Written By: Andrew Wilson, Office of Communications, SAMHSA

The SAMHSA team supporting Project Evolve has been working hard over the past few months to make improvements to the website. Many of these improvements are still “behind-the-scenes,” but enhancements are underway to both the technical infrastructure underpinning the site and to how the information is organized and presented.

Last fall, the inaugural Project Evolve blog post invited readers to help us evaluate a new way to organize information on the website. Instead of structuring the site around SAMHSA’s organizational layout, we began moving toward a topic-based approach. This model better reflects how people look for information, and adopting this approach makes finding information and services easier and more intuitive. When we presented a very early draft of what this might look like in early 2012, your comments were very positive and your feedback was extremely useful.

Over the following months you will have many more opportunities to provide input and feedback about the direction of SAMHSA.gov. These opportunities will help establish a meaningful relationship between the team working to improve the site and the people that are actually using it. Together, we will make the website better.

New SAMHSA.gov Navigation Is Taking Shape

For the first of such opportunities, SAMHSA is inviting everyone who seeks/uses information about substance abuse and/or mental health issues to participate in an online card sorting exercise – placing specific pieces of information into pre-defined categories. This exercise is very intuitive. Expertise in Web design or technology is NOT needed, and this activity should likely take less than 20 minutes to complete.

This card sort is very similar to the one initiated in the November 2011 blog post. Participants in that card sort spent an average of 10 minutes completing the exercise.

The card sort will be available online from August 13-19, 2012, and your participation is completely anonymous. To start, please select the most applicable card sort below:

• General Public Card Sort (I use SAMHSA.gov primarily for personal purposes)
• Behavioral Health Professionals Card Sort (I use SAMHSA.gov primarily for professional purposes)
• SAMHSA Card Sort (I am a SAMHSA employee or contractor supporting SAMHSA programs)

Thanks in advance for your participation. Your feedback will help us better understand how information should be categorized and organized, and your assistance will influence the future direction of SAMHSA’s website. If you happen to know other people who might be interested in participating, please share this information with them.

Finally, we want to thank everyone who has already provided feedback to Project Evolve and encourage you to participate in this effort as well.