What is card sorting?

Card sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the information architecture of a site. In a card sorting session, participants organise topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups. To conduct a card sort, you can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or one of several online card-sorting software tools.

Card sorting will help you understand your users’ expectations and understanding of your topics. It is often most useful once you have done some homework to find out about your users and understand your content. Knowing how your users' group information can help you:

• Build the structure for your website
• Decide what to put on the homepage
• Label categories and navigation

Types of card sort

Open and Closed Card Sorting

Depending on your needs, you may choose to do an open or closed card sort. They differ as follows:

• Open Card Sort: Participants are asked to organise topics from content within your website into groups that make sense to them and then name each group they created in a way that they feel accurately describes the content. Use an open card sort to learn how users group content and the terms or labels they give each category.

• Closed Card Sort: Participants are asked to sort topics from content within your website into pre-defined categories. A closed card sort works best when you are working with a pre-defined set of categories, and you want to learn how users sort the content items into each category.

Card sorting techniques — pros and cons

Technique 1

One on One — are in-person sessions with an observer. Participants think aloud while sorting, giving a clearer picture of their reactions and thought processes.

Pros

This type of sort may be completed with physical cards or with online card-sorting software and the facilitator looking on and asking questions as needed.

Cons

N/A

Technique 2

Group / Independent — Concurrent In-person Sessions have participants sort a set of cards independently. The facilitator may brief the participants at the beginning and debrief the participants at the end, but the participant works alone for most of the session.

Pros

Because of the limited interaction, you can have many sessions at the same time with one facilitator.

Cons

You must have as many sets of cards as concurrent sessions or have each participant at a separate computer if using online card-sorting software.

Technique 3

Group — Concurrent In-person Sessions have participants sort a set of cards as a group. The facilitator may brief the participants at the beginning and debrief the participants at the end, but the participants work together for most of the session.

Pros

Working collaboratively, or as a team, may quickly bring about grouping and labelling of main content areas.

Cons

Group dynamics might come into play and should be monitored.

Technique 4

Remote, Computer-based Sessions — require participants to work independently. Participants sort the cards independently on their own computers. You can do open or closed card sorts remotely. Several software programs exist to help you with large-scale remote card-sorting studies. Using the software is an advantage because it analyses the data for you.

Pros

Allows you to have many participants in many locations.

Cons

You do not get information on why participants sort the cards the way they do, because you cannot see the participants or hear them thinking out loud.

Card sorting best practice

• Limit the number of cards. It is tempting to want the participant to sort “ALL” of your content, but be mindful of participant fatigue. We would recommend 30 to 40 at the absolute max, especially for an open sort.
• If possible, randomise the order of presentation so that each piece of content has a chance to be sorted earlier in the session.
• Provide the participants with an estimate of how long the card sort will take before beginning the session to help them better gauge the required time and effort.
• Consider the benefits of requiring participants to complete your sort. For an open sort, if possible consider requiring them to sort the cards, but perhaps not to label them, since that might be the more challenging part of the task, providing you have limited your items as suggested.
• Consider an open sort as part 1 and a closed sort as part 2 of your process. One allows you to learn what goes together, while 2 allows you to really test out your labels to see if they are intuitive to your participants.

How to conduct an in-person card sort

Prepare the Cards

1. Create your list of content topics. Topics can be phrases or words, very specific or more general. As a suggestion, limit yourself to 50–60 topics or less. This means there might not be a card to sort for every page on the site.

• For a new site, list the content topics of types of information that you are likely to have on the site
• For an existing site, list the most important/popular types of content
• To create this list: Review the content listed in your content inventory. Identify the most important or most frequently used content. Decide whether you will be doing a physical card sort or using online card-sorting software.
• If you are using online card-sorting software, consult the software instructions.
• If you will be conducting a card sort using physical cards, write each topic on a separate index card.
• Use self-adhesive labels and a word processor. The cards will be neat, legible, and consistent. You’ll have the list of topics in the computer for later analysis.
• Number the cards in the bottom corner or on the back. This helps you when you begin to analyse the cards.
• Have blank cards available for participants to add topics and to name the groups they make when they sort the cards.
• Consider using a different coloured card for having participants name the groups.

Set up the Session

1. Plan about one hour for each session, longer if you have many cards.

2. Arrange the space.

• For paper card sorts, ensure the participant has enough room to spread the cards out on a table or tack/tape them up on a wall. A conference room works well.
• For online card-sorts, ensure there is a computer with an internet connection available as well as room for both the participant(s) and facilitator to sit comfortably.

