Following on from last years successful visit to the CPIT Information Design Centre, Bruce Russell allowed us back to look at user testing and information design.

Bruce started by introducing the idea of Information Design to the students, the sort of projects they work on and a brief run down of the course that CPIT offer in Information Design. This was followed by a quick look at the facilities and the equipment that they have for use during testing. Bruce discussed the limitations of using the cameras and video equipment during tests and noted the time involved in working through the video footage was often not cost effective on most projects.

The students were then shown how the Polytech's student handbook had been redesigned to more effectively communicate information and Bruce ran through a web site that had been through a usability evaluation and the changes they had recommended be made. It was interesting to note which recommendations the web designers had chosen to implement and those they had not.

The final part of the visit was an exercise in taxonomy in which the students were ask to use card sorting as a way of creating a site structure for an intranet. They were provided with cards with different titles on them and asked to sort them into top and second level categories. Our students whipped through this exercise and were able to justify their decisions which was excellent to see. All groups came up with very similar final categories and the differences were well justified. This was a great example of a simple technique that could be applied during the design process.

We would like to thank Bruce for his time and the opportunity to visit the Information Design Centre as it is a valuable and rewarding visit.