The person conducting the test (usability analyst, user . Email your participants a link to the study. What logic do participants follow in the categories theyve created? Combining the best of Open and Closed Card Sorting, it allows you to validate information grouping strategy while still leaving respondents room for free expression. Ask some relevant questions and let respondents express themselves. This will allow you to screen your respondents and filter out the irrelevant ones. Card sorting will help you understand your users' expectations and understanding of your topics. Vaida Pakulyte, UX Researcher and Designer at Electrolux. Card sorting is a UX research method that helps you discover how people understand and categorize information. (Some digital card sorting tools mitigate . Recruit 15-30 representative users to participate in the exercise. Card sorting is a well-established research technique for discovering how people understand and categorize information. Common goals when carrying out a card sorting study include: learning what users think about an existing IA, understanding why users group ideas in certain ways, and discovering how users categorize information. First, you can conduct a hybrid card sorting exercise to see how participants label and sort your website's structure. Identify and Write Down Pages/Subtopics. Consider the benefits of requiring participants to complete your sort. You can unsubscribe in one click, and I will never share your email address. Check the example of a PDF report as well. The main advantage of paper card sorting is that there is no learning curve from technology. More on what type to choose in this Card Sorting Guide. She recommends reviewing your card sort with this in mind to make sure each itemcould have a potential partner (or many partners). This method is generally easier because it requires less resources, and the tool will do the heavy lifting of analyzing the results and revealing which items were most commonly grouped. sourcing participants that represent the demographics of your intended users, including moderated participants for qualitative data, review your participants, and include or exclude individuals based on their card sorts, segment and reload your results to view only card sorting data from individuals or groups. To help you, we created this ultimate list of. Beside the agreement score, you can see the number of participants included in that score. In conclusion, card sorting is an excellent way to get ideas, gain feedback from users and understand how they think, gather insight on potential IA and discover your users mental models. Use social media, share your study and offer a reward. Create your cards and discover how people think about grouping them into categories. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or one of several online card-sorting software tools. STEP 7: Close card sort & analyze results. want to avoid the risk of people making do with categories they may not wholly agree with. Look for repeating, common patterns, note similarities and differences between each session. OptimalSort offers monthly plans or one-off fees if you just need to use it for a single project. Cast your eye over the results from each session and let it all sink in. You can use both exploratory and statistical analysis approaches to do this. One on Ones are in-person sessions with an observer. Though the numbers seem small, it prompted us to ask one two very useful questions Can we reword one of our categories so that these items have a home?. If you have access to a pool of participants (like employees if youre working on an internal product, or your customer mailing list) then sending them an email invitation, along with an incentive or chance to win a prize, can be a useful way to get responses. Estimate the Time and Get Volunteers. And if you find a card that is difficult to partner with any others, but that you think is valuable to your study, follow her lead: On a recent sort, I deliberately included three cards I didnt really needso participants would have some cards that were easy to group[to give] participants the confidence to proceed to more difficult groupings.. In this guide, well discuss each of these use cases, but well be focusing particularly on how you can use card sorting to design an intuitive IA. All of the results are visually represented and easy to read and comprehend. Its ideal if you can have a second facilitator with you, so they can take notes and help you observe the process. This website was created with a simple purpose. Ask the participant to use the colored card to name each group. If no, make sure to go through these pages: Learn about the process in this Card Sorting Guide, compare the Pricing, get familiar with Information Architecture and Optimalsort and discover card sorting Tips & Tricks. Moreover, you can learn more about their preferences and experiences, opinions on your product or the study. We used closed card sorting to find out if people understood our category labels and agreed on which articles belonged where. This method helps reveal not only how users classify the cards but also what labels they use for each group, which generates new ideas and category names, and provides a deeper understanding of your user. Work from your original list of topics and move topics around to recreate each participant's groupings and enter that participant's name for the groupings. Limit the number of cards. Hybrid card sorting is a type of card sorting that combines open and closed card sorting methods. Card sorting takes the guesswork out of it. You must have as many sets of cards as concurrent sessions or have each participant at a separate computer if using online card-sorting software. In this card sorting study example we decided to go with 3 questions, all of them pre-study. When you first look at the Categories table, take some time to get familiar with the labels your participants have suggested youll probably start seeing patterns pretty quickly. I am probably best known for the Boagworld Show that ran from 2005 to 2020. Learn how users prioritize and rank information within existing categories, You want to test existing IA and website structures to see if they work as expected, You have some information categorized, but need input for organizing the remainder, The topic youre researching is particularly complicated, as you can provide examples of categorization, Gain a deep, nuanced understanding of the user, rather than a wide breadth of knowledge of a group, Understand the direct thought-processes of users, rather than just the outcomes, Get large amounts of feedback from multiple users, or multiple groups of users, Conduct a card sort within a limited budget, Uncover the most natural responses from users, and you dont mind interpreting that data yourself (rather than speaking directly with participants), Looking to gain insight from a wide variety of