What is Card Sorting? How to conduct Card Sorting? Variations in Card Sorting? and Conclusion

Let’s get started without wasting time by delving deeper.

Summary: Card sorting is a UX research technique in which users organize topics into groups. Use it to create an IA that suits your users’ expectations.
- By Katie Sherwin, NNGroup

What is Card Sorting?

Card sorting is a research technique for organizing, structuring, and labeling information in the simplest, useful, and most accessible way possible.

This technique allows you to create an information architecture that matches users’ expectations.

The simplest method is to understand how the user perceives information, structure it, and label it by breaking them into different categories.

How to conduct a Card Sorting step by step

Step 1: Choose a set of topics

You can set the topic including 50–80 items that represent the website and write each of these items on an individual card.

Step 2: User organizes topics into groups

Mixed all the cards and ask the user to look at each card and place it in the appropriate group they feel it belongs to.

Step 3: User’s name the groups

Once the group is completed, you can move on to the next phase. Give users a few blank cards and ask them to name the groups.

Step 4: Debrief the user (Optional but recommended)

If possible, ask the user to explain the reason behind each group they have organized and structure it.

Step 5: If needed, ask the user for more practical group sizes

Ask the user to break the small groups into larger categories or larger categories into smaller groups once the first 3 steps have been completed.

Step 6: Repeat with 15–20 users

This should be repeated for at least 15–20 users until you have a good understanding of the user’s mental model and their structuring pattern.

Step 7: Analyze the data

Select the most common groups & categories, and analyze the information to measure which will be the most well-organized; the structured format will help.

Variations in Card Sorting

Each of the three types of card sorting consists of a set of topics that users help in organizing, structuring, and labeling. You can run an open, a closed, or a hybrid card sort, depending on what you want to find out.

1. Open Card Sorting

In this, participants make the groups of a given set of topics and label each of them that make sense to them, and put it into the categories.

2. Closed Card Sorting

Moderator introduces participants with pre-defined categories and asks them to sort the individual card as per their preferences into those categories.

3. Hybrid Card Sorting

Participants are given pre-defined categories by the moderator, and they can create their own if they feel it necessary.

Conclusion:

Card sorting is a well-known research technique for determining how people understand and categorize information, as well as identifying their mental models and thought patterns.

Card sorting is useful when you want to

• 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 from the same topics