3. Plan to have the facilitator or another usability team member take notes as the participant works and thinks aloud.

4. As with other techniques, arrange for payment or other incentives to thank the participant for spending the time and effort helping you.

Lead the Session

1. Show the participant the set of cards. Explain that you are asking for help to find what categories of information should be on the site’s homepage and what those categories should be called.

• In an open card sort, explain that you want to see what groupings of cards make sense to the participant and that you will ask for a name for each group of cards once the participant has grouped them.
• If you are conducting a closed card sort, explain that you want to see how the participant thinks the cards fit within the defined groups.

2. Ask the participant to talk out loud while working. You want to understand the participant’s thoughts, rationale, and frustrations.

3. Let the participant work. Minimise interruptions but encourage the participant to think aloud. Allow the participant to:

• Add cards — for example, to indicate lateral hyperlinks or additional topics.
• Put cards aside to indicate topics the participant would not want on the site.

4. If, in the end, the participant has too many groups for the homepage, ask if some of the groups could be combined.

5. Ask the participant to name each category.

• In an open card sort, give the participant a stack of different coloured cards. Ask the participant to use the coloured card to name each group. Ask what words the participant would expect to see on the homepage or second-level page that would lead the participant to that particular group of content items.
• In a closed card sort, asking about word expectations, their final card organisation, and other follow up questions can provide valuable insight and observations for your research.

6. In the end, thank the participant and give the payment or other gift if promised.

How to conduct a remote card sort

1. Create your list of content topics. Topics can be phrases, words, etc., and can be very specific or more general. It might be tempting to have a card for every topic on your site, but in this case, more might not be better. Consider the cognitive load on the participant. You want them to be as on task for your first card as your last. As a suggestion, limit yourself to 50–60 topics or less.

2. Prepare the cards according to the software instructions.

3. Email your participants a link to the study. Provide instructions for the sort (whether open or closed) and let them know approximately how long the session should take to complete.

4. If a comment box is available, urge participants to use the field to record any observations or questions. While you will not be able to answer them in real-time for the participant, these comments can be useful for your analysis.

5. Thank the participant for his or her time and provide instructions for receiving payment or gift (if promised).

How to Conduct a Card Sort was originally published in Asterisk Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As it turns out we hadn’t made a massive mistake and though there were a few hiccups, it all went pretty okay.

After signing the lease we booked our flights and came back the next weekend to pick up the keys. That part was quite expensive and if I had thought about it more the weekend after that was quite a bit cheaper to fly. But it was done. The morning we were due to pick up the keys was quite stressful. We had woke up to our landlady now saying she wasn’t going to give us the keys that weekend because there was an issue with our lease.

We later found out that she was trying to get out of it because she had found tenants with another company who had smaller fees. Unfortunately for her all of us had already signed the lease and so she was stuck. We had to trek across London to get to the estate agents to try and sort it out that day. Otherwise, we’d be out over £600 with nothing to show for it.

Eventually, it got sorted and we were able to pick up one set of keys that day. However, there was another issue in that the blinds which were supposed to be fitted before we moved in weren’t going to be done for at least 4 weeks. It was stressful but by the end of the day, we were happy enough that we had seen the flat and got a set of keys, which meant the next day we could go and measure the apartment.

Once that was sorted we then had to decide on a moving date and start to get our stuff sorted to move. We decided on two and a half weeks. We thought that would give us enough time to pack and organise how to get over. We initially thought we would just use a moving company for the sake of ease but after checking times and costs we realised it wasn’t really going to work for us as we’d either have to pay a couple of thousand pounds or wait a few weeks to get our stuff. Neither of which we’re particularly palatable.

In the end, we decided to rent a large van from Enterprise and get the boat from Dublin to Liverpool overnight.

I started clearing out our things bit by bit but in the end, we still had quite a lot of stuff and were very worried we wouldn’t be able to take everything we wanted to take. We did have to get rid of quite a lot of old stuff like our Christmas tree and some cheaper furniture. We sold some items on facebook and gave some to one of our friends who had just bought a house.

That still left us with a massive sofa, a double bed, a double chest of drawers and bedside cabinets. Along with two guitars, all our clothes, home office stuff, two TVs etc. The entire time we were certain it wasn’t all going to fit in the van. We got the van the morning before we were due to leave and managed to get quite a lot of stuff packed into it on the first day. I had bought boxes and we had got some more for free from our local Tescos so most things we’re packed into boxes to make it easier to carry and stack in the van.

