[Sigia-l] Card Sort Exercise suggestions?

[Anders Ramsay]

Hi Andrew - 

Might I suggest not basing this on an existing website, but rather using 
something like a physical IKEA catalog (Swedish company - you'll get 
bonus points for that) and cut out product images/descriptions  (make 
multiple copies of each, etc), and use this for your card sort.  To make it 
more interesting, focus on somewhat obscure product types/areas, such 
as accessories, or the droves of knick-knacks you find in an IKEA store.  
The language element could also be very interesting here, since IKEA 
products have obliquely related (though often somewhat curious) names 
in Swedish for every product.  (You could of course also remove the IKEA 
names, since that could adversely affect the sort, or have a control group 
without names.) When they finish, you could compare their 
categorization/hierarchy/cross-referencing to how the content is structured 
in the catalog.   By using something other than a website, I think you might 
steer their thinking away from menus and navigation bars, and keep the 
focus on the actual content.

Hope this helps.

-Anders

On 4/22/02 12:32 PM, Andrew Otwell at andrew at heyotwell.com wrote:

> Hey IA instructors! I'm doing a workshop this week with some students 
and I
> could use a suggestion:
> 
> I want to do a card sorting exercise with them: break the class of 40 or so
> into small groups with the same set of cards, have them organize and 
each
> group present to the class, then we discuss.
> 
> I'm having trouble finding a site that lends itself to an hour or so of work
> (so maybe 75 or so pages/cards). I want to avoid food topics or animal
> topics, since this is a group of Swedish students, and for many people 
food
> names and animal names are difficult to learn thoroughly. (I don't want to
> go through the "tomato as vegetable or fruit" discussion with them,
> either...)
> 
> Any suggestions for a good smallish set of content?
> 
> thanks
> 
> andrew
> 
> Content Management Symposium, Chicago O'Hare Marriott, June 28 - 
30.
> See http://www.asis.org/CM
> _______________________________________________
> Sigia-l mailing list
> Sigia-l at asis.org
> http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l