participants, e.g. Hybrid Card Sort respondents sort your cards into defined categories or create their own. These can be digital or physical cards that the user can move around. A G E N D A What is card sorting Understanding the context of web design Mental models Card sort exercise (individual) Sharing your card sort Group processing Next steps Early designs by James Breen Hiram A. Quinones Business Access . Have blank cards available for participants to add topics and to name the groups they make when they sort the cards. Ensure information is organized in a way that makes sense to your audience. First, you can conduct a hybrid card sorting exercise to see how participants label and sort your websites structure. For a more detailed analysis, consider using an Excel spreadsheet to show the relationship between the cards or use one of the available software programs to analyze your data. Check out our card sorting, For Closed and Hybrid card sorting youll also need to. The main advantage of this method is that you capture each card sorting exercise digitally, reducing the amount of work for synthesis. And for information architecture, you might want to see how a user might sort navigational . On the other hand, don't create too many cards (over 60). Their results will be included with the unmoderated participants, and youll have the extra insight from observing and listening to your participants. Youll approach hybrid card sorting results with questions like: The biggest decision to make when creating any card sort is what to put on your cards. Moderated card sorting often lends itself to situations where you want to: Unlike moderated card sorts, unmoderated card sorting requires participants to organize content into groups on their own, either as a solo activity or multiple users working together. As the first step in our Alignment Model, our Values Cards provide an interactive way to define what you value most and set the stage for . Fake Credit Cards Generator is a quick and easy way to Generate Random Credit Card Numbers With Address for testing purposes. This type of card sorting doesn't reveal how users naturally categorize a set of topics. Its a powerful tool to grasp how users categorize information and determine the best way to organize and label the content on your website or product. Open card sort: Participants sort cards into categories that make . Inconsistent: The nature of card sorting means that your results may vary quite widely from one participant to the next. Explain there are no right or wrong answers and tell them how long you expect the exercise will take. If you used a physical card sort, you can also take a photograph of the finished card sort for reference later. The obvious advantages of remote card sorting are that it saves time and allows you to reach a wider audience. Step 5. The cards have been labeled using Avery labels on 3 x 5 index cards. The Actual Agreement Method (AAM) dendrogram gives you the data straight: X% of participants agree with this exact grouping. Card sorting works by presenting participants with a set of pre-made cards and asking them to prioritize or organize them into groups. Statistical analysis is focused on numbers. Some of the softwares will provide you with advanced analytics, some will be more basic. This should be enough to analyze results later on. Card sorting does not account for tasks at hand and wider contextfor example, we may group tomatoes under fruits, however if the context was within a supermarket, they may be categorized under the vegetable aisle. Values cart sort exercise This is an exercise to help you identify and prioritize some of the most important values you hold. Group / Independent - Concurrent In-person Sessions have participants sort a set of cards independently. people from multiple countries, Under time constraints and need to conduct the card sort quickly and process results quickly, How many users are participating, if working together, Whether you are collecting quantitative or qualitative data, Whether you are manually analyzing the data or have a tool to process this, Unmoderated card sorting may not provide deep enough insights, Analyzing the results of a card sort (particularly a paper one) can be very time-consuming. Here are some categories we chose for this card sorting example: Questionnaires before and after your study are important for gathering all types of info about the users. In all cases, youll want to find at least 15 participants. Though theres no hard limits on how few or how many cards to include, we recommend aiming for between 30 and 60 cards for all card sorts because: More specifically: for an open card sort, 30 to 50 cards will usually account for the complexity of the task and the depth of thought you want from people. Ask some relevant questions and let respondents express themselves. In all cases, you can choose to moderate the sessions or not and can carry out the sessions using paper or online tools. These sessions can be quicker and easier to organize as they dont require facilitators, and you can use online card sorting tools such as Maze to conduct remote card tests and collect insights. Often, the way information is organized in a product subconsciously ends up reflecting the internal organization of the Product team. She cites the example of a 100-card card sort she tested with a colleague before taking it to a client. Card Sorting. Card sorting is a technique in user experience design in which a person tests a group of subject experts or users to generate a dendrogram (category tree) or folksonomy.It is a useful approach for designing information architecture, workflows, menu structure, or web site navigation paths.. Card sorting uses a relatively low-tech approach. I also share updates about my content regularly on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. get people to rank or arrange items based on set criteria. Let the participant work. The two strongest clusters towards the top and centre are cards placed in our two categories The natural world and Food and lifestyle: The PCA aims to find the most popular grouping strategy, and then to find two more popular alternatives among those who disagreed with the first strategy. Card Sorting will help you create a robust information architecture for your website. A perfect agreement score is 1.0 (100%). Card sorting has many benefits within UX research and design, namely due to its ability to comprehensively understand a users way of thinking. In particular, open card sorts are commonly used to: Closed card sorting is an evaluative research methodits used to assess and validate potential ideas or solutions. A good experience for your users almost always results in a great result for your organisation. If you are using online card-sorting software, consult the software instructions. Card sorting is a UX design user testing technique that focuses on establishing the best structure for an IA. Depending on your niche and the goal of your study you might wanna be sorting content titles, specific products, items from the menu etc. It's a technique that works by way of determining the domain knowledge of your . Three types of card sorting. There are multiple handy ways to do that, so you dont have to worry about not getting enough participants. Unmoderated card sorting is the format to go with if youre looking to: In digital card sorting, you use online card sorting tools and card sorting software to simulate the card sorting drag-and-drop activity of dividing cards into groups. Watch for anomalies and surprises. You can include images to illustrate or clarify the text on your cards, or you can include images on their own. The Cards table for a closed card sort tells you which category each card was placed in the most often. