Card Sorting — what, how & the perks
Introduction
Card sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate information architecture. In a typical card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and group them accordingly. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or one of several online card-sorting software tools.
Benefits of card sorting:
- Easy & Cheap — Card sorting studies are simple and cheap to set up for all the people involved.
- Quick to execute — Several sorts can be executed quickly yielding a significant amount of valuable data.
- Established — The technique has been used extensively for over 10 years.
- Involves users — Studies provide insight into users’ psyche for website material and intuitive content grouping.
- Provides a good foundation —Card sorting provides a robust foundation to the structure of a site or product, and as a method when investigating label quality.
- Provides a good insight — Provides a good understanding of the users’ subconscious and how they would expect the information to be organized.
Demerits of card sorting:
- Labels are not presented in context — Without context, the ability of the labels to represent meaning is diminished.
- Varied results — The card sort may provide fairly consistent results between participants or may vary widely.
- Time-consuming analysis of results — The setup and sorting can be achieved quickly, however, the data analysis can be complicated and time-consuming, particularly if the results are inconsistent.
- Cards sorting may not go deep enough — this is kind of like ignoring tasks disadvantage, if your users can’t place the data in context they may give you a very top level analysis without getting deep into the problem you are trying to solve.
Different types of techniques used for card sorting:
Open — In open card sorting, each participant is given a stack of cards.The participants are then asked to group those cards together in any way they want. Then they create labels for the groups that they chose. This method is commonly used for new/existing information architectures (IA) or organizing products on a site.
Closed — In a closed card sorting, the researchers create the labels for their respective groups. Participants are given a stack of cards and are asked to put each card into a group. This method is normally used when adding new content to an existing site or gaining a second round of insights after an open card sort.
Card sorting can also be done either remotely or face to face.
Remote —Remote card sorting sessions are computer-based sessions in which participants work independently on their own personal systems. Open or Closed card sorts both can be done remotely. Several software programs exist to help you with large-scale remote card-sorting studies.
Using the software is an advantage because it analyzes the data for you.
Face to face—This type of sorting session happens in person where an impartial observer is present. Participants are provided with a set of cards and they think aloud while sorting, giving a clearer picture of their reactions and thought processes. The observer has the opportunity to clarify any observations they are unsure of to gain a better insight into why the user has made those choices.
Analysis
Once collected, the data is analyzed to identify common trends. This is done by using cluster analysis software or if the sample size is small, by inputting the data into a spreadsheet to see if there are any patterns in the groupings or labeling.
- Analyze qualitative information based on user comments.
- Analyze quantitative information based on:
- Which cards appeared together most often
- How often cards appeared in specific categories
Conclusion
Card sorting is a great technique but it’s not always the right technique for UX research. However, when using card sorting along with other UX methods such as usability testing it can help you to find out some functional info about users to get new projects up and running. One should always spend enough time weighing up the benefits and problems before selecting any kind of UX research technique.
Thank you for reading my first blog. I’m really excited to push more stories!
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All the points that I’ve mentioned are as per my understanding, so feel free to drop in your comments. Positive criticism is always appreciated. 🤘🏻💎
