the study Participants perform the study You can look at survey results any time
- 6. © 2015 Autodesk A sample task
- 7. © 2015 Autodesk 12 tasks out of 20 123 users participated Pre- and post-survey questions provided insights about these users In the Treejack study…
- 8. © 2015 Autodesk Summary of results: Overall Success Optimal Workshop says that an overall success score of "68% is at the high end of average for websites in general," so we did pretty well, but there is room for improvement.
- 9. © 2015 Autodesk Summary of results: Overall Directness Optimal Workshop says a Directness value of 70% is pretty good. However, the overall score for each task “is a weighted average of the squares of success and directness, favoring success over directness at a ratio of 3:1, scaled to be a value out of 10." In other words, Success (finding the information at all) is more important than Directness (finding it on the first try).
- 10. © 2015 Autodesk Let’s examine results for one task… Overall score on a range from 1 (low) to 10 (high) Red = lots of users did not find the correct topic Gray = a few users skipped this task Dark green = some users went directly to the correct topic Light green = some users wandered before finding it
- 11. © 2015 Autodesk What’s a pietree, you ask?
- 12. © 2015 Autodesk Same task, different information architecture AfterBefore
- 13. © 2015 Autodesk Pietrees show a clear difference AfterBefore
- 14. © 2015 Autodesk Click-through rates tell the story Before: After:
- 15. © 2015 Autodesk We removed a layer in the help hierarchy. Document the Model > Share the Design > Print Document and Present the Design > Print “Share the Design” was too vague. Users lost the scent of information. It didn’t mean “print” to them. What changed to improve the results?
- 16. © 2015 Autodesk Get labels right. Don't use vague terms that cause users to lose the scent of information. Match the user's mental model. Lessons learned Print Share “I like the current system which is based on the design process.” – Jason B.
- 17. © 2015 Autodesk Demo with Q&A
- 18. © 2015 Autodesk Treejack: www.optimalworkshop.com Information Foraging by Jakob Nielsen http://www.nngroup.com/articles/information-scent/ Search is Not Enough: Synergy Between Navigation and Search by Raluca Budiu http://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-not-enough/ Resources
- 19. © 2015 Autodesk Icons from TheNounProject.com: (CC BY 3.0) Users by Vittorio Maria Vecchi Monitor by useiconic.com Share by Joshua Stearns Browser by Max Miner Analytics by Christopher Holm-Hansen Creative Commons licensed image: Talent #3 (dog) by Robert Terrell (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Confused by Guudmorning! (CC BY 2.0) Attributions for images used in this presentation
- 20. Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, and Revit are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2015 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.