Nov 14 2008
Fun with Card Sorts
So you’re getting calls for information that is readily (or so you think) available on your website. Maybe you’re creating an Intranet and you’re not quite sure exactly how to organize the navigation.
I have two words for you. Card sort.
So what the heck is a card sort and why should we use it? A card sort is a usability test of sorts. It’s a technique used to help organize a website. A user is given a stack of cards with labels on them. The labels are usually navigation labels – page names (or potential page names) of the website. They don’t even have to be that granular. The cards can show topic areas instead of specific page names.
There are two types of cards sorts, open and closed.
Open card sort. This type of card sort allows the user to group the cards into buckets that makes the most sense to them.
Closed card sort. This type of card sort gives the user the predetermined group name and allows the user to then place the cards into the already existing groups that makes the most sense to them.
Why use card sorts? They’re quick, they’re easy and they’re cheap.
Example. We just finished the second phase of what I like to call a navigation re-labeling and re-organization. The first phase was user testing on the section. From that testing, we found that users found the section very confusing. What’s interesting is that users mentioned the content within the section was very useful, but they couldn’t actually find the information easily because of the link labels.
We then used a card sort to give us the first step in determining better organization of the section.
We took our existing section navigation and put each label on a card. Using the open card sort method, we gave the users the stack of cards and said to organize them in the buckets of their choice. If a label didn’t make sense, the user was told to write what they thought the label should be.
The result was eye opening. We found that many of our labels made no sense to the user. Not only that, the users grouped them differently than we originally had them grouped.
In that test we used good old-fashioned index cards. There are many web-based card sorting tools as well. Among others there are Websort and Optimal Sort. Our unit is actually using Optimal Sort on project we are working on right now.
So, if you’re thinking your site could use some re-organization or your launching a new site, try a simple card sort. It’s definitely worth the $4.29.
