[Sigia-l] alternate aplication of card-sorting

[Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com]

Markus,

I haven't done a card sort this way myself, but have heard from others 
that it can work fine:  For distant users, send them a set of cards to 
sort with blank cards for labeling groups (and possibly creating their 
own content cards if applicable).  Given them instructions to group the 
cards and then label the groups.  Have them do sub-grouping if you have 
lots of content.  They then put rubber bands around each group/subgroup 
and mail the set back to you. User suggested labels help you get ideas 
for labels, headings, terminology, and metadata.

You might also find this interesting from the Usability First site:

"Usability Glossary: open card sort  
a type of card sort that asks users to suggest categories that topics 
group into. Users are provided with a list of topics (e.g. content 
pieces to go on a website) and are asked to group them and to label the 
groups with category labels. If the set of topics is large enough, they 
are asked to further group the groups or further subdivide the groups, 
labeling all the groupings. 

"These groupings are then combined to determine a user-based 
conceptualization of the site structure, and the labels given are used 
as a starting point for labeling the site navigation."

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Lyle Kantrovich

Croc O' Lyle: personal commentary on usability, Information 
Architecture, and web design
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com