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or an online card sorting tool. In an open card sort, give the participant a stack of different colored cards. Throughout this 101, well illustrate how card sorting works with a project we created for this purpose. Each card represents a content item from your website. 2022 Optimal Workshop Ltd. All rights reserved. You can run a card sort in person, using physical cards, or remotely using an online tool like Maze. Check out our card sorting Tips & Tricks page for more info on the topic! After 15 users, diminishing returns set in and correlations increase very little: testing 30 people gives . Running an in-person, moderated card sort with 5 to 15 participants will give you invaluable qualitative insights to go with the quantitative numbers you get by running the card sort online. It provides really good insights into how your users think and delivers evidence that can help prevent the internal clashes that can arise when information architecture is decided on by internal stakeholders. Now, lets jump right into it. Guillermo Gineste, Senior Product Designer at Maze. Time-consuming analysis: While the actual card sorting exercise is quick to run, analyzing the data can take more time, in part because of the potential inconsistency in responses. This technique is used when a team wants to group and label website information in a way that makes sense for the target audience. Its also much faster because you can get a sufficient amount of data in less time and identify patterns quicker. Choose from our library of pre-built mazes to copy, customize, and share with your own users. Keep in mind that there are several variations, as described above. And youll find a bunch of useful and inspirational information on our blog. In herbook on card sorting, Donna helpfully distinguishes between exploratory analysis (when you look through your data to get impressions, pull ideas out, and be intuitive and creative in your approach) and statistical analysis (when its all about the numbers). Last but not least, card sorting is a simple and cost-effective method of gaining insights about your users and how they think. Besides the first option hopefully being useful to you, youmightget useful ideas for footer and sidebar facets from options two and three. You can use card sorting results to group and label your website information in a way that makes the most sense to your audience. Choosing the right type of card sorting comes down to the objective of your project. Now weve discussed what options you have when it comes to card sorting, lets take a look at just how you can plan and execute a successful card sort within UX research. Her colleague was unable to create coherent groups because the cards were inconsistent and often unrelated, and therefore the card sort couldnt provide much insight into how the content could be grouped on the site. You can do open or closed card sorts remotely. First and foremost, youll need to decide if your card sort is going to take place online or offline. With existing websites, you can always use Google Analytics to find out which pages are the most popular and use these as a starting point. Try card sorting example study for yourself using these handy demos: open card sorting, closed card sorting, and hybrid card sorting. Telephone: +44 (0)7760 123 120, 2022 Boagworks VAT No. establish if your different user groups think in different ways about your information. You should use the results of your card sort to help you define the navigation of your site. Card Sorting is well worth considering if you need to: At the end of your card sorting sessions, youll have your content organised and labelled in line with the mental model of your users, as opposed to that of your organisation. I recommend this one, in case you want to find out how users match cards with existing content structure. find out how people understand and conceptualize your information, find out where people expect to find information when they land on your website, generate ideas for how to structure and label your website information. how many participants sorted the same cards into each category, the cards with the highest agreement on where they belong, and the cards with the lowest, which categories meant different things to different people (ie. Using the software is an advantage because it analyzes the data for you. respondents sort your cards into defined categories or create their own. Spend just a few minutes scanning the categories people came up with and youll quickly form an impression their mental models (how they perceived the overall theme or concept of your cards). Explain that you are asking for help to find what categories of information should be on the site's homepage and what those categories should be called. One other result we found particularly useful was the Not sure category results: 9 out of 41 people found no suitable category for Top spellers go head to head, and 5 out of 41 people found none for Led Zeppelin cover band set to thrill. Plan to have the facilitator or another usability team member take notes as the participant works and thinks aloud. When we place every category that uses the same words or phrases into a standardized category, we can assess the effectiveness of the category by looking at the agreement score. The number and type of categories you set for a hybrid card sort will determine whether the card sort is more open or more closed. Remember, your cards should be easy to read and comprehend. draft a potential website structure based on the right-hand clusters, quickly see which card pairings are the most common and thus probably belong together on your website. Visit digital.gov for current information. The last option is a combination of the two. Steps. In useberry, you can run an open and a closed card sort, depending on what you want to find out. Card sorting creates a foundation for robust information architecture (IA), and strong . Resize all your images before you upload them if you want them to be the same size, and preview your card sort to make sure it looks how you want it to. For example, card sorting can be used to group relevant programs or services into categories or other similar contexts. That is, to make both labels and groups on websites or apps more intuitive to users by considering how they would organize the information on your site. If you used physical cards for the test, either photograph the sort or use the numbers on the cards to quickly record what the participant did. At the end, thank the participant and give the payment or other gift if promised. Participants think aloud while sorting, giving a clearer picture of their reactions and thought processes. 