Card Sorting
Designing Usable Categories
Published: April 2009
Paperback:
162 pages,
ISBN 1-933820-02-0
Digital:
ISBN 1-933820-07-1
by Donna Spencer
This book is a fresh, clear, practical explanation of the value of card-sorting, how to do it, and how to use the results. Spencer mixes step-by-step instructions and good examples with just enough theory. You'll emerge from this book with new skills to create great user-centered information architectures—and smart responses to tricky questions from pesky stakeholders."
—Tamara Adlin, Founding Partner, Fell Swoop, and co-author of The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design
Card sorting helps us understand how people think about content and categories. Armed with this knowledge, we can group information so that people can better find and understand it.
In this book, Donna describes how to plan and run a card sort, then analyse the results and apply the outcomes to your project.
Why should you buy this book?
- You'll be able to gain the basics quickly and get sorting straight away
- Your designs will be better and you'll have more confidence in the outcomes by including card sorting in your projects
- Even if you have conducted a card sort before, the book will contain plenty of extra tips to make the most of the technique
“Card Sorting” Blog
Blog Archive »
Mike Rice has created a fantastic spreadsheet to help analyse card sorting data. It's a 'co-occurrence matrix' which means it shows how often each pair of cards were put together in the card sort. It has full instructions on how...
New articles and resources
It's been a while since I had a good look around for new articles on card sorting. Here's some recent ones. Thorough overviews Card sorting (Interaction-Design.org) Card sorting (Usability Body of Knowledge) Detailed examination of one aspect Online or offline...
Card sorting doesn't cut the custard
Here's a really good post from Zef Fugaz called Card sorting doesn't cut the custard, where he talks about how we should make sure information is accessible in more than one way and how card sorting seems to encourage just...
Inviting the guests to cook the food
I received an interesting comment today, that basically said that card sorting was a ridiculous idea and akin to "inviting the guests of a restaurant to make the food in the kitchen with the cooks". People don't say this to...
First review
Thank you very much to Matthew Sanders for the first review of my Card sorting book. Phew - he liked it, and provided good suggestions for some things I didn't cover. Book review: Card Sorting by Donna Spencer, by Matthew...