Card Sorting

Card sorting is a UX research method primarily used to help understand how your site users think about and understand your website’s information architecture.

Card Sorting with Your Target Audience

Traditionally card sorting is conducted with people outside of your project team who represent your target audience. These people are given a stack of cards and asked to arrange them into logical groupings.

The cards are labeled with types of information you plan to include on your site. Examples from www.tamu.edu might include:

• How to apply
• Financial aid options
• Student organizations
• History of Texas A&M
• Aggie traditions
• Costs and tuition
• Facts about Texas A&M
• Colleges and schools
• Texas A&M leadership

Each of these items would be listed on a separate index card. You would then ask your user to group these cards logically and observe how they do so. Observing the way they sort the cards unveils their mental models about the information, revealing how they would look for information on a website.

More Information About Card Sorting

• Card Sorting: Why and When
• Card Sorting: Uncover Users’ Mental Models for Better Information Architecture
• Card Sorting: Pushing Users Beyond Terminology Matches

Card Sorting as a Project Team

Open card sorting can also be a useful exercise to get input from multiple people about how to organize and prioritize ideas. When redesigning www.tamu.edu in 2022, we held a multiday workshop with key team members and stakeholders to solidify what content needed to be included on the main university website and how it should be organized.

The following card sorting exercise is based on our experience in 2022.

Card Sorting And Dot Voting Exercise

Card sorting and dot voting can help identify:

• Logical “buckets” for your content (IA)
• Content needs to prioritize (content strategy)
• “Buckets” to prioritize in your navigation

How To Complete The Exercise

1. Create “nugget” content notes. Using sticky notes, write down “nuggets” of information that you think might need to be on your site. These can be based on keyword research, business goals, feedback from interviews and more.
2. Put notes on the wall. Put up the content notes on a wall without any organization. (You can also do this digitally with a tool like FigJam.)
3. Review and look for themes. As a group, review the cards and start to look for commonalities — natural ways to group the ideas.
4. Organize based on themes. Move post-its around as the categories emerge. As themes emerge, label the column. (Tip: It’s normal to end up with a “Misc” theme of notes that don’t fit anywhere else — those misfit notes end up being some of the most helpful ones!)
5. Prioritize notes through voting. In this same exercise, you can use “dot voting” to quickly gauge what your team thinks is most important to include. Pass out stickers to everyone to stick on what they think is most important.