Jordan's mum was amazing as well she came up and cleaned up behind us and helped pack away our kitchen stuff. She also came up on the second day to help with the final runs to the dump to get rid of the last of any food we had sitting open. She also took some of our pieces of furniture and stored them. We had to be done by 3 pm that day as we were having our final inspection then and it was a bit of a mad rush at the end to get the outside of the house weeded and cleaned. To get the inside mopped and everything tidied away before they came. We only really finished up at around 2.45pm so we were really cutting it close.

Once the inspection was over we grabbed some lunch then headed down the road. The drive to Dublin was okay, Jordan was still getting to grips with the van but it went smoothly enough. We were 2 hours early for the boat but better early than late. And once we got on we were able to get a cabin and go and get some food. Dinner and breakfast were included which was nice and I even got a bit of cake in the end. We didn’t get much sleep that night as the boat was quite loud but we got enough.

The 4.30am wakeup call was unpleasant. We got down, got some breakfast and then headed down to sit in the van till we were let off the boat at around 5.45am. It took us around 6 hours to drive to London, though we did stop three times. Once for coffee and some snacks and once for a Subway and to charge our phones. The final stop was just to refuel the van as we were running a bit low.

We had to wait on our inventory inspection before we could move stuff into the apartment, so we parked the van outside and went in to get the fridge etc turned on. This was when we realised there were some issues with the electric. The hob and oven were on the wrong fuses so when we turned the oven off the hob went off instead. And something kept tripping the electric. We initially thought it was that but after some exploration, we realised it was actually the electric towel rail. Fortunately, as we were having out an inspection that day we were able to say to the guy and our landlady who send someone out the next day to look at it.

We were exhausted at the point but we still had to unpack our entire van. Jordan's mum and sister were in London on holiday and he somehow managed to persuade them to come and help us unpack the van. Without them, it would have taken us a lot longer. It took about 3 hours to unpack everything. Jordan left the van back to Enterprise and then we just left everything in the apartment and went for dinner and drinks. It had been an exhausting hard few days but we had done it. Our stuff was in the apartment and we were sorted.

K. x

This blog post is coming at you post finding an apartment

I and my other half Jay have been talking for years about moving to London. We had visited 4 times and each time fell more in love. A few of our friends lived there and my mum had lived there for a while when she was 18 and had always sung its praises. But we never really talked any more about it than saying that it was something we would like to do someday.

When the landlord for our current apartment wanted over 4 months notice as to whether we were staying in our current house for another year. We had to make a decision. Say we’re staying and get locked into our contract for another year with a, to be honest very annoying, landlord. Or say we were leaving and then have four months to find somewhere new to live.
Well as you can tell by the title of this post we choose to move. Annoyingly that was when we realised that the market in London moves very, very quickly. I was looking at places which had been put online and then checking back a day or two later and they were gone.

This put us in a bit of an odd position. We were living in a three-bedroom two living room house and knew if we moved we would have to downsize, drastically. But we didn’t know if the place was going to be furnished or unfurnished or one or two bedrooms. This part really stressed me out. Eventually, I did what I always do and created a project on Asana dedicated to moving to London.

This was when I started my research, about areas and advice and cost of travel. We had previously estimated the cost of living but hadn’t sat down properly to work out what we could afford, and what sort of number we were talking per month. It started to get quite scary as the numbers added up.

In Northern Ireland rates (aka Council Tax) is included in your rent and we don’t have to pay for our water. I also walked to work every day which is super handy at reducing costs. But in London, we were going to have to pay for all these things on top of rent, heating and electricity. Not only that but food, in general, is also more expensive. 😰 cue me sweating profusely at the total number we came up with.

But other people did it, right? So why can’t we? Sure we might need to eat like students for a few years until we get on our feet and might not be able to go on as many dates as we want to but we’ll be in London, where there’s no shortage of free things to do! So we’re just going to wing it and figure it out after. We are very lucky to have some savings which we can use if the going gets really tough.

Then we waited. Until about 2 months before we were due to move out and we booked 4 days in London at the end of June, 6 weeks out from our official ‘will be homeless if we don’t find somewhere to live’ date. We thought this would give us enough time to view apartments for the first two days then organise more for the last two while we were there if we needed to. We were quite lucky in that we could stay with our friends while we were there while keeping the cost down a bit for the first trip.

