By Marla Hendriksson, Director of SAMHSA Office of Communications

 

SAMHSA’s Project Evolve continues to move toward a new improved SAMHSA.gov.  The “customer first” approach strives to ensure that SAMHSA.gov users are an integral part of the process with feedback driving improvements to SAMHSA.gov.  We need your feedback to help us organize the lower level content of our webpages.

Since fall 2011, we have been posting Project Evolve progress updates, asking for your help and participation, and seeking your comments, feedback, and suggestions.  So far, three rounds of online card sorting exercises have been conducted to evaluate the best ways to organize content on the new SAMHSA.gov:

1. November 2011: Initial card sort to help develop a new information architecture (IA)
2. August 2012: Second card sort to help us validate the new IA
3. August 2012: Reverse card sort to refine and improve the IA

Your tremendous participation and valuable feedback helped finalize the primary navigation menus for the new SAMHSA.gov.  Your input and feedback are needed again as we build out the lower level organization of web content within key topic areas.

Our Current Card Sort

You are invited to participate in an additional online card sorting exercise.  This will be similar to the previous exercises, but this time you will place cards related to a particular topic into groups that you create.  We are intentionally not revealing the topic, because we want your help in refining its actual name.

This exercise is very intuitive – expertise in Web design or technology is NOT required – and should take no more than 15 minutes to complete.  The card sort will be available online from March 13 – 19, 2013, 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 categorize and organize content as well as influence the future direction of SAMHSA’s website.  If you know others who might be interested in participating, please share this post with them.

Finally, please continue to check the SAMHSA Blog Project Evolve posts for more opportunities to provide input and more updates on the new SAMHSA.gov.