Card Sorting is a powerful tool that allows you to understand how your users categorize and group different types of information. Card sorting can be conducted in usability tests to optimize information hierarchy and UX fluidity.
Card sorting can be used in the following circumstances:
- Understand where your testers expect certain content to be found
- Validate how people perceive information contained on a page in a web or mobile application
- Understand if your website labels and tabs make sense for users
- Test different layouts and application structures with different users groups
General tips on creating card sorting tests
- To optimize participant experience, card sorting is only available in desktops.
- Try to limit the number of cards and categories presented to users. Although there is no hard set rule, having too many cards and categories can cause confusion.
- For open card sorting, toggle Allow participants to add categories to let users create their own categories.
- Further customization to allow participants to rank cards within a given category is possible by enabling Enable participants to rank cards.
- You can always Randomize order of the card to counterbalance the order of items presented to the testers. This helps reduce potential bias from the order of presentation.
- Make sure to double check the instructions and be sure that everything is clear and concise. Writing good instructions matter as much as the cards and the categories.
Setting Up Card Sorting
Step 1. Open your draft study and click on + Add task, and select Card sorting.
Step 2. Add instructions to your card sorting task.
Step 3. Add and edit categories and cards as needed.
You can also drag and drop the cards to change the order of the cards.
If you want to delete any of the cards, you can click on the trash icon
Additional customization is available for categories and card items. For both, you can add additional descriptions by enabling Show descriptions:
- Max cards per category: By default, participants can place as many cards in a single category, but if you want to deliberately set an upper limit, you can set the number of max cards that can be placed for each category.
- Allow participants to add categories: This toggle allows you to run open card sort, by allowing participants to create their own categories as they complete the tasks. Toggling this will show the option to add categories as shown in the image.
- Enable participants to rank cards: This toggle allows participants to drag-and-drop item cards within the assigned category to rank the items.
For card items:
- Add images: You can also add images to each card item.
- Randomize orders: The order of card items will be shuffled for every participant.
Step 4. Preview your card sorting task. Every time you make a change in the card sort builder, you can preview your changes in the right side.
Card sorting results
If you want to understand how to interpret and analyze card sorting results, please check out our guide on interpreting card sorting results.