Affinity Diagrams

Affinity diagramming is a categorization method where users sort various concepts into several categories. This method is used by a team to organize a large amount of data according to the natural relationships between the items.

IAwiki. Articles>Information Design>Charts and Graphs>Card Sorting

Analyzing Card Sort Results with a Spreadsheet Template

This article explains how to quickly derive easily-read, quantitative results from a card-sort activity by entering data into a spreadsheet template that is adaptable to any set of cards and categories.

Lamantia, Joe. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Beyond Story Cards: Agile Requirements Collaboration

Discusses the life cycle of Story Cards, what they should be, how to use them and what to watch out for.

Shore, James. JamesShore.com (2006). Articles>Documentation>Agile>Card Sorting

Card Sorting Tools: Final Summary

A summary of how IBM's USort/EzCalc and CardZort worked for results entry and analysis.

Maurer, Donna. DonnaM (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Card Sorting: A Definitive Guide

Card sorting is a simple user-centered technique for obtaining insight into the structure of a site. But is it really so simple? This definitive guide to card sorting includes detailed instructions on how to execute and analyze a sort, plus helpful hints to improve your sorts. It is the first in a series of articles about card sorting.

Maurer, Donna and Todd Warfel. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Card Sorting: An Inexpensive and Practical Usability Technique  

Card sorting is often inexpensive, quick, and easy. Learn when to use this method and how to perform a card sort of your own within your company.

Kaufman, Joshua. Intercom (2006). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Card Sorting: How Many Users to Test

Testing ever-more users in card sorting has diminishing returns, but you should still use three times more participants than you would in traditional usability tests.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Card Sorting: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned

Card sorting is a simple and effective method with which most of us are familiar. There are already some excellent resources on how to run a card sort and why you should do card sorting. This article, on the other hand, is a frank discussion of the lessons I've learned from running numerous card sorts over the years. By sharing these lessons learned along the way, I hope to enable others to dodge similar potholes when they venture down the card sorting path.

Ng, Sam. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Card-Based Classification Evaluation

We hear and talk a lot about card sorting in various forms, and how it can be used as input on a hierarchy or classification system (or a taxonomy, if you like more technical words). We hear that we should test our hierarchies, but we don’t talk about how.

Maurer, Donna. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

EZSort

The EZSort tool helps interface designers organize information based on users' expectations using statistical cluster analysis. This tool includes two packages -- USort and EZCalc. The USort program can be used by card sort participants to sort virtual cards with a simple GUI interface, instead of using physical cards. It can also be used by study administrators to generate card list and enter existing card sort result from individual participants. Once individual card sort results are captured by the USort package, test administrators can use the EZCalc package to manage card sort data from multiple participants, and perform cluster analyses. EZCalc generates tree diagrams that allow direct adjustment of the cluster thresholds. The packages can be used in designing Web sites, program interfaces, and many other information design applications.

IBM (1999). Resources>Software>User Centered Design>Card Sorting

Global Online Card Sort for World Usability Day 2006

World Usability Day has come and gone for 2006, and the results of the global online card sort are in. About five hundred people in 19 or 20 countries participated in the exercise. Find out what's next.

Bailie, Rahel Anne. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

How to Organize a Portfolio

You have collected the pieces you would like to include in your portfolio. You have sorted through your collection and selected your best work. You have made entry cards for each piece to provide a good introduction for each sample. And you are ready to place your work, introduction page, entry cards, section dividers, and give-aways into your new leather portfolio. Where do you start?

Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson. Careers>Portfolios>Information Design>Card Sorting

Information Design Using Card Sorting

At the beginning of any information design exercise, it is normal to be confronted by a very long list of potential subjects to include. The challenge is to organise this information in a way that is useful and meaningful for the users of the system. A card sorting session can go a long way towards resolving this problem.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2001). Articles>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Innovations in Card Sorting

Creating a product that has a logical information structure is critical to the success of the product. A good structure helps users find information and accomplish their tasks with ease. Card sorting is one method that can help us understand how users think the information and navigation should be within a product.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Card Sorting

Pluralistic Usability Walkthrough

A usability test method employed to generate early design evaluation by assigning a group of users a series of paper-based tasks that represent the proposed product interface and including participation from developers of that interface.

Usability Body of Knowledge. Resources>Usability>Methods>Card Sorting

Sorting Techniques for User-Centered Information Design  

Card, or pile, sorting has long been used in social sciences to identify how humans group words or concepts together. Can such sorting also inform information design? Can we use it to better anticipate what users are looking for when they open a book, a Help system, a library catalog, or a Web site? A review of literature and a variety of published case studies suggests how various sorting techniques are suited to different research goals. How to carry out a sorting study is discussed, and analysis methods applicable to the goals for an information design project are reviewed. We look at automation tools as a means of reducing analysis tedium, and as a means to expand a potential study audience via remote participation.

Deaton, Mary M. Techne (2003). Design>User Centered Design>Methods>Card Sorting

WebCAT Category Analysis Tool

The Web Category Analysis Tool (WebCAT) is a variation on traditional card sorting techniques that allows a web designer/usability engineer to test a proposed or existing categorization scheme of a website to determine how well the categories and items are understood by users.

NIST. Articles>User Centered Design>Information Design>Card Sorting