What is card sorting and why may you use it?
Card sorting is a technique that many information architects and use as input to the structure of a site or product.
Its described in a few texts and a number of sites, and most description are brief. Its also very quick, inexpensive ,
and reliable method, which serves as input into your information design process. It generates an overall structure for
your information like form navigation and menus.
The card sorting may not provide a final structure and it can help give answers to previous questions you will be able to
tackle throughtout the information design phase. The question are do the users want to see the information grouped by subject,
process, business group, or information type, how similar are the needs of the different user groups, how different are their
needs, how many potential main categories are there, and what should those groups be called.
The advantages and disadvantage with card sorting varies, so the first thing that I will start with is advantages. Card sorting
advantages has six like being simple its easy for the organizer and the participants, cheap is typically the cost is a stack of 3×5 index cards,
quick to execute is you can perform several sorts in a short period of time, established like being used for over 10 years. The last two are
involving the user like the information structure is based on real user input, and provides a good foundation it provides a good foundation
for the structure of a site of product. Card sorting has four disadvantages are like does not consider users task, result may vary, analysis
can be time consuming and may capture “surface” characteristics only.
