Article Idea:
Guide to Modified-Delphi Sorting
suggested by Celeste Lyn Paul on 2007/07/01
Modified-Delphi card sorting is a pre-design card sorting protocol I have been working on for the past year. It was introduced at IA Summit 2007 during one of the presentation sessions, elaborated on in the IA Institute Process Grant report, and I am working on my graduate thesis which goes in to more details of the theory behind the method and experimental validation.
Open card sorting is a participatory user-centered method that information architects use to gain insight on how users model information. Traditional open card sorting methods, which are used early in the design process, often require large numbers of participants in order to get reliable results. For an early design method it is expensive is often conducted with fewer than necessary participants to save time and money. The Modified-Delphi card sort is a new technique which aims to use fewer users and collect better results. Rather than trying to take an average of many results, it uses an information gathering technique based on the Delphi method to reach a consensus on a single result.
Is there value and interest in the B&A community for a How-To guide for the Modified-Delphi Card Sort? Should this be a supplement lesson for after you have mastered regular card sorting, or a definitive guide which would be appropriate for even a beginner?
Want to see this idea turned into a story?
7 people said yes. | 0 people said no.
John Ferrara
81 Reputation points
Posted 2007/07/02 @ 12:24PM with
Celeste,
Caught your presentation at the Summit, and it sparked a concept for a related exercise I’m proposing within my organization. I would love to see this written up in an article, and have two questions that I’d like to request it address:
1. Working from a seed sort seems to put a lot of agenda-setting power in the hands of the first person. How can we mitigate that person’s influence on the final sort?
2. Some participants may be predisposed to make substantial changes, while others may be predisposed to change very little. Taking into account this personal variability, how can we reliably determine when no further changes need to be made?
Donna Maurer
165 Reputation points
Posted 2007/07/03 @ 02:54AM with
I definitely think you should write an article about this as it is such a neat technique.
I see it as slightly differently to a regular card sort, perhaps best used after a non-delphi open sort, as it works its way toward a design solution more directly than a card sort does.
Karl Groves
22 Reputation points
Posted 2007/10/25 @ 10:43AM with
Will you be able to supply some data validating the quality of the generated architecture? Perhaps some data which tests the architecture on actual participants and perhaps even an A-B test with an architecture created through other means? If so, this could really be an amazing article.