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Besides tools for understanding users, UXers have a ton of tools to understand content and context. In fact, many of them are the same tools!
Quick Reference
- OptimalSort - Card sorting tool
- Google Spreadsheets - Tool for content inventory
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Besides tools for understanding users, UXers have a
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ton of tools to understand content and context.
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In fact, many of them are the same tools.
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We mentioned that when we talk about understanding content,
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we're talking about understanding what content our product has available.
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Understanding what content users need to complete their tasks,
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and then melding those together in an understandable way.
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Therefore, methods and tools that are extremely helpful
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in our quest to understand content include; card sorting.
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Card sorting is a method that is often seen as
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a user research activity and in many ways it is.
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However, I put this method in the understanding content section because I
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believe that card sorts give us insights into how users perceive content.
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Thereby increasing our understanding of how to place content within our product.
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Card sorts are activities that can be done live or remotely, in which we have all
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the different pieces of content on cards, and
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ask the users to sort that content into groups.
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In this way, we could figure out how users would
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group content and therefore, better organize it for our own product.
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Some card sorting tools to consider are optimal sort.
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A quick easy tool that you can use to do remote or in-person card sorts.
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Web sort is a similar tool.
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Lastly, if doing in-person card sorts of good old
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index cards or post it's work in a pinch.
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Next, we have search logs.
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Looking at what terms people are searching for, cannot only help us understand what
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content our users need, but can also help us to understand which they don't.
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For this, you can look at Google Analytics, or an in house search log tool.
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Content inventories.
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This is a method that I introduced when talking about understanding content.
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The best tool I've seen for content inventory
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is good old Excel, or some other spreadsheet software.
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When we think about tools and methods that would be helpful in
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understanding context, we start to see that by gaining a clear understanding of
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the user, and the content, the best tool we can use to put
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those in to context would be, our brain, and our ability to empathize.
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Earlier, we discussed environmental context, meaning what environment the user
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is in when they are using our product or service.
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We should see that understanding environmental context is
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something we can gain from empathizing with our user.
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We also talked about detailed context.
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We can see that understanding detailed context is something
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we become aware of when working with understanding our content,.
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Awareness and empathy of our users and our content is
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what ultimately helps us to understand and put things into context.
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