Brightfind recently brought us to beautiful, sunny, San Diego to moderate a user experience study called a Card Sort for the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC) at their annual conference. A card sort is an exercise that gathers user input on how a website’s navigation and information architecture should be organized. The results of a card sort tells us where your target audience expects to find certain things, what terminology makes sense to them, and what content might be unfamiliar. These results are used to create a user-driven information architecture, navigation structure, and sitemap.
A card sort is an incredibly valuable exercise to conduct when redesigning a website; it lays the foundation for the site and sheds light on users’ attitudes towards different types of content, their levels of familiarity with the taxonomy, and their main priorities and needs. If users can’t find what they’re looking for, or if they get confused and have difficulty orienting themselves on the site, they can feel lost and overwhelmed; their frustration and dissatisfaction with the website can deter them from engaging with a website. It brings to mind the famous Maya Angelou quotation: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” If people are frustrated and feel lost on your website, they’ll remember that feeling, and there’s a high likelihood that they will not want to visit the site again. This concept really applies to the practice of user experience as a whole; people will remember how the experience of going to your website made them feel (especially if it’s a negative experience).
Conducting a card sort is an excellent first step in ensuring that your users won't feel lost on your site. A card sort can be done in person using physical cards with content items labeled on them, or by moderating an electronic card sort in person or online (among other ways). I prefer in-person card sorts, because it gives us the opportunity to speak to users face-to-face, answer their questions, and learn more about their thought processes. We get a richer, more qualitative, and more comprehensive picture of their mental maps and priorities.
For this study, we used an online software program called “Optimal Workshop” and moderated the study in person. We set up shop in a booth in one of the expo halls at the NACAC conference in San Diego, where we could get feedback from their main audience base. Participants were asked to review a set of content items (on digital cards) that are currently on NACAC’s website and group similar items together in a way that made sense to them. Then they gave each group a logical category name. Cards could be dragged and dropped into categories, and once all of the cards were sorted into groups, participants could enter a name for the group in a text field at the top of each group. Once participants have placed items that they felt belonged together into groups and named each group, the result is a user-driven sitemap with primary and secondary navigation items. Once completed, we use the software to analyze the results in simple, digestible formats including (but not limited to) charts and graphs that display the relationships between the participants’ responses.
When explaining the exercise to participants, we emphasized that they should not overthink it and simply go with their gut instincts. There are no right or wrong answers; it’s whatever makes the most sense to them. That being said, we weren’t looking for out-of the box creativity (for example, while the name “Things that are probably important” is both an amusing and technically accurate name, it lacks clarity and doesn’t indicate the type of content users can expect to find within that group). We ask this to see which category names are mostly commonly proposed.
One of the things I love about working in user experience is that I’m in a constant state of learning, whether it’s about audience segments, getting to know your clients’ users, best practices, new technology, etc. Every time I conduct or moderate user testing, I always learn something new, and this trip was no exception. Our sign at our booth read “Help NACAC Redesign Its Website.” When we asked if people wanted to help redesign the NACAC website, often the reaction was “Oh, no, you wouldn’t want me. I’m not a designer!” or “I don’t know anything about web design; I wouldn’t be any help!” It seemed that our potential participants heard the word “redesign” and assumed that the activity we were conducting required someone with design credentials, and therefore they weren’t qualified to participate. The word "redesign” had connotations that were deterring the very people whose opinions we wanted most!
So, as UX designers are wont to do, I decided to test this theory and changed my approach, asking questions such as, “Would you like to give us feedback about how NACAC should organize their new website?” This approach was much more successful; people were much more comfortable with the idea of giving feedback, and appreciated it when they felt that their voices were heard. By adjusting how we asked for their participation, we increased our positive responses by framing it as an opportunity to be heard rather than a challenge for which they felt unqualified.
By the end of the conference, our final participant count was nearly double what our original goal had been. One of the reasons I love going onsite to talk to users is that is shows off the best in people; it’s great to see how much people really want to help and get involved. As they finished the card sort, a number of participants said that this was really fun for them! Others remarked about how they had no idea that exercises like card sorts existed, and that they felt it could be really beneficial for their own organizations. It was a such a wonderful, productive trip, and I left feeling accomplished and excited to analyze the data from the card sort to create NACAC’s new information architecture and sitemap!
So until next time, you stay classy, San Diego.