What's Card Sorting in User Experience Research?

in this video I'll dive into the user experience technique of card sorting card sorting is a highly useful research method for information architecture that can increase navigation usability is a

test that researchers can utilize when they want to organize sets of information into intuitive groups card sorting shows how users expect their content to be organized it is useful to conduct a card sort when you have a lot

of content to organize let's say you're working on an e-commerce website that sells hardware and you want to make sure you're organizing your items into categories that make sense for your users you want to make sure they can easily find what they're looking for

you'll have many different groupings on your website such as appliances bathroom kitchenware lawn garden plumbing and so on in order to understand what categories and hierarchy makes logical

sense for categorizing the homepage you should recruit five users that represent your target customer by running through this exercise with enough participants you can meet the expectations of future

users you can directly see how people categorize information group cards into categories that make most sense to them and then label each category in a way that they feel accurately describes the

content you have three types of card sorting to choose from first you can conduct open card sorting participants are asked to group cards into categories that make most sense in

them and then label each category in a way that they feel it accurately describes the content you can also use clothes card sorting in this case you'll pre categorize the groups like appliances bathroom

kitchenware lawn and garden and then ask participants to sort cards into these predefined groups the third option is hybrid card sorting participants can sort cards in two

categories you've already predefined and they can also create other categories if they think your categories are not comprehensive once you decided which type of card sorting you're going to perform you need to choose whether

you're going to conduct a moderated or unmoderated card sort session moderated card sorting is when you ask the participant to perform the card sorting in a one-on-one session with the researcher the advantage of this is that

you can ask the participants rationale if you're unclear on their groupings the other option is unmodern card sorting which allows the participants to organize content into groups on their own

usually a via an online tool with no interaction with the facilitator you can ask participants to think out loud when they're categorizing afterwards you can watch the recording this option is

generally faster and less expensive than moderated card sorting you also have the option between paper or digital card sorting paper card sorting is the traditional in-person form of card

sorting topics are written on index cards and users are asked to create their own groupings on the large table the biggest advantage of paper card sorting is that it's intuitive for the study participants all they have to do

is stack index cards and piles on tables it's also easier for people to manipulate a very large number of cards on a big table and it is to manipulate them on a computer screen computer screens can't often show everything with

a single view and a require scrolling however the downside of paper card sorting is that it's more work on the researchers side since they have to manually document each participants groups and input them into a tool for

analysis the other option is digital card sorting which utilizes software's to simulate index cards that users can drag and drop into different groups

this method is generally the easiest for researchers because the software can analyze the results from all the different participants and reveal which items are most commonly grouped together

the downside is that technology issues can cause frustration Trello is an easy and free tool that can be used for digital card sorting each set of card should include 40 to 80

items that represent the main content on your site right each item on an individual index card or on your digital tool avoid topics that contain the same word since participants will tend to

group those cards together don't forget to add a spot for I don't know and unsure so participants don't force items into categories if you notice that certain items are frequently Uncategorized determined whether it's

because the card labels aren't clear or the content seems unrelated to the rest of the topics that's all I have on card sorting make sure to subscribe for more insights on product and UX you