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WEB204 » 04) Card Sorting for Website Information Architecture Report

According to Courage & Baxter, Card Sorting is a popular and inexpensive user-centered research methodology that allows the researcher to collect data from website user groups in terms of how information on a website should be grouped, organized and labeled according to the user’s mental model.

Therefore, a Card Sort can help identify:

• Overall organization of the content or tasks in your product
• Terminology employed by users
• Labels users apply to different categories of information or tasks
• Missing and unnecessary objects

To conduct a card sort the researcher prepares a set of cards that contain a title and a brief description of the pieces of information or tasks that are or are proposed to be in the informational structure of a website.

Requirements:

• This Card Sorting for Website Information Architecture Report shall be written as to describe the motivations for, procedures of and results of conducting a Card Sorting for Website Information Architecture.
• To prepare your cards, your team should create your list of content topics. Topics can be phrases or words, very specific or more general. As a suggestion, limit yourself to 70 topic cards or less.
• Your card sort shall be conducted by your team online using Optimal Sort to run one group session with 10 to 15 participants. Your participants will mostly consist of the other students in this class. (You may also choose to run some participants that you know with the demographics of your website topic.) Each student in the class is required to participate in the other students’ studies. ;-)
• To analyze the data from the study, your team should start by analyzing the card groupings by user group for similarities and differences between user groups.
• To conclude your study and make your recommendations, each team will finalize the recommendations in the form of a proposed information architecture.
• Each Card Sorting for Website Information Architecture Report shall contain but not be limited to: 1) Background & Objectives 2) Procedure & Materials 3) Findings & Results and 4) Conclusion & Recommendations of the study.
• Post a link to this assignment in the comments section AND print it out to turn in as your Card Sorting for Website Information Architecture Report assignment according to the class Schedule (Winter) or Schedule (Spring).

Examples: 

• Card Sorting the Human Centered Design & Engineering Website Information Architecture | Mike Sinkula
• Seattle Tilth Site Card Sorting Report | Cameron Kunz, Michelle Szwedo, and Jeff Reynolds

Resources:

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool & Crawler Software | Screaming Frog
• How to pick cards for card sorting | Optimal Workshop