Card sorting exercise

Outline

This is a great little way to get some insight on how your users think your site should be organised. It’s all about scribbling down your page headings on some post it notes and letting users organise them into logical groups that make sense to them. The results can then be analysed and compared against suggested site maps to help you with your website architecture. You might be in for some surprising results!

Benefits

It will help you design a website architecture that reflects your user’s expectations. It also gives you valuable information for where content should be cross referenced if they fall into more than one group.

But really…. Why bother?

Perhaps all your users are not as well versed in using the internet as the person designing the site architecture. Organisation, terminology and cross reference points are all aspects that can help your site to be a breeze to surf. It might also spring new ideas and raise questions on issues you may have not considered otherwise.

How to do it!

First you will need:

• Post it notes or small bits of card
• Some A3 paper
• Some pencils

1. Write your site page names or descriptions on the post it notes or cards. (You can confirm the actual labels for each page later)

2. Prepare some blank A3 paper with some columns drawn on for people to lay out the post it notes on.

3. Write your section name at the top of the columns going across the page. I.E Products | Services | Careers etc
(Or you can ask people to label the groups themselves!)

4. Prepare a brief document asking the users what you would like them to do. Here is an example:

Card sorting exercise

Instructions:

• Review the post it notes and arrange them into logical groups.
• Once you have made the groupings create a name for this group.



• If you feel the same post it note applies to more than one category simply write another post it and place it in another group.
• If you feel something is missing from the structure once it is complete, write it on a post it and place it in the group.
• There is no right or wrong so please just put them in any order you wish.

Once the user has finished, just take a photo of the layout. You should end up with lots of photos like these:

How to analyse your results

If your groups are fairly similar you can just make a summary of that group. Or if you have a few common groups you can pop them in a spread sheet and list how many times each section appears under which group.

If you have a site map that was designed prior to this exercise compare that to the results. How close is your original to the outcome from the users? Everyone has a different opinion on how information should be structured. This is a great way to check you’re not stuck in your own rut and organising a site they way you have organised past sites. You must remember all website and projects are different and have different aims and different audiences. These factors will a have a huge affect on the way the site should be laid out and what is considered to be the most important.

This test may have also highlighted where cross reference points need adding. It is almost impossible to create a perfect site map where everyone agrees that content is in the right place. So use this data to create a cross reference table and make sure the user can access all relevant information from that point even if that information sits in another section.

At this point you may also want to consider types of navigation systems. Do you have groups of content that are time based, subject based, task based, geographically based or audience based? This can highlight a need for separating site functionality from site content. You may have the main site architecture with a specific navigation bar plugged in to tailor to the aforementioned groups.

Summary

What you do is with the results of this exercise is up to you. The aim of this task is to highlight structural and navigational patterns which also point out issues which you may have otherwise missed. The users of your website have golden information to making your site a success. After all they are the one using it! Don’t for get that. Go on give it a go. It’s a fun task!