5. Can be used for gathering any type of additional feedback. If you see a sort with a 11/43 agreement score, its telling you that 10 other participants sorted their cards into groupssimilar tothese ones. That's where card sorting comes in. Put cards aside to indicate topics the participant would not want on the site. groupings within groupings). Participants sort the cards independently on their own computers. Participants can card sort using physical . Create cards with your product features or services and set categories like Yes, I want this! and I could give this a miss to find out what your customers want and dont want. . When possible, try to illustrate your cards with images, to make the sort easier for the respondents. For card sorting, however, there's only a 0.75 correlation between the results from 5 users and the ultimate results. The purpose of the Card Sorting exercise is to get the end users to organize the website content into hierarchies and information architecture they feel is intuitive. Ask the participant to name each category. Mattel, creators of the Barbie doll, wanted to review the IA of the Doll Showcase section of their Barbie collectors' website. You'll have the list of topics in the computer for later analysis. Our fictional news websiteThe Wellington Dailyis a magazine-style website that combines the latest news with opinion pieces and musings on culture and the future. At any time during your card sort or analysis, you can: Youll explore your open and hybrid card sorting results to get ideas for labelling and grouping your information, so kick off your analysis with these questions in your head: The Categories tab is a great doorway into your open and hybrid card sorting results. It could discourage testers to finish your exercise . Start by opening a spreadsheet and collecting all the possible concepts or items you could include in your card sort. Are you a parent of at least one child that is 0 to 12 years old? Run a dry test before doing a real session. Both options are pretty great, but for bigger insights I would recommend going with the first option. quickly pinpoint the cards that were placed in all categories at least once. It works best when you have a lot of results. You can use the standardization grid, similarity matrix, dendrograms, results matrix, popular placements matrix, and many others. This image shows a participant partway through the open card sort (so far with six categories, four labelled): As well as our case study, here are a few ideas to get you thinking about how open card sorting could be useful for you: Create a card sort with your current website topics to find out if your website structure matches up with how people would organize the same information, or get ideas for structuring a brand new one: Create a card sort with your blog tags to find out how your readers would expect to see your blog content categorized, and how they conceptualize what you publish. I use hybrid card sorting to map all the content of the website. participant commentary during a moderated session, or they could be quantitative, e.g. When you set fewer categories, participants are more likely to create their own, and thus it will tend towards open. You can add your organisations' logo and ask additional questions before and after the exercise if you wish. Prepare the cards according to the software instructions. Youll find plenty of useful advice for in-person (moderated) card sorts as well, and learn how to add this data to your online card sorts for analysis. Social media is pretty toxic these days, which is why we have formed a a safe, friendly and relaxed place to hang out on Slack. A glance tells us this immediately, before weve even looked at the detail: When we look more closely, we can find out which cards are paired together the most often: And which cards are rarely paired together rarely, if at all: With agreement levels like this, one option for us is to draft a set of categories based on the darkest blue clusters along the right (which include around 60% of our cards). research what similar organizations (or even competitors) have on their websites. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or one of several online . This is simply because narrowing down the most effective structure from 40 different suggested categorizations will probably be an easier task than from 200 different suggestions. Ask what words the participant would expect to see on the homepage or second-level page that would lead the participant to that particular group of content items. Living in alignment is about matching your "real" behaviors with your "ideal Values.". In this example of card sorting we shared a link to our study via email newsletter and used the Recruitment widget on the website, offering a discount code for every finished sort. Youll see a dash in place of an agreement score before standardizing, as each category has only been created by one person. A high level of agreement (over about .6, or 60% agreement) means youll find it useful to keep this category standardized for the rest of your analysis. At worst, a card sorting exercise will confirm youre on the right track, and at best, it will take you off the wrong one and send you in a better direction. As with all research methods, there are both advantages and disadvantages to card sorting. You can add your organisations logo and ask additional questions before and after the exercise if you wish. Start by adding cards and categories. Facilitate. As with many remote testing tools, you cant control the environment that the task is carried out in, so you cant be sure that you have your users full attention. If possible, randomize the order of presentation so that each piece of content has a chance to be sorted earlier in the session. With large information-based websites, youll probably have more than 60 topics, but as we dont want to overwhelm our participants, just stick to the main phrases. Card sorting tools offer many views on data. These results could be qualitative, e.g. A great place for your screener. In case you chose to conduct your study online, its time for the next step. In this card sorting study example we decided to go with 3 questions, all of them pre-study. The above guide is for an open card sort, but can easily be adapted for a