Organising Viewings

About a week or so before we went we started bookmarking apartments that we liked mostly using Right Move. We didn’t expect them to still be up but maybe the estate agents would have something similar. The day before we went we looked through Right Move again and started taking down the info on the apartments we wanted to view in a big spreadsheet. This included things like how many bedrooms it had, the rent, the link to the listing, the estate agents number, the council tax if we knew it and a basic rating of how much it suited our needs. This helped us rank the listings in a general order to view them in. We ended up with around 30 apartments on the list. We didn’t think we’d view them all but it made us feel more comfortable knowing there were a lot of options.

You can view and make a copy of our original spreadsheet if you think it will help - https://tinyurl.com/y3qhceb6

We then went through and started ringing them in order. This was where things got tricky. A lot of the agents had to get back to us about times, one or two of the flats had already gone and some still had tenants living in them and needed more notice. We did the best we could and got 4 viewings organised for the next day. We would be flying in, in the morning, getting into London Victoria and grabbing some food then dashing off to our first viewing.

This was the one we thought we wanted. It was a newly refurbished one-bed apartment near Caledonian Road station. However, when we got there we realised that the area, though up and coming with a lot of houses being refurbished on the same road. It was very quiet even during the day. And was near quite a shady area. As I would be walking home from the station alone this made me a bit apprehensive. It wouldn’t be so bad in summer when it was still light for most of the day but in winter when it gets dark at like 4 in the afternoon… I wasn’t too sure about it.

We had one other viewing in the same area but we knew it wouldn’t work the moment we walked in. It was far too small, we ideally needed somewhere that Jay could work from home. A bit defeated we went to lunch and looked at a few of the other places on our list. After lunch, we walked down to regents park and made a few more calls to organise viewings for the next day.

One thing I did note is that the moment we told the estate agents we were from Northern Ireland they became really helpful, telling us what we should look out for, that we should come back and look at the same apartments at night to see what the area was like and generally giving us advice even at the cost of possibly losing a sale.

We had a few more viewings in the afternoon. Neither of which stood out to us. One had a lovely bay window which looked out onto a garden but it was just very dirty. That night we went out for some drinks and Thai food with our friends which cheered us up a bit. It made us remember why we wanted to move in the first place.

The next day we had organised to meet the estate agent at the office and she was going to take us around a few different listings. This was a much better experience and I would recommend trying to get a few with the same estate agent. She offered us water and took us through the listings she was going to show us. She was going to drive us around each one in her car so we didn’t have to worry about transport and off we went. The first apartment she wants to take us too wasn’t listed yet online with them but it most matched our needs and was a brand new build, only being completed earlier in the year.

It was a bit further out than what we were really looking for so I didn’t think it was going to be up to much. It was on London City Island… Never heard of it before then and asking our friends who lived in London, they hadn’t either. Driving in, it was still a construction site but it was about 90% of the way there. They seemed to be madly doing landscaping and tidying up. She parked in a ground-level secure parking lot (Jay got very exciting at this) and walked us round to this massive bright purple apartment block. It was lovely inside, with a reception area for guests to wait on you on velvet-covered sofas.

She took us up the apartment and the moment she opened the door our jaws dropped. It was massive (in comparison to what we had seen) with two balconies, one facing south towards to o2 arena and one east. Everything was brand new and untouched. Clean white, fitted wardrobes and the nearest station was literally two minutes from our front door. What more could we want or need? Maybe the residents-only spa and gym? The fact that Sainsbury’s was opening next year again two minutes from our front door or that the English National Ballet was on our doorstep? I had died and gone to heaven. It was quiet but we weren’t worried about that here with it’s 24/7 patrolling security.

We went to view another apartment, and honestly, it was very nice... If we hadn’t just viewed the first one. We stood outside for a bit but we knew that another person was going to be viewing the apartment in the afternoon and we had to make a decision. Did we want to put an offer in for it? We stood there on the path for a few minutes then said ‘fuck it’ let’s do it. We dashed back to where we were staying, grabbed our documents and went back to the office.

This is where the advice comes in, we were very unprepared for what all was needed to put an offer in; 3 months of payslips, proof of address, 3 months of bank statements, passport or other photographic identification. References from your place of work and your current residence and the details of your current work including the address and contact details.

