A Comparative Analysis of Card Sorting and IDM Approaches in e-Tourism Website Design

While Interactive Dialogue Model (IDM) and card sorting are popular methods for designing websites, research is continuously being done on which method is best suited for the design of multichannel or web-based applications, based on the complexity and feature set of the application to be developed. In this research, we explore which design method performs better for websites with fairly complex navigational structures with multiple levels of page traversal. To explore, the IDM and Card Sorting methods were meticulously followed starting from early designs to fully implemented prototypes e-Tourism websites for a group of hotels or resorts. Then, both websites were evaluated following a between-subject experimental approach to assess and compare their usability. The study showed that although the navigational design with IDM may be a bit more complex and may require more clicks for completing some tasks, it far outperformed the card sorting design for our case in all significant parameters. Overall, IDM gives a better outcome in the usability and satisfaction for all users, thus pointing to the fact that IDM would be the better way to design complex structured websites like an e-Tourism website.