Card Sorting

Card sorting is a technique used by information architects to assist in the grouping and labelling of content.

It is easy to do, inexpensive, and provides great results. It provides an un-influenced user-view of how items are related to each other and what each of these relationships should be called.

This information can then be used to inform decisions related to the site structure and labelling or nomenclature.

There are 2 key types of card sorting, open and closed.

Open card sorting
Users are presented with a number of  physical cards, often index cards or ‘post-it-notes’, with something written on each of them. Each card typically represents a page within the website, or simple a ‘chunk’ of information. The users are then asked to sort the cards into piles of related items and then to label each ‘pile’. If there are enough cards, users are then  asked to group piles in to related groups and again label them.

Closed card sorting
The closed card sorting process is similar to the above process, only the users are given labelled ‘buckets’ before they start and asked to place the cards in to the pre-labelled ‘buckets’.

Online card sorting
A number of tools exist online which allow users to sort virtual cards online, removing the need to physically visit the users with actual cards, opening the sorting exercise up to a much wider audience even more easily and cheaply.

Analysis
A number of tools exist, ranging from complex spreadsheets which allow you to easily compare how different users group and label content, to dendrograms, which graphically show the most popular groupings made by people.