closed card sort; just make sure you prepare your content categories beforehand. This section is supported by insights from Guillermo Gineste, Senior Product Designer at Maze. An ideal number of participants for your study is 30-50. An agreement score of .8 means that 80% of participants in the new category agree with the grouping. In this example of card sorting we shared a link to our study via email newsletter and used the Recruitment widget on the website, offering a discount code for every finished sort. Card sorting (also called UX card sorting) is a UX research method that helps you discover how people understand and categorize information. In this video, we'll perform an exercise to show you how card sorting is done. Create your list of content topics. GB208980095 Your Privacy Advertise on this site, free ebook on building a user-centric culture, support for freelancers and agency owners, User Research: 10 Techniques to Get Started or Improve, How to Build a User-Centric Information Architecture Without Endless Debate, How to Get Started With Usability Testing, Why performance is the best way to improve the user experience. Did people create categories similar to the ones we gave them, or did they take a different approach, youll get enough useful data to make informed decisions about your website, youll only be able to include the most relevant cards, and be forced (nicely) to discard the rest. Once complete, you can take a photo of the result, before shuffling the cards ready for the next session. These insights will allow you to make informed decisions and organize your content in a way that makes sense to your audience. The vertical axis gives the exact percentage, and you can drag the vertical line across the dendrogram to get accurate data. This means there might not be a card to sort for every page on the site. Depending on your niche and the goal of your study you might wanna be sorting content titles, specific products, items from the menu etc. We created and analyzed three card sorts an open, a closed, and a hybrid that each included 48 cards labelled with headlines representing the kinds of content we plan to publish. As with other techniques, arrange for payment or other incentives to thank the participant for spending the time and effort helping you. This time, instead of trying to find out how people conceptualize your information, you want to know where people think information belongs withinyourconceptual framework. Topics can be phrases or words, very specific or more general. Follow your instincts, take some risks, and try new approaches. Card sorting provides you with a glimpse into the perspective of your user. Feel free to check it out! You can start with your users, email them an invite link or recruit directly from your website. In a closed card sort, asking about word expectations, their final card organization, and other follow up questions can provide valuable insight and observations for your research. Like all card sorting, moderated card sorts can be conducted with paper card sorting, or remotely using an online tool. When we opened our study, we quickly saw that groups that had the word Animals in the label were rather popular (with 15 all together): Its tempting to throw categories with the same or similar labels together straight away, but before you do, cast your eye over both the labels and the cards in each category to ensure the participants are all thinking in the same way. Card sorting is an excellent way to understand how your users expect the information architecture of a website or product to be structured. Youll also see the number of unique categories for each card, with fewer categorizations meaning higher agreement among participants. Remember that you are the one who is doing the thinking, not the technique you are the one who puts it all together into a great solution. Lets take a look. In open card sorting, each participant is given a stack of cards that are pre-filled out with topics and then asked to group those cards any way they want. For example, the card Artificial intelligence lawn mower gets approval was placed by 34 out of 41 participants into the Imagining the future category: We also spotted some cards that participants were divided on, which tells us useful things about how people perceive the type of content. pinpoint the cards with the fewest unique categorizations and thus the clearest matches with their categories, find out which cards were placed in every category, and could thus be ambiguous. Hope youve already studied all the basics of card sorting UX research technique, its specifics and advantages and are ready to look at the card sorting example. The three card sorting techniques you can choose from open, closed, and hybrid will each tell you something different about how people understand and group your information. The darker the blue and the larger the cluster, the higher the agreement between participants on which cards go together. Some of the softwares will provide you with advanced analytics, some will be more basic. With the closed card sort categories results, you could: We gave participants nine categories (including Not sure), and we could quickly see high agreement for some categories. Email: paul@boagworld.com The Participants table displays useful information about every participant who started your card sort, and can be used to filter your data. How long does a card sorting session take? Moderated card sorting is best for when you want quality over quantity. Ask the participant to talk out loud while working. The strength of an open card sort is in generating ideas and finding consensus amongst large numbers of people. The advantage of in-person card sorting is you can ask your participant/s to think out loud as they do the activity. Its called a Participant-centric analysis because every participant response is treated as a potential solution and ranked for similarity with other entire responses. Combining the best of Open and Closed Card Sorting, it allows you to validate information grouping strategy while still leaving respondents room for free expression. Youll also find it useful to check out our sample cards sorting (from both the participants and the researchers perspective). Getting started is easy, just enter your card titles and you're about ready to go. As the facilitator, youll start the session by providing instructions to your participant/s. The pricing varies accordingly. You might choose to add images to your cards if you: In OptimalSort, you can upload JPEG or PNG files of any size, and each image will be resized to a maximum width of 200px. The main advantage of in-person card sorts is that it allows for more complex groups (e.g. To help organize the "Admissions" section of Rollins.edu, I ran a card sorting exercise with colleagues in the Office of Admissions. You can leave the card sort open from two days to one week. Hybrid card sorting results are the same