Why I don’t ask Mandalorians for help with my card sorting
How to let real users tell you what they think is best
This article is day 26 of a 31 day series. A mash-up of the Inktober 2022 prompt list and UX terminology. Read more about the challenge here.
Day 26 | Inktober prompt: Ego| UX Term: Card Sorting
I’m not sure I’m mature enough for this
Talking about ego can get a little touchy it seems. There are fewer conversations about it in the way that Freud talked about it, and more just talking about a person’s sense of self, as an exaggeration, or otherwise. A lot of it is pretty eye roll inducing, which sounds pretty egotistical to say. See what I mean? Touchy. But I feel that there is still something to learn from the exploration, as there almost always is. You’ll hear people talk about “putting their ego aside”, meaning that they are choosing to not think only of themselves, and see another perspective. This is supremely important in user experience where we want pretty much everything to be about the user. And as brilliant as we all are, no ego, just sayin’, we can sometimes get it wrong when it comes to knowing what will make sense to users.
A perfect example of this is seen at the top of nearly every website you visit. The menu bar, the navigation, that top part with links to the other pages and stuff. Whatever you call it, it needs to make sense and be easy to use. As subject matter experts, it can be tempting to assume how things should be organized and displayed for instant understanding, but to quote my favorite break-dancing tutorial dvd series from the early aughts, “We don’t break like that.” So that’s why we rely on card sorting.
What is card sorting?
Card sorting is an opportunity for UX designers to put away their sticky notes, and dust of their index cards. Okay yeah, UXers may have a weird obsession with office supplies, but what’s wrong with that?
When it comes to organizing a navigation menu there will be different considerations based on the complexity. If your site is limited to a handful of pages, you might just list them across the top and call it a day. But with more complex sites, you may have pages as well as sub-pages, and then maybe even variants. When that’s the case, you have to get a bit more strategic about how the information is organized. There are certain expectations when it comes to a menu that would behoove you to honor. If there are already existing and well defined design patterns, the primary method for navigating your site is not the place to get creative. That’s how you lose people.
Here comes trouble
Now the issues arise when there are categories that fall outside of those common design patterns in the mix. This is likely representative of the bulk of the content on your site. All those pieces that you want to make sure people see. To help ensure their success you can conduct card sorting. Essentially you place each category and subcategory on a card. Anything you’re thinking of including in that menu should be on those cards. Then you hand your new deck of cards over to a participant, and ask them to organize them in a way that makes sense to them.
Like with all user research, you want the group you test with to be representative of the users of your site. If we’re talking “bark” we should probably distinguish between inviting an arborist, or a dog lover. Beyond the risk of confusing terms, there are design patterns and mental models that exist within industries that are well established, so the better you can align, the more you’ll be able to reduce the cognitive load expected of your user.
What do I do with this?
The sorting of cards is but the first step in this process. You want to make sure that you get plenty of participants. Fifteen is a common standard, as after that you tend to see diminishing returns. Then you start to look for patterns. You may find that there are some pretty obvious match-ups and there may be some that make you go, “hmm”. Don’t be afraid to test again if your results are not clear. It can happen that you get some grey areas that you’d like a little more feedback on. These can be a great opportunity for different kinds of testing like A/B testing or First Click testing. At the very least, with card sorting, you’re narrowing down. Iterate and iterate. As a community without ego might say, “This is the way.”
