Card Sort Analysis

The above is a depiction of the cards we used for our card sort, in which we had people unaware of our project's intentions look at the features, design attributes, and functions and sort them based on any classification system they thought was most relevant. Based on the results of those sortings, there were several trends that influenced our design concepts.

Most people tended to sort the cards by relating the things they were most familiar with. The pairing between mini-games and phone camera apps was the most common connection, but those two cards were also closely related to touche screen interaction, as most phones with apps use touch screen functionality. People had a much harder time associating the rest of the cards, as they don't seem immediately to have many connections. There were several pairings of 5th Street Bridge with "nooks and crannies," most probably because of the spatial relation they share. Nooks and crannies were also grouped with hidden tags, because the idea of nooks and crannies seemed to evoke the idea of hiding things for most people. These two items were also tied to scavenger hunts in the same way, evoking the idea of hide-and-seek. The two cards most people weren't sure what to do with were Coupon and Fact. These didn't seem to relate to any of the other ideas very well for most people.

This inability to fit in two major components of our design brought to light some questions about our plan of implementation. Would people be interested in finding things such as coupons and facts about the bridge or surrounding areas since they didn't seem to relate the ideas on their own? We had already spent a great deal of time considering what types of items to "hide" for our scavenger hunt idea, and our three main ideas were mini-games, coupons for local businesses and facts about the space. Some alterations to our idea included the following:
-Instead of just hiding coupons in the space, we could use them as prizes or incentives for playing mini-games. This way, users would have to play the mini-games (the most popular part of our idea) in order to win the prizes: coupons for local participating businesses.
-Even though the facts about the space seemed to be a disconnect for many people, we feel that allowing people to learn about the history of the space they are exploring it in the present will help make the bridge itself into a more important place. Giving it context with its historical background and information about it's construction would, we feel, help connect people to the space.