skip navigation
Go to Foraker Design
Usability First
Your Online Guide to Usability Resources
Home
Resources
Intro to Usability
Courses
Books
Humor
Links
Methods
Glossary
Search
Categories
A-Z Index
Submit a Term
Job Postings
Applications
Website Design
Usability ROI
Accessibility
Groupware
Consulting
Site Tools
Site Map
About Us
Feedback
Foraker Design Foraker
Design

Usability Glossary: card sorting


a technique for uncovering the hierarchical structure in a set of concepts by having users group items written on a set of cards, often used, for instance, to work out the organization of a website.

For a website, users would be given cards with the names of the web pages on the site and asked to group the cards into related categories. After doing so, the users may be asked to break groups again into subgroups for large sites. After gathering the groupings from several users, designers can typically spot clear organizations across many users. Statistical analysis can uncover the best groupings from the data where it's not clear by inspection, though inconsistent groupings may be a sign of a poorly-defined goal for the website or a poor choice of web page names.

see also

affinity diagram
closed card sort
information architecture
open card sort
similarity matching
website design

categories

Glossary Categories > Usability Methods > Conceptual Design
Glossary Categories > Website Design > Navigation

© 2002-2005 Foraker Design - Provider of Usability & Web Design Services Foraker Design