Empathy help card sort

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

Hi folks,

So I asked my wife to do a card sort with the Empathy help
topics earlier today.  I put the title and desc of each
topic on a piece of paper and asked her to put them into
groups.  I only used topic pages, not guide pages.  Guide
pages are our notion of how to organize content.

She went through the cards one by one, putting them into
ten or so stacks.  Then she sifted through some of the
stacks and moved things around a bit.  And then she put
some stacks close to each other, so we have a two-level
grouping.  Note that I didn't give her any instructions
on how many groups to make or anything.  Everything is
a result of her brain.

Here's the resultant stacks with some comments:

--------------------------------------------------------
Use a nickname password on IRC
I get a message that says "Name in use"

She actually shifted the error topic to this stack when
she was sifting through.  It was initially in the next
stack.
--------------------------------------------------------
I get a message that says "Network Error"

Yup, this one was on its own, after she moved "Name in
use" to the previous stack.
--------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
What is the Salut service?

Introduction stood on its own for quite a while, until
she couldn't decide where to put Salut.  She said she
doesn't know what Salut is, and thought a page like
that would probably be linked from the Introduction.
--------------------------------------------------------
Add an account
Disable an account
Import an existing account
Remove an account
Register for a new account
My account is not enabled
I get a message that says "Authentication failed"
Jabber Account Details
IRC Account Details

Nothing terribly surprising here.  All but one of them
contain the word "account".  I asked here why she put
"Authentication failed" there instead of with her stack
of error messages, and she said this one seemed it had
to do with your account.
--------------------------------------------------------
Status Types and Icons
Change your status
Set a custom message

All status-related stuff.  Note that the word "status"
appears in the desc for custom message.
--------------------------------------------------------
Activate/Deactivate geolocation
What is geolocation
Geographical position not published
Geolocation privacy
Supported services

All things geolocation.  Note that the desc for support
services talks about geolocation.  (By the way, we should
try to have page titles that stand on their own, without
the context of the guide page we think they exist on.)
--------------------------------------------------------
Send files
Send files over IRC
  ---
Share your desktop

These are two stacks.  But in the end she put them next
to each other.  Her reasoning was that instead of sending
a file, you'd share your desktop.  OK, if this doesn't
make sense to you, it's probably because you make stuff
and send it to people.  She's one of those people who
sends Word documents back and forth for collaborative
editing.

This is interesting to me, because it speaks to why she
would send files or share her desktop.  To her, these
aren't so much goals as they are means to accomplish a
goal: collaborative editing.  Ask a dozen other people
and you might get a dozen other answers on why they'd
do these things.
--------------------------------------------------------
Start a conversation
Send a message to someone
Group conversation
Chat with somebody on IRC
Join an IRC chat room
Join a protected IRC chat room
  ---
Start a video conversation
Start an audio conversation
Audio and Video Support
  ---
View previous conversations
  ---
Show offline contacts
Add someone to your list of contacts
  ---
Favorite rooms

OK, so the big stack is all about having conversations
with people.  And she put previous conversations right
next to that, because it has to do with conversations,
but not having one right now.

She had an audio/video stack, but then decided that it
belonged sort of with the conversation stuff, though
she didn't merge the stacks.  (That mimics our current
root guide, by the way.)

Favorite rooms was its own lonely stack, but she put
it near the conversations stack in the end.

And then she put the stuff about contacts next to the
conversations stack, because it's kind of related.
--------------------------------------------------------


So I think the big thing I'm taking away from this is
that the current account management guide section on
the root guide is off.  It contains pages from three
of those stacks: accounts, status, and contacts.  The
big thing to me is she put the contacts stack next to
the conversations stack, not the accounts stack.  It
might be OK to leave accounts and status together.

I'm not sure I'd put too much stock in where she puts
troubleshooting topics.  People only seek those out
when they actually get those errors (I hope).  And
when they do get those errors, they'll have context
that will drastically shape where they think to look.

I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on this.

--
Shaun