UCD - Card Sorting & Site Map Creation

Card sorting is a great way to find out how your site visitors expect the information on your site to be structured and labelled. By organising your website around how your users think (and not around how your organisation thinks) your site visitors will be able to find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently. Ultimately, this will:

• Increase task completion and conversion rates
• Improve the user experience
• Encourage site visitors to return again and again

Card sorting usually takes place before the focus groups & user research² and after wireframe design & testing³ in the user-centered design process.

What is card sorting?

Card sorting is reasonably quick and easy to carry out and helps identify:

• How users expect the site's content to be structured and labelled
• Missing or unnecessary content

Card sorting involves writing down the name of each piece of content from your website on to its own card and then asking participants to place cards into logical groups (they'll usually be up to 100 cards). Once they've done this, participants assign a label to each group. They can also suggest new cards for groups.

Abstract Technology's highly experienced consultants facilitate the card sort at all times, always encouraging participants to think aloud.

This exercise is repeated with 12-15 participants in total. Then, Abstract Technology will carry out expert analysis on the groups and labels from the card sorts and create an appropriate site map for your website. We would of course work with you beforehand to identify the different user groups to take part in the card sort.

Deliverables from card sorting

Abstract Technology will create and present to you a site map inline with user expectations. This is in the form of a hierarchical diagram depicting the pages within the site and their relationship.

We would also provide you with a list of pages to be cross-linked to each other. The card sorting analysis and subsequent site map creation will show the best possible groupings. All users are of course different and two items which don't get grouped together in the site map may still belong together in the eyes of some users. We would highlight this for all possible groupings thereby showing you recommended cross-linking.

Interested in how it can work for you? Please contact [email protected] for more information.