Luckily I had my iPad with me but it still took us about 2 hours to get everything and I ended up having to ask HR to email me my payslips. Eventually, when all the paperwork was done, they phoned the landlady with our offer and she immediately accepted. It all happened very fast. One moment we were viewing it the next we were paying our first months rent and our deposit.

Then the panic came, what had we just done, we didn’t know the council tax, we didn’t know the area, would Deliveroo delver to us?! Had we just made a massive mistake?

-K. x

For the past three years of my degree we’ve had one thing above all drilled into us: always start on paper. Wether it’s icons, a logo, a presentation or wireframes, starting on paper allows you to iterate faster without getting attached to your designs. It took me a while to get into doing this but this year I’ve gotten into the habit of sketching even one or two things out before jumping into Sketch or Illustrator.

From these initial paper wireframes I move into Sketch. At this stage it’s still very lofi, usually just boxes and lines of different thicknesses to indicate written content. I try to create a few of these before starting to add content because it allows me to quickly duplicate and try different screen layouts without much effort.

However I don’t spend too much time on the lofi’s, I think it’s important to start getting content on your screens as soon as possible. It helps you get a better feel for what the end product will look like. And importantly what it might look like with content that doesn’t exactly fit your design.

From here I started adding the brand colours. Unfortunately I choose an obnoxious shade of mustard as my main colour. I tried so many iterations of text colour and background colour and accent colours to try and 1. make sure it didn’t look too abrasive and 2. that it met AA accessibility standards. This is important to me because accessibility on the web is currently a major problem.

I carried out two short usability tests which indicated some areas which needed clarification. Such as what was editable and what wasn’t. It also gave me positive feedback to reassure me I was going in the right direction with my apps feature set.

Once I had it in a shape I liked I decided to show it to my other half. Who just so happens to be an iOS developer. I’ve already written a post about how that went so I won’t go into detail but suffice to say there were a lot of changes to be made from that interaction.

So thus came the fourth and final iteration of the design. I liaised with my other half through the final iteration to produce a more idiomatic design.

At this point I also started thinking about the interaction between screens and what the animations and micro interactions might be.

The final design still has the general feel of the initial wireframes but has developed into a more thoroughly thought out design. That I know if given to a developer tomorrow could be developed with only minimal discomfort to the person doing it.

Designs change. Sometimes a little bit and sometimes a lot. But hopefully always for the better.

Kelsey. x

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changesss was originally published in Asterisk Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• As of 26th February InVision no longer offers a direct integration with UserTesting.com. However you can still use the share prototype link in UserTesting.com.

As a student one of the hardest things to do is properly test your designs. You can carry out quick usability tests with people in the street or your friends etc but unless you have a camera or can connect to a laptop it’s difficult to record the findings as they happen. This means you might miss things or forget important observations.

Unmoderated testing is an option here however it can be very expensive, with one test on usertesting.com coming in at $71 (£51 ish). So when I found out that InVision was offering three free, 5 minute usability tests a month in conjunction with UserTesting.com I was very happy. The only catch was I only found this out on the 19th of February.. a week before they were stopping it.

I went into overdrive trying to get the final design of my app finished so I could carry out some tests on it. Using Craft for Sketch saved my life here because I didn’t have to physically upload new screens each time I made a change or created a new screen.

Finally on the 21st I finished my screens. At least to the point were it was acceptable to test them.

I carried out three tests in quick succession. Two had some good content and feedback but the last one was entirely unusable.

Unfortunately it’s sometimes the case when you’re testing wireframes or prototypes that the person testing it doesn’t fully understand the scenario or what prototypes are and so get frustrated when the ‘app’ doesn’t do everything they expect it, or when things they are clicking on don’t work. They focus on this rather than critiquing what they can do within the prototype. It can be frustrating but two out of three isn't bad for remote testing.

The first tester was an American man who navigated easily around the app and genuinely seemed to enjoy the premise and prompted us to continue with what we were doing.

The second tester was an American woman who had a bit more difficulty in the beginning but by the end was navigating around easily enough. She had some good feedback but also pointed out some small things she liked within the app which is always nice to hear.

If I had the money I would carry out at least 5 tests as this it the number generally accepted by most to cover 80% of issues which will affect 100% of your users. You can read more about it here. But as I am only testing designs on InVision a few tests are enough to get an idea if i’m going in the right direction.

Kelsey. x

p.s. this article look ridiculous with two massive videos on it but you can’t resize them (as far as I can tell). Sorry!

Testing a Prototype with InVision and Usertesting.com was originally published in Asterisk Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.