as open because youre allowing people to create and name their own categories, but your set categories will be standardized to replicate how theyre analyzed in a closed card sort. In particular, you know you need open card sorting if you want to: To help us with our initial draft designs, we ran an open card sort to find out how our readers would group our articles, and which labels they would use to describe the topics. This exercise consisted of a closed card sort that was set with 23 predetermined cards. Consider an open sort as part 1 and a closed sort as part 2 of your process. Digital card sorting works especially well if you are: Run digital card sorting sessions and discover how users understand and categorize information. On the back of each card is a letter/number combination, as well as a short description or image as . Similarly, you could invite people via your social media channels or add banners to your website. When you run closed and hybrid card sorts, the categories you set will lead people to think about your cards in a particular way, whether its on purpose or not. It's better to have at least 30 cards before starting a card sorting session. They differ as follows: You may also choose to try a combination of the two. You know you needclosed card sortingif you want to: Aside from how you structure your website content, you can also use closed card sorting to prioritize and rank features, products, search filters, and so on based on criteria such as Important to Unimportant, or Use often to Use never.. And although this isnt an exact science, we found this draft incredibly useful: In our hybrid card sort similarity matrix, we can see larger clusters and higher agreements on the similarity matrix for our hybrid card sort, which reflects the fact that we gave participants four categories to start with. Open card sorting is a generative research exercise, rather than an evaluative onemeaning, it helps uncover and define the problem at hand, rather than evaluating a solution. For closed card sorts, you need to create enough categories that people can find a home for most of your cards, but not too many that only include categories that match your intentions for your website or your research questions. If you run a hybrid card sort with even just one category, most people will take your lead: Set the category Vegetables and most people will create the category Fruit. Card Sorting Exercise Results 2:44 with Dan Gorgone Hopefully you were able to compile your own results from the card sorting exercise from the previously video. In this card sorting example we will be working on improving a parenting magazines website navigation. Due to the availability of developed online tools, digital card sorting can work well for open or closed card sorts, as well as moderated or unmoderated. Labelling your website content with the terminology of your users will ensure your content is delivered in an intuitive manner for your audience. You can also make use of high-quality recruitment panels, which can be effective if you want fast, pain-free options with minimal effort. So, the first step is to brainstorm your cards. 7 card sorting examples (and what we can learn from them) Now we're caught up on the what and why of card sorting, let's get into some examples of card sorting in action. For an open sort, if possible consider requiring them to sort the cards, but perhaps not to label them, since that might be the more challenging part of the task, providing you have limited your items as suggested. get quick answers on ranked items if people sorted the cards according to your ranking criteria. First, I ask users and stakeholders to group the content into categories, and then I get the participants to name or create their own categories. The human mind is so fond of pattern-finding that we use it regularly as a shortcut when making decisions, especially on intellectually-taxing tasks. Pictures are a better choice if the person doing the Card Sort speaks . Group - Concurrent In-person Sessions have participants sort a set of cards as a group. statistics on time to complete the test, number of cards sorted, or percentage of cards in one group. Your participants will sort cards into the groups that you supply, but can also add new groups if they feel its necessary. add any card sorts from your moderated (in-person) participants who used OptimalSorts printed cards. The dendrograms give you another way to quickly spot popular groups of cards, and to get a general sense of how similar (or different) your participants card sorts were to each other. Put methods into practice using our tools, Explore articles, news and product updates, Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories, Sign up for a free account and create a card sort, View a sample card sort from a participants perspective, View sample results from a researchers perspective, Read more about card sorting in our Help Center, One critical after Eastern motorway crash, design a new website or section of a website, or improve an existing website, find out how your customers expect to see your information grouped on your website, discover and compare how people understand different concepts or ideas. For online card-sorts, ensure there is a computer with an internet connection available as well as room for both the participant(s) and facilitator to sit comfortably. Creating a User-Centered Approach in Government. The main benefits of card sorting are that it enables researchers and designers to: most common ways researchers and designers use the insights from a card sort, Create the information architecture (IA) of a website or homepage that is easy to navigate, Learn how people understand different concepts or ideas, and how they feel about them, Understand where users expect certain content to be found, Get inspiration for labeling and grouping content or ideas, , UX Researcher and Designer at Electrolux, Moderated vs. unmoderated card sorting: A researcher can conduct and oversee the session (moderated), or users work through the session on their own (unmoderated), Paper vs. digital card sorting: You can either write the topics on physical index cards (paper) or type them onto cards in a simulated environment (digital), Create new information architectures or improving existing ones, Find patterns in how users expect to find content, Generate ideas for how to structure and label your website or app information architecture, Find out if users understand your categorizations, Pinpoint misleading categories and make informed decisions on how to improve. It might be tempting to have a card for every topic on your site, but in this case, more might not be better. Both options are pretty great, but for bigger insights I would recommend going with the first option. When you set more categories, enough for people to find a home for every card, theyre less likely to create their own categories, and thus it will tend