[Sigia-l] card sorting: dealing with multiple placements

[Boniface Lau]

> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> Behalf Of Todd R.Warfel
>  
> On Friday, May 23, 2003, at 05:39 PM, Jesse Wilbur wrote:
> 
> > ...she asked me how I'd handle it if people wanted to put one site
> > into more than one category.
[...]
>
> Typically, they won't. 

That is probably due to the card sort restriction imposed on users. If
users were allowed to have duplicated placement, they probably would.

Proper placement depends on the nature of items. For example, it is
quite natural to place an opera singer's biography under both the
Opera and Biography categories. Such duplicated placement improves
findability.

Card sort is really about ordering. Using an ordering tool for
categoring implies non-overlapping categories. In situations where
such assumption of non-overlap does not hold, card sort distorts the
true picture by imposing an either/or mentality.


Boniface