[Sigia-l] My card sorting book is underway!

[Stewart Dean]

>From: "Donna Maurer" <donna at maadmob.net>
>To: sigia-l at asis.org
>Subject: [Sigia-l] My card sorting book is underway!
>Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 07:08:53 +1000
>
>Hi guys
>
>I’m very excited to let you know that, between now and the end of the year, 
>I will be
>writing a book on card sorting. Specifically, it will be about how to use 
>card sorting in
>information architecture and similar projects. I think it will fill an 
>important gap – there
>is some material about how to run a card sort, but little on how to 
>actually use the
>outputs.

I have never been sold on card sorting. I work on medium size sites - banks, 
energy providers, that kind of thing. You are right that there is little on 
how to use the output of card sorting, and those who use card sorting havnt 
really explained to me how it fits with the work I do.

I have seen it claimed it can organise top level navigation.

Open card sorting is like user designed buildings - it's interesting to see 
how they think but the results are often tell you little about how to 
structure the site.  It's also a backwards way of looking at things, in my 
view. that is starting with content then trying to grow out a task. To my 
mind it should start with a task and deterimine what content is needed and 
how it is expected to be found.

I have a method that uses cards but is based upon flow. The user can explain 
some tasks, this is broken into stages and what content is expected is added 
along with the flow.

Closed card sorting is like a poor mans prototyping from what I've seen, it 
strips out much of the vital context and, in my view, should be avoided as a 
validation process.

But, the question remains, why do so many people use it. I suspect I might 
be missing something and that card sorting is of use but I've missed that 
use. I'm looking to be convinced but currently card sorting is filed in away 
with user profiles and eye tracking in the list of things others appear to 
do that I can't see how it can feed into the process of creating a new site 
or improving an existing one.

Donna, you are writing a book on the subject so must be sold on the idea, 
could you try and make me a convert? How can the outputs be used directly or 
is that not the idea of card sorting?

Good luck with the book. I will probably buy it to try and disprove my 
personal theory.

Stewart Dean