towards closed. Card sorting tests concepts, not usability so the cards themselves dont need to be written in the most usable format, or exactly as they are on your website. If youre looking for ways to organise and label your content or products, card sorting is a great option. Card sorting can allow you to start understanding these early on, before too much time has been invested in ideas that dont align with your users. An open card sort is the equivalent of an open-ended question in a traditional study, in that people can give any answer, and are not confined to one type of response. You can then follow that up with a closed card sorting session that will help you validate the website's structure and test if people can find the relevant information. The other option is digital-card sorting, which requires the user to perform the card sort on a website or service. Keep in mind, you want all or most of your cards to be sorted. You can use this method to: You can also use a closed card sort as a follow-up to an open card sort to analyze if the categories identified in the first round seem logical to most users. Running an open card sort with OptimalSort is a generative exercise: the results give you lots of ideas of how you could label and organize your website content. You want to understand the participant's thoughts, rationale, and frustrations. Remote, Computer-based Sessions require participants to work independently. Thats why its important that you have enough categories covering all the possible groups. Apart from that, there arent many advantages versus using a digital tool; the data will look similar and you are able to ask the same questions.. Throughout this guide, well explore the benefits of different kinds of card sorting, how to run a successful card sort, and which tools to use. What new categories did people create, and are they better than yours? The stand-out dark blue boxes on this matrix tell us straight away that we have high agreement between participants on where cards belong. As a suggestion, limit yourself to 50-60 topics or less. Can be used for gathering any type of additional feedback. Open card sort:Participants sort cards into categories that make sense to them, and label each category themselves, Closed card sort:Participants sort cards into categories you give them, Hybrid card sort:Participants sort cards into categories you give them, and can create their own categories as well. Values may be considered as "guiding lights" or aspirational principles that are core to . If you're unsure how to organize your website or app information, an open card sort can help. You can recruit participants from quite specific demographics, and be confident that the participants will take your study seriously (they are getting paid, after all). Then you can reshuffle the cards for the next session. This format naturally lends itself more towards moderated card sorting, but can also be conducted as unmoderated. A mental model refers to the explanation of someones thought process about how something should work and their expectations, based on past interactions with other products. You must test 15 users to reach a correlation of 0.90, which is a more comfortable place to stop. Try not to use too professional language if youre not sure the users will understand it. Youll also find out how many unique cards were sorted into each category, with fewer unique cards meaning higher agreement among participants. Tests are easy to arrange and provide fast, reliable results. Mattel: Barbie. Have questions about this video? After you launch your study and get some completed sorts youll be able to start analyzing the data. Determining the right approach to your card sort is a key part of ensuring you get the results youre looking for. How to run a card sorting exercise is done in 7 steps: Write Down Topics. This technique is ideal for when you already have certain categories established, but you need input into how the remaining ones should be labeled, or arent positive on what goes where. Heres an example of the one we used in this card sorting study: After you launch your study and get some completed sorts youll be able to start analyzing the data. Card sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the information architecture of a site. The best products are created with their users needs and pain-points in mind. However due to the nature of involving a facilitator, most commonly theyre conducted in person. Well, a low agreement score isnt the only number you can rely on to tell you something useful. That is a great practice for motivating people to attend your research. When working on information architecture, its important to match your users mental models, aka, the way they structure the content in their minds. If youre conducting an open card sort, ask your participants to group the content first. Lets get into more detail about a few of the main benefits of card sorting. I am a User Experience Consultant,Conversion Rate Optimisation Specialist and expert indigital transformation. Vaida explains: Once the initial structure is set, then you can test it a second time with closed card sorting or a tree testing exercise.. Create cards for each item you want your user to categorize. As a suggestion, limit yourself to 50-60 topics or less. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups. For Closed and Hybrid card sorting youll also need to prepare category labels. Information architecture (IA) is how you organize, structure, and label your content so that users can easily navigate your product and find the information they need. Some of the most common ways researchers and designers use the insights from a card sort is to: Use Maze to run card sorting sessions and discover how users understand and categorize information. if every card was sorted into one category at least once, then its obviously ambiguous), use the top three cards that appear most often in a given category as examples for what belongs there on your actual website, pinpoint the categories with the least agreement among participants and reword the labels. tangible cards Alternatively, you can create electronic or handwritten lists of the values listed and then sort them to . If a comment box is available, urge participants to use the field to record any observations or questions. Once you have all your ideas in hand, youll reduce and refine the possibilities until youre left with only the most relevant cards. This image shows a participant partway through our closed card sort with our eight pre-defined categories: As well as our case study, here are a few ideas to get you thinking about how closed card sorting could be useful for you: Create cards with topics from your homepage or your search filters, and create categories like Use often and Use never to find out what people need to access the most when they arrive on your site: Create cards with company values adjectives and set categories like Our company is and Our company is not to find out how your customers and clients perceive you, and compare it with the data you gather from staff and colleagues. It gives you the opportunity to revise and adapt your card sort, and you can always send it to more people if necessary. In an open card sort, participants sort your cards into groups that make sense to them, and then label the groups themselves. Consider using a different colored card for having participants name the groups. Write Introduction and Conclusion. want to find out what people think of your sketches or designs. Group dynamics might come into play and should be monitored. Choosing the right technique at the right time is key to gathering high-quality, relevant data to inform your design decisions. Every card sort you run with OptimalSort will present you with a Results Overview and Participant data. Participants can group a set of cards into predefined categories, but they can also create new categories. linked to below, offers the ability to search and sort every single cost-free collection and provides a. Rapidly test & validate prototypes, concepts, copy, and more, Work seamlessly with design platforms like Figma, Adobe XD, and more, Get actionable user insights with automated metrics and reports, Send targeted product research campaigns, faster. It always depends on the goals of your study. When improving a live website, the hybrid method might be most suitable. For the purpose of this article, we will describe an ideal execution for a card sorting exercise. The category Global news update had the highest number of unique cards: 35 cards out of 45 were placed there at least once, suggesting that the label itself was too broad, and thus too ambiguous for our website. This means people will be more likely to sort the cards into your categories only, and less likely to create new categories. In a physical card . If your users can find what they need quickly, thats a good experience! At a glance, we can see a few strong clusters, which show us the same data weve observed on the Similarity Matrix: Youll approach closed card sorting results with questions like: The Categories table for a closed card sort tells you how many times a card was sorted into your each given category. In this section, well look at the three main types of card sorting you can choose from: Depending on your objectives, you can then also choose from different card sorting formats: Of course, as with any UX research, each method has its ideal circumstances, and its pros and cons. Heres what we got in our card sorting example study: A study overview with the respondents information: And other countless graphs and charts thatll help you organize your website in a user-friendly way! To come up with your list of possibilities, you could: Card sorting is a conceptual activity, not a usability test or game of Snap. Combining the best of Open and Closed Card Sorting, it allows you to validate information grouping strategy while still leaving respondents room for free expression. One of the main benefits of card sorting is that it allows you to make informed decisions based on users' expectations and mental models rather than based on assumptions. Great choice when you want to understand how users group your content. Is card sorting qualitative or quantitative? Then, you canupload the card sortsfor each participant in the Participants tab of your OptimalSort results. participants will be more likely to complete your card sort. As well as looking at the cards and assessing the agreement score, head over to the Standardization grid to see your standardized categories in more detail. This type of sort may be completed with physical cards or with online card-sorting software and the facilitator looking on and asking questions as needed. Great choice when you want to understand how users group your content. You can learn more about each of them in this list of. And if not, perhaps we should get rid of it entirely. we had high agreement on four categories that we felt matched our tone and branding, but were less certain on others. To help people using card sorting in their UX research. External links may not function and information on the site may be out of date. quickly see which cards are very rarely paired together so you dont need to waste time thinking they might. Its particularly useful if: Moderated card sorting involves a moderator who will debrief the participants and ask them follow-up questions following the card sort. What kinds of labels do people suggest for representing your information? More on what type to choose in this Card Sorting Guide. You can create more cards if youd like to, and set OptimalSort to give a random subset of cards to each participant. To prepare for the session, collate a list of 30-60 topics and write them on post-it notes or cards. The facilitator may brief the participants at the beginning and debrief the participants at the end, but the participant together for most of the session. The solution? Consider the benefits of requiring participants to complete your sort. Card sorting involves creating a set of cards that each represent a concept or item, and asking people to group the cards in a way that makes sense to them. If you used online card-sorting software, consult the software instructions. Find the right words to form your navigation. It may take longer, but you can gain deeper understanding by speaking directly with participants to learn their reasoning. Decide whether you will be doing a physical card sort or using online card-sorting software. When you ask people to complete a card sort, youre asking them to look for and create patterns with your cards. The software will analyze participant data in a variety of ways. Your goal is to discover how people think about and make sense of your information, not whether or not they can find it quickly on a homepage. Where open card sorting has been carried out, you might see similar categories being used. By conceptual level, we mean that if you want people to sort grocery items, you wont include the higher level category Vegetables as a card at the same time as the lower-level Carrots: In her bookon card sorting, Donna is firm on the importance of making sure all cards are actually groupable. By presenting participants with different elements of the product and allowing them to group items into what feels natural, youre able to get a deep level of insight into how potential users approach navigating your product and expect information to be structured. Anchored in advice from UX design and research experts, stick with this guide to go from novice to pro in your card sorting skills. Images can be as effective as text for representing concepts and items, and in some cases more so. Creating an IA that's easy to understand and intuitive is key to providing a good user experience. 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