Team Spirit conducts card-sorting studies whenever we need to quickly ascertain your target users’ mental models for organizing, categorizing, and relating functionality or information. Card-sorting studies provide insights into

• organizing digital information environments and applications to improve findability
• creating lexicons, or controlled vocabularies, and labeling schemes for navigation systems and applications

Depending on our objectives for a card-sorting study, we may prepare index cards that contain labels, terms, descriptions of content, images, or sample content. During a card-sorting study, we ask actual or representative users to sort index cards into groups. Team Spirit can use either open or closed card-sorting studies to test organizational models and labeling schemes.

Open Card Sorting

In open card-sorting studies, participants sort index cards into groups according to the relationships between their content. There are no predetermined categories or labels. When preparing for an open card-sorting study, we create the index cards, then shuffle all of them together. When conducting the study, we give each participant the deck of cards and ask them to sort the cards into categories and subcategories, explaining their thinking aloud as they work. Once they have sorted the cards, we ask them to describe each category and write a label for it on an index card.

Closed Card Sorting

In closed card-sorting studies, participants sort index cards that are labeled with terms for objects or actions into groups. When preparing for a closed card-sorting study, we write the label for each high-level category on a separate index card. We also create a few index cards for items or chunks of content belonging to each category. Then, we shuffle all of the cards together. When conducting the study, we give each participant the deck of cards and ask them to sort the cards into existing categories, spreading out the categories in whatever order makes sense to them and explaining their thinking aloud as they work. Participants can change any labels they find confusing.

Analyzing Card-Sorting Data

Once we have finished a card-sorting study, Team Spirit analyzes and identifies the underlying patterns in the data, as well as areas of disagreement among participants, which may point to

• differences between participants that indicate there are multiple user groups
• functionality, labels, or content about which participants were confused
• content that belongs in more than one category
• a need for alternative workflows
• a need for alternative navigation paths through content

At the conclusion of a card-sorting study, Team Spirit produces a brief Card-Sorting Study Report, then presents our findings to your product team. The information that we obtain through card-sorting studies is particularly useful during information architecture, interaction design, and navigation design.