Comments on: Card sorting

By: | DeerflyDesigns

| DeerflyDesigns — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:07:03 +0000

[...] Card sorting is a way to organize content based on hierarchy. To try it, simply put all of the pages for your website onto index cards. Ask stakeholders to sort those cards into logical stacks that represent the hierarchy of your website’s navigation. It’s a great exercise to make sure that the content on your website can be found in the most logical place and that like-minded content is grouped and named appropriately. [...]

By: Jim Boekbinder

Jim Boekbinder — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:56:35 +0000

I've been using it increasingly in recent years, and teaching it as well. I highly recommend Donna Spencer's book 'Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories'. I also usually derive all kinds of information but rarely translate it directly into navigation categories (for menu's, for example.) The interpretation is much broader.

By: Joe Aston

Joe Aston — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:49:07 +0000

I found a good guide to card sorting here: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_sorting_a_definitive_guide Definitely worth taking a look if you're unfamiliar with the process. I'm about to embark on the huge task of organising content for a student support site. Let's hope this card sorting strategy works!

By: Paul Boag

Paul Boag — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 09:12:13 +0000

What we don't do is analyse the cards in a particularly statistical way. We don’t believe in simply adding up the results and going with that information architecture. We work through the groupings of cards and allow those to influence our thinking. Sometimes we put them into an excel document but not that often. Most of the time it’s just a matter of examining the groups and looking for consistencies.

By: Steve Crow

Steve Crow — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:11:08 +0000

The thing I wonder about card sorting excercises is how you deal with the stack of cards once you get them back?
Do you use some kind of Excel spreadsheet to note their card placement order? What does that Excel spreadsheet look like?
How do you analyze the results if you have, say, 10 people providing card sorts?

By: Karyn Meaden

Karyn Meaden — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:58:11 +0000

I've used card sorting in the past, and it worked really well for me. I had vaguely decided upon the seven top level headings that I wanted to use, so on each card I wrote either a section heading or a piece of content that I wanted on the site. Then I asked customers to arrange the content under the headings they would expect to find them in. The results were quite interesting. I primarily used them quantitatively, but I did note any comments that the customers made whilst carrying out the exercise, and they informed the final structure of the site as well. I think I was lucky that I was creating a very flat structure. I could imagine that the number of cards would have been overwhelming and the whole exercise would have suffered if I'd tried to create hierarchies. I also don't think the customers would have been willing to sit there for too long trying to organise the cards!

By: Nigel Worthing

Nigel Worthing — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 19:30:45 +0000

I have to admit the one time I tried card sorting was far from a success. Judging by your comments above I used far too many cards and simply overwhelmed the users. As a result they struggled to order anything into logical sections.