Topics in Usability
Card Sorting

Descriptions ToolsCommentary and Related Articles

Descriptions and Instructions

Overviews and Basis Instructions

What is Card Sorting - Information and Design toolkit
General introduction and useful downloadable tools

Information design using card sorting - StepTwo
General introduction and detailed instructions

Card Sorting: A Definitive Guide - Todd Warfel and Donna Maurer in Boxes and Arrows (April 7,2004)

Card Sorting to Discover the Users