Card Sorting

How many cards?

70+ cards are just too many. Such a large pile of cards will only tire the participants and will probably not get you the answers you are seeking. Studies made on this exercise show that the "sweet spot" is around 20 with a maximum of 40 cards for one round per participant.

How many participants?

To find out patterns, similarities: for best results, the exercise needs to be done with more than 10 to 15 participants. You can start with 1-2 participants prior to going to larger testing, to see if there are any problems you might have missed and would like to improve before testing on a larger audience.

Types of Card Sorting

There are three types of card sorts: open card sorts, closed card sorts, and hybrid card sorts. Also, two different testing approaches: moderated or unmoderated.

Open Card Sorting

Open Card Sorting means that the participants do both the following actions themselves: creating categories, and arranging the cards in the categories they created themselves. The participants can also add new cards too. Some of the pros of this method are that due to its flexibility, it allows a more accurate understanding of the user's mental models, and allows researchers to discover new angles, new opportunities.

Close Card Sorting

Closed card sorting means that the participants are limited to using only the cards that were provided to them. So the categories are already established prior to the exercise. This method will help you discover patterns easily and test assumptions. This will be of better help if it's done after a card open sorting exercise.

Hybrid Card Sorting

Hybrid card sorting means you will provide participants with some flexibility. The participants will receive the established categories along with the cards that need to be sorted. But also the participants can add new categories and cards that they feel are missing from the deck. It's good to use this method at the end of a close card sorting exercise. This will allow people to suggest different things and maybe open new doors to further explore.

Moderated Card Sorting

Moderated card sorting needs a researcher, a notetaker, and a participant, in person or remotely. This type of session allows guidance through the exercise. It helps discuss, elaborate, and document the behavior of the participants in real-time. It also helps with giving an insight into which cards are more difficult to sort, to understand, as well as the reasoning behind actions. A con for this is that all the parties need to be present at the same time during the session.

Unmoderated Card Sorting

With unmoderated card sorting, you do not need to provide any guidance to the participants. It allows large batch testing, and gather a lot of quantitative data. The beauty of this is that it can be done asynchronously, and with lots of online tools available. These tools provide a great analysis of the final results and patterns.

Online Card-sorting tools

As I mentioned, card sorting can be done online, using some great options that are available in the market at the moment. Lots of researchers highly recommend: Optimal Workshop , Usability Tools, UsabiliTest.

Exercise: Card sorting Pen and Paper

We will make an easy closed card exercise for an E-commerce menu. Take or cut 10 to 15 paper squares that you will use for writing the cards. See if you have some colored paper around the house, you will use that to write the categories on.

Go to any online e-commerce website, and write down some of the categories from the menu. Place your colored "menu cards" in a straight line and start writing.

I have chosen 4 categories that are somehow close in meaning to each other, because I want to create a need to focus and pay more attention when I work on sorting the cards.

From the same website, extract some sub-categories you find in the selected categories. Start writing the names you've chosen on the cards.

Make sure that each category has at least 2-3 options.

Mix up the cards and start placing the cards under the categories you think they belong to.

You can change your mind many times of course. Once you are done, see if your card arrangement is the same as from the website from where you took the categories and the cards. ☺️

Conclusion

If possible, try to document how participants behave during the exercise. You can discover that some terms or categories are just too hard to understand, to group together and maybe decide it's better to change or cut them out completely.