Information Design Using Card Sorting Page III

You are now ready to run the card sorting session.

Place the cards in a single pile in the middle of the table, and ask the users to sort the cards into piles. Typically, this means that one user will volunteer to read each card, and to place it according to the consensus of the group.

When a pile is finalised, ask the group to nominate a label for the pile. Write this on a blank card, and place on top of the pile. This is the most important aspect of the session: the labels become the menu items (or subject groupings) in the final system.

Be prepared for a reasonably-lengthy session: the participants are likely to want to rearrange the cards more than once, and some labels will undoubtedly be changed.

Maintaining the energy

The card sorting is likely to start slowly at first, as the participants get the hang of how it all works. In the middle of the session, progress will be relatively rapid, as the 'easy' cards are grouped together. Towards the end, only the 'difficult' cards will be left, and things will slow down.

During each of these three phases, it is important to 'facilitate' the group's progress. At first, this means encouraging them, and reminding them how the session works.

During the bulk of the session, the challenge is to avoid getting distracted on issues. When working out where to place a card, it is natural for the group to engage in a discussion about the topic written on the card. While this is often useful (see 'taking notes' below), if necessary you must bring the group back to the task at hand: sorting the cards.

Towards the end, you may be required to help the users complete the task, as they struggle with the more difficult topics. Some strategies include:

• Allow a 'to be determined' pile to be created.
• Where there are two choices that are hard to select between, have the group choose one of them, arbitrarily if necessary. Inform them that 'not everything has to be in the perfect location'.
• Discard cards altogether, if the meaning of them is not clear to anyone present.

While these methods can be used to ensure completion, it is important during most of the session to 'force' users to group things properly. A 'to be filed' category should not be allowed at the start of the session.

Taking notes

Keep a notebook handy throughout the sessions. The users will undoubtedly raise some important issues during the session, which should be noted down for future reference.

You might also want to side-track briefly to discuss some of these issues. While this can be very valuable, be careful to avoid overly distracting the session.

Keeping it friendly and fun

One final tip: keep the session light and casual, and avoid using acronyms, jargon or 'buzzwords'. This is your chance to show the users that the project has a 'human face'. The card sorting session should also be fun: a good distraction from the day-to-day activities of the user.

Most of all: be honest and open with the users. This will gain you considerable respect, which will be important later in the project.

Wrapping up

When all the cards have been sorted, and a general consensus has been reached, wrap up the session. Thank the participants for their involvement, and highlight again the importance of their efforts.

At the end of the session, write down the groupings identified by the participants. This is where the topic numbers come in handy. All you need to do is to write down the list of headings created by the users, and list the topic numbers beside them. You can then expand the full topic titles later, at your leisure.

Carefully bundle up the cards, keeping the groups intact (so you can check your transcription later), and bind them together using a couple of rubber bands.

Analysing the results of the card sorting

You now have the raw results from the session. The challenge is to present this information in a way that is meaningful. There are many different ways to achieve this.

One method is to present the information in a tabular format, listing the headings and the topics underneath them. While this is quick to create, it can be quite hard for a reader to gain a clear picture of what the structure looks like. We would therefore recommend against this approach.

Instead, we would recommend a graphical presentation that displays a simple "mock-up" of what the structure would look like, if implemented. We have used diagrams like the following:

Depending on the number of topics you have included in the session, you may need to run to two pages.

Once the results have been gathered together into an easy-to-read format, you are then ready to make use of them as part of your overall information design process.

While every card sorting session will generate different results, there are a number of common themes:

Similarities vs differences

It is often very revealing to compare the results of card sorting sessions with your different user groups. If a common structure appears across a wide range of users, you can be confident that this is the right way to go.

If there are differences, investigate why. This will probably identify differences in the way the information is used, or the types of activities that the different groups conduct. Either way, these issues will need to be taken into account in an overall information design.

Information design

The card sorting sessions serve as input into your information design process. This will generate an overall structure for your information, as well as the major menu items, navigation and more.

The card sorting itself is just another input into this process: it does not generate the final structure. For example, there will undoubtedly be areas where your users disagree about the subject groupings.

The card sorting can, however, identify some important trends, such as:

• Do the users want to see the information grouped by: subject, process, business group, or type of information?
• What are the most important items to put on the main menu?
• How many menu items should there be, and how deep should it go?
• How similar or different are the needs of the users throughout the organisation?

With these sorts of questions answered, you can tackle the information design with much greater confidence.

Analysing the results of the survey

Analysing the survey results is generally just a process of collating all the answers and presenting them in some simple and meaningful fashion.

Usage survey

The usage survey will generate a large number of scores (ranging from 1 to 5). These should be entered into a spreadsheet and analysed there. For example, an average score for each topic is clearly a useful piece of information.

Beyond this, you could explore a number of different graphs to highlight particular aspects of the results, or perform more complex statistical analysis. In general, however, the most useful form of presentation is the one that allows a reader to rapidly identify the most, and least, used topics.

Feedback

In some form or another, the general feedback filled in by the participants needs to be typed in. If there are modest number of responses, consider just listing these (perhaps as bulleted list).

If there are a large number of responses, it will be necessary to summarise them. Needless to say, care should be taken to ensure that the summary reflects the overall intent of the responses.

Make sure that both positive and negative responses are included. User dissatisfaction is generally more important to recognise than satisfaction, as it has the potential to generate considerable difficulties later in the project.

Wrapping up

Once you have done all the preparation, run the session, and analysed the results, you are almost finished. A few final steps neatly completes the exercise:

• Gather together the results, and create a small report. This should include the following information:
• the date of the session
• who participated in the session
• a brief summary of the activities conducted
• a description of the survey questions asked
• the analysis of the results
• any other comments and conclusions drawn

This report should be self-contained, and easy to read. Put some extra effort into this, as this is another opportunity to market your project.

• The report should be sent to a number of key groups:
• your manager (of course)
• the manager of the participants
• the participants themselves

The actual participants are the most important of these, and should be sent the feedback as soon as possible. If necessary, the report can be edited to remove any conclusions or comments that might cause an issue.

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