1. Card Sorting Notes for Thursday 10/2/14

2. Card Sorting Card sorting is a technique used to discover how people group and name content elements or chunks. It helps you answer questions such as – What elements belong together? What elements differ in some way? – What is a good name for an element or group? (informative, unambiguous, etc.) – How are elements or groups related? similarity, broader-than, narrower-than, part-of, sequence, other taxonomic or structural relationships – Is there general agreement, or do different people or groups of people have differing views? Card-sorting exercises can be used for analysis of existing website, or to revise or plan a new site.

3. Example: Organizing the Dessert Menu You are the owner of a restaurant that specializes in desserts. You want the menu on your website to emphasize the range of desserts. How will you group and label the desserts? You create cards with all the dessert names, and ask members of your staff and some frequent customers to sort them into groups for your menu. Sort the desserts below into groups for the menu. What “rules” define each group? Desserts angel-food cake apple-cranberry pie apple-walnut crumble baklava bittersweet chocolate milk shake brandy-butterscotch pudding cherry swirl ice cream chocolate chip cookies with pecans chocolate pecan pie chocolate-nut brownies cinnamon-encrusted walnuts coconut cream pie dark chocolate ice cream date bars flan fruit cake hot fudge sundae key lime pie lemon chiffon pie sugar-free lime Jell-O Mama's chocolate pudding maple-nut bars mixed berry milk shake orange sorbet peach pie peanut brittle pear tart pecan pie pumpkin pie strawberry ice cream tiramisu triple chocolate cake vanilla pudding walnut bread pudding

4. General Process 1.Select the content items you wish to organize 2.Write each item on a card or enter them into a card- sorting tool 3.Select representative users of the site – consider role, purpose of user, experience 4.Ask user to sort cards into piles of "similar" items – You could provide a scenario of use, then ask user to sort into similar piles – You could ask them to organize the piles themselves (e.g., hierarchy, sequence) 5.Debrief: ask the user why items are similar/different, what features were important, what their "rules" were 6.Record/save groupings to compare with others' responses 7.Analyze results

5. Variations (1) Closed card-sorting – You provide the categories into which items must be placed Open card-sorting Users have 2 tasks: (1) sort the items by similarities, (2) name and define the resulting groups Allow users to create an "other" category, or force all items to be placed into a named category. (Applied to closed or open sorting) Allow or encourage users to add notes to the cards, to highlight reasons for decisions or note questions or comments.

6. Variations (2) Allow or encourage users to add notes to the cards, to highlight reasons for decisions or note questions or comments. Allow users to place 1 item in more than one category (i.e., make copies of cards). This represents items that belong to more than 1 group, perhaps based on different rules. – For example, a course title and description could be placed in a group of SILS courses, the list of required courses for a specialization, and the semester schedule. Provide blank cards so that users can add additional items that should be included.

7. Analysis (1) Deduce the "rules" used by a user for groupings. What features or characteristics of the item were salient? Find similarities/differences between users Find similarities/differences between groups of users. For example, do faculty members group items differently from students? For closed sorting, do people interpret the category names in the same way? Are there unused groups? Why? For open sorting, do people assign the same group names (or synonymous names)?

8. Analysis (2) Where are areas of uncertainty, lack of pattern, ambiguity (e.g., the "other" group)? What information items are missing? Based on what you observe: – How will you organize information on the website (distributed over multiple pages)? – How will you organize information on a webpage (distributed over individual pages)? – What links will you provide, and how will you name them?

9. Card-Sorting Tools http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting /blog/card_sorting_software_tools/ http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting /blog/card_sorting_software_tools/ http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/cardsor ting.html#tools http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/cardsor ting.html#tools http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebCAT/o verview.html http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebCAT/o verview.html http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and- tools/methods/card-sorting.html http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and- tools/methods/card-sorting.html