[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
> 
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