Isabelle Sperano

In this case study, the research team (RT) explores user experience design in relation to digital practices adopted by governments. The goal of this first phase was to identify research opportunities. To do so, the RT adopted a practice-centered participatory research approach (Holkup, 2004). The RT began a partnership with a municipal government (City of Edmonton). Regular meetings were held with the partner organization to discuss—among other things—the organization’s structure, current and future projects, the digital editorial strategies implemented by the organization, and the organization's issues and constraints when designing digital services. This allowed the teams to identify not only interesting research questions but also potential teaching collaborations related to work-integrated learning. In this paper, the practice-based participatory research approach is explained, the timeline and the outcome of the partnership are presented, and the lessons learned through tha...

Content audit is an evaluation method used to identify, describe, quantify, and assess content quality of a website or of a larger information ecosystem (social media, web application, newsletter, intranet, etc.). Despite the growing popularity of the method in the last years, very little research has been conducted on this topic. However, it is extensively described and commented in a large body of literature, mostly written by information architecture (IA), content strategy and UX professionals. Hence, this is what led to further examine, in this research, a corpus of 200 publications (books, web pages, blog articles, journal articles) addressing content audit. This study attempts to take stock and establish a realistic picture of the current knowledge about the method, particularly concerning content audit definition components and content audit types, as well as to suggest possible means to further develop this evaluation method.

Journey maps are graphical and textual representations that intend to outline an experience over time with a product, a system or a service (Kalbach 2016). In this article, we first describe how this visualization tool is used in interaction design. Secondly, through two case studies, we describe two innovative ways of using this tool. In the first case study, we present the pedagogical journey map, a journey mapping approach meant to be used by teachers as a collaborative design tool to support the creation of pedagogical activities. In the second case study, we introduce the project planning journey map, used as both a prospective and retrospective project planning tool to help student designers plan and reflect on their design process. This paper is meant to support the use of the journey map as a prospective design method by academics and practitioners (from fields such as interaction design, user experience design, prospective ergonomics, education, and engineering) addressing issues related to the design of innovative products and services.

In a three-year, practice-based, creative research project, the team designed a video game for undergraduate biology students that aimed to find the right balance between educational content and entertainment. The project involved 7 faculty members and 14 undergraduate students from biological science, design, computer science, and music. This nontraditional approach to research was attractive to students. Working on an interdisciplinary practice-based research project required strategies related to timeline, recruitment, funding, team management, and mentoring. Although this project was time-consuming and full of challenges, it created meaningful learning experiences not only for students but also for faculty members.

Ses activités d’enseignement et de recherche portent sur l’UX design et l’architecture de l’information. Elle s’intéresse particulièrement à l’évaluation, à l’organisation et au design de l’information dans des environnements numériques de grande ampleur. Cet article présente une partie des résultats d’une étude conduite dans le cadre de sa thèse de doctorat en architecture de l’information à l’école de design de l’Université Laval (Québec) portant sur l’évaluation de la qualité des contenus numériques.

In acting training, psychophysical exercises are used to strengthen the relationship between mind and body, thus fostering a deeper understanding of the character [1]. Intrigued and inspired by the potential value of these techniques in design contexts, we explored their application for interaction designers as research methods in a pedagogical setting. To do so, we first created a single-session workshop that introduced design students to basic actor movement techniques in the winter of 2019. The goal of the workshop was to help students empathize with their users and discover solutions when designing digital products. Later, in the fall of 2020, we used reflections from the first activity to develop two longer workshops; both consisted of three sessions and were carried out consecutively in two different universities. In this article, we present a case study of those three workshops. After discussing considerations for the evolution of the workshops, we describe how each was condu...

Ideation is an essential process to any prospective design project. That collaborative process is cognitively demanding. Observing designers (n=133) working on prospective design projects allowed us to identify three categories of ideation problems recurrently occurring. Firstly, we identify the problems related to participants’ preparation. We notice that certain intellectual stance or lack of general knowledge is a handicap to some and impairs their ideation capability. Secondly, we introduce problems related to the focus of the ideation process. Those problems particularly affect the way the idea is developed and its scope. Finally, we discuss the idea externalisation difficulties, where we mainly deal with the language and sketching competencies required for the materialization of ideas.

In this research, we conducted a content analysis of experts’ literature on the topic of content audit. By carrying doing this our research aims to better understand expert’s discourse related to that method. This article present the methodology used to collect and analyse the results of this study. Partial results are presented at the end of the article, where we focus on the analysis of audit criteria.

In this article, we focus on one aspect of the content audit: the auditor. What is their field of expertise, and what are their required characteristics and skills? Because auditors are the main actors in charge of conducting a content audit, they are also largely responsible for the quality and the credibility of the audit results (ISO 19011 2011). This confers to them great power, as well as a large responsibility.

Content audit is an evaluation method used to identify, describe, quantify, and assess content quality of a website or of a larger information ecosystem (social media, web application, newsletter, intranet, etc.). Despite the growing popularity of the method in the last years, very little research has been conducted on this topic. However, it is extensively described and commented in a large body of literature, mostly written by information architecture (IA), content strategy and UX professionals. Hence, this is what led to further examine, in this research, a corpus of 200 publications (books, web pages, blog articles, journal articles) addressing content audit. This study attempts to take stock and establish a realistic picture of the current knowledge about the method, particularly concerning content audit definition components and content audit types, as well as to suggest possible means to further develop this evaluation method.

Depuis une vingtaine d’années, le Web s’est imposé comme média privilégié par une variété d’organisations (instances gouvernementales, entreprises, organismes, etc.) pour transmettre une quantité substantielle d’informations à leurs destinataires. La mise en place adéquate de ces imposantes structures informationnelles dépend, entre autres, de spécialistes de l’information et de la communication de divers champs d’expertise, dont l’architecture d’information (AI). Dans la mesure où l’accès à une information particulière constitue l’objectif principal d’une majorité d’activités de recherche sur le Web, ces spécialistes portent normalement une grande attention au contenu présenté. Pour ce faire, différentes méthodes visant à mieux appréhender le contenu ont vu le jour depuis quelques années. L’audit de contenu est l’une d’elles. Considérée par plusieurs spécialistes comme incontournable, cette méthode experte vise à identifier, à dénombrer, à décrire et à évaluer le contenu d’un site Web ou d’un écosystème informationnel plus vaste en le confrontant à une liste de critères d’analyse (ex. : genre, style, pertinence). La communauté d’AI se heurte actuellement à un déficit de recherche à propos de l’audit de contenu. En effet, rares, voire inexistants, sont les travaux de recherche qui en rendent compte de manière exhaustive. Fort d’une validation plutôt informelle effectuée en grande partie par des praticiens, l’audit de contenu se voit en revanche abondamment décrit et commenté dans une foule d’écrits professionnels. C’est ce qui nous a menée à examiner un corpus d’écrits d’experts abordant l’audit de contenu (ouvrages, publications Web, articles). Cette recherche procède à un examen approfondi de l’audit de contenu comme méthode d’évaluation de l’architecture d’information d’un écosystème informationnel numérique. Plus précisément, cette recherche dresse un portait des publications abordant l’audit de contenu et de leurs auteurs, définit l’audit de contenu, cerne ses principales caractéristiques, fait l’examen des activités et des protocoles d’audit de contenu et, enfin, analyse les critères d’audit de contenu. Les résultats mettent en lumière une importante disparité entre les propos des auteurs des publications du corpus. Que ce soit concernant la dénomination de la méthode, sa définition, ses caractéristiques, ses activités ou ses critères, le discours présenté dans chaque publication du corpus exprime de manière fragmentaire les savoirs disciplinaires à propos de l’audit de contenu. Nous observons aussi que les savoirs relatifs à la méthode ne cernent que partiellement la réalité informationnelle des organisations. En filigrane des écrits relatifs à l’audit de contenu, on constate que le discours actuel à propos de cette méthode est le reflet d’une approche plutôt traditionnelle de l’architecture d’information.
Mots-clés : audit de contenu, inventaire du contenu, architecture d’information, évaluation experte.

For twenty years, the Web has emerged as the favoured s of communication by a variety of organisations (governments, businesses, organisations, etc.) to deliver a substantial amount of information to their recipients. The proper implementation of these imposing informational structures depends, inter alia, on information and communication specialists in various fields of expertise, including information architecture (IA). Insofar as access to particular information is the main purpose of a majority of research activities on the Web, these specialists should pay special attention to content. To do so, different methods intended to provide a better understanding of content have emerged in recent years. Content audit is one of them. Considered by many specialists as indispensable, this expert method aims to identify, count, describe and evaluate the content of a website by confronting it to a list of analysis criteria (e.g.: genre, style, relevance). The IA community is currently facing a deficit of research about content audit. Indeed, research about this method is rare, if non-existent. Content audit is, however, extensively described and commented in a host of professional writing. This is what led us to examine a corpus of experts’ writing addressing content audit (book, Web documents, articles). Our research aims to carry out a thorough review of content audit as an information architecture evaluation method. Specifically, this research describes publication addressing content audit and their authors, defines content audit and identifies its main features, examines and content audit activities and protocols, and finally analyses content audit criteria. Our results highlight a significant disparity between the authors’ discourse. Whatsoever concerning the description of the method, its definition, its characteristics, its activities, or these criteria, the speech presented in each publication expresses fragmentally the disciplinary knowledge about content audit. We also observe that the current content audit-related knowledge covers only partially the organisations’ informational reality. Finally, we note that the current discourse about the method displays a reflection of a rather traditional information architecture approach.

Keywords : content audit, content inventory, information architecture, expert evaluation.