Donna Spencer - Card Sorting

At its core, card sorting is a pretty simple techniquewrite things on index cards (or the software equivalent) and ask people to sort the cards into groups.

But as is the case with most simple things, there is plenty of room for complexity. Figuring out why you would bother to do this in the first place; deciding what to put on the cards; guiding people through the activity so you get something useful; and actually applying what youve learnedall these can get pretty tricky for real-life messy projects.

Thats why I wrote a whole book on card sortingto share what Ive learned via lots of card sorts and via working on projects where I had to organize information that people could easily find, understand, and use.

This is a practical book with a touch of theory and interesting real-life case studies. It is based on work that I, and many others, do day-to-day. I hope it helps you with your day-to-day work as well.

This book is for anyone who needs to organize information that other people have to use. It will be particularly useful for people involved in information architecture projects (which I describe much better in Chapter ).

If you have never run a card sort and are thinking of doing so, this book is definitely for you. By the end, youll be able to plan your sort, run it, and figure out what youve learned.

If youve run card sorts already, this book is for you, too. Ive included plenty of tips based on my experience, and you may really like the chapters on analysis (), especially if you have never attempted statistical analysis in the past.

And if you dont think youll ever run a card sort, but have a team that might need to do so, theres plenty of valuable information here for you. Youll be able to better support your team when they ask if they can run a sort (or do other user research). You may get the most from Chapters , and how the outcomes of card sorting are used for projects.

This book is organized into four main sections.

Chapters is not about card sorting at all, but instead is about some of the really important principles that underlie categorization and why it is hard to organize things.

Chapters cover all the practical steps to run a card sort, including choosing your method, selecting cards, arranging participants, making cards, and facilitating the session. This whole section is very practical and full of tips and tricks.

Chapters is about statistical analysis (thats the scariest chapter).

The last section is about using what you have learned. Chapter youll learn about communicating the results.

This books companion website ( rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/ ) contains pointers to useful card-sorting resources, such as my card sort analysis spreadsheet, a list of card-sorting tools, and a card-sorting bibliography, as well as a calendar of my upcoming talks and a place for you to engage in discussion with others who are interested in card sorting. You can keep up with the site by subscribing to its RSS feed ( feeds.rosenfeldmedia.com/cardsorting/ ).

Weve also made the books diagrams, screenshots, and other illustrations available under a Creative Commons license for you to download and include in your own presentations. Youll find the original illustrations and diagrams from this book at www.flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia .