UIEye

This article by Anthony Colfelt should be required reading for anyone developing and designing software in the modern world.

Even if you are not following an Agile process it places a fantastic point on how the design of your product can be impacted by the artificial constraints put forth by many practitioners of the process.

I have been there and dealt with the problems too and for the starting phases of a project I can only agree that Agile doesn’t provide the best framework to capture all the successes UCD could bring to a project.

Images have been uploaded to flickr from Donna Spencer’s upcoming book “Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories”:

There is also a very interesting article on Boxes and Arrows, Card sorting – a definitive guide with a much needed explanation of what card sorting is:

“Card sorting is a quick, inexpensive, and reliable method, which serves as input into your information design process. Card sorting generates an overall structure for your information, as well as suggestions for navigation, menus, and possible taxonomies.”

Of course there are alternative methods, such as affinity diagramming.