[Sigia-l] Determining Users' Mental Model to Drive Site Architecture?

[Heather Johnson]

Just to make sure I understand the terminology correctly, can someone
clarify the difference between an open card sort and a closed card sort?

Thanks.
Heather

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Todd R.Warfel
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 8:50 AM
To: Bollaert, Jodi
Cc: 'sigia-l at asis.org'
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Determining Users' Mental Model to Drive Site
Architecture?



On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 07:59 PM, Bollaert, Jodi wrote: [...]
> I understand an open card sort might typically be a good way to go,
> but my client is wary of that approach since it may totally negate 
> weeks of time they've spent deliberating over two potentially good 
> architectures.
[...]

Or it could validate their work. The fact is that if they've done a 
good job up to this point, then they have nothing to worry about. And 
honestly, if you're after the users' mental model, then an open card 
sort is one of the best ways to capture that.

You could do a closed card sort, but I'm not a big fan of those. One 
way to do this is to have boxes on the table labeled with the 
high-level categories. Ask users to put cards in the box they feel the 
item has the closest relationship to. This is more of a top down 
approach, and again, I'm not a big fan of this method.