Old heritage from cognitiv psychology (1946), card sorting is used by information architects and UX to gather insights from users. Moreover, it’s a participatory activity aiming to gain an understanding of how users understand and model information (Maurer et al., 2004). We use card sorting in ergonomics where a group of users (novices or experts) of a product accompanied the classification of terms.
1 - 5
3-4 hours
60 min
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This method is used to draw out underlying mental models (Nielsen et al., 1995; Rosenfeld et al., 2002) that will later aid in the design or validation of an information architecture or site navigation.
In theory, it is one of the less expensive, user-centered design methods available. You are going to identify trends such as: - Do the users want to see the information grouped by subject, process, business group, or information type? - How similar are the needs of the different user groups? - How different are their needs? - How many potential main categories are there? (typically relates to navigation) - What should those groups be called? (Maurer et al., 2004) Bonus gift : you’re gonna gather a lot of terminologies from the users
PREPARATION:
Tips : The set should include 40–80 items that represent the main content on the site. Write each topic on an individual index card and Avoid topics that contain the same words; participants will tend to group those cards together.
Please note:
Give the users blank cards and ask them to write donw a name for each group they created. It reveals the mental model of the user. Note that you should not expect the participant to create effective labels.
Tip: It’s important to do this after all the groups are created, so the user doesn’t lock him/herself. You can ask users to think out loud when they perform the sorting.
Ask users to explain the rationale behind the groups they created :
You gonna search for common groups, category names or themes, and for items that were frequently paired together. Some items were frequently left to the side? Determine it’s because the labels weren’t clear or the content seemed unrelated to the rest. You have to combine the patterns with the qualitative insights from the debrief. You can also check out on Interaction Design Foundation website for analyzing methods.
A real template / drawning that can help you
HOW TO USE IT:
You can use that template to create cards. You just have to cut by following lines .
You should definitely give some virgin cards, double cards, maybe colors sticks and markers to your users. Maybe the workshop will reveal some funtionality missing but also that you need to have a functionality acces in two categories.
