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the180 - Card Sorting, Part II
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Card Sorting - How to Build Great Navigation and Organization for Your Web Site

Part II - What To Do With the Data

In the previous the180, discussed how to do card sorting.

Card Sorting results.

  • Rough maps of how each person would organize topics on your site.
  • Organized by groups and sub-groups.
  • The names each person would use for each group and sub-group.

How to analyze the results.

  • Find a table with blank wall closeby.
  • Put all maps side-by-side on the wall.
  • Have all the index cards in front of you on the table.
  • If possible, invite at least one other person to help out.
  • Study the maps quietly, looking for common patterns of how cards are grouped.
  • There will not be complete consistencies, but patterns will emerge.
  • Move the cards on the table to create a 'first draft' of a card organization that reflects how your users' organized the cards.
  • Take another sheet of large paper, and make a 'first draft' of the names for the groups and sub-groups.
  • While your names *might* be the same as the names created by users, do *not* expect them to be.
  • Try to come up with something better using their ideas as guidance only.
  • Put your 'first draft' of group names on the wall.
  • Take a break. (Seriously.)
  • Revise your cards on the table for a 'second draft' of the organization.
  • Make a 'second draft' of the names of the group and sub-groups.
  • Decide if what you have is good enough.
  • If another revision needed, continue until you have created something reasonably good enough.

What to do with the results.

  • Your names serve as the basis for your set of main navigation links, repeated on every page of the web site.
  • The card organization serves as the basis for your web site organization.

By the way.

  • This very same Card Sorting technique can be used to create the menus for software applications.
  • The Microsoft Word menu, for example, would look different if Card Sorting was used to help people find functions more easily.
  • All of the180s now can be found at the180 list.

Posted January 8, 2002
By Joe Grant

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