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Today, November 14, is World Usability Day 2006 and the STC France Chapter invites you to join members of the STC France Chapter online and contribute to a world-wide exercise that will help us understand regional and cultural variations in how people think about information.

As part of STC's sponsorship of World Usability Day 2006, members of STC communities around the world are being invited to participate in "The World's Largest Online Card Sort". Card sorting is a common analysis technique used to group objects in order to understand how users categorize information, and is used by information architects and usability professionals to find latent structure from a range of items.

How to take part

You should allow about 20-30 minutes to complete the card sort test.

1. Go to http://www.gifttool.com/tester/ViewTest?ID=251&TID=656.
2. Click Start Survey.
3. Complete the one page form with some basic demographic data to enable the organizers to analyse the card sort data. No personal information will be used to identify anyone - it is simply used to group the information in different ways.
   NOTE: You must enter the same email address on the survey form and when logging into the card sort. This is not to identify you; it's only to match up the card sort with the demographic information for group analysis.
4. Cilck Next to submit then on the confirmation page, click Submit Finished to display the link to the card sort.
5. Click the card sort link, enter your email address in the card sort login, then follow the instructions provided to complete the card sort.

Live chat session from 7pm-10pm Paris time (GMT+1)

Members of the STC France Chapter will be online this evening from 7pm-10pm to provide instructions and assistance to anyone wishing to take part in the activity and to discuss their experience, before or after, and talk about applications of the card sort.

• Just click the "join the chatbox" link in the left side menu on the STC France website (www.stcfrance.org) to join the discussion! (you may have to enable popup windows in your browser to see the chat window)

Spread the word!

Spread the word to your friends and colleagues, local or around the world (you don't have to be a member of STC to take part). The more people we have participating, the richer data set we'll have (and the more fun it will be!)

After the card sort data has been gathered, it will be analysed for response variances, to see if the differences are by geography, age, etc. The report that comes out from the exercise will be made publicly available to further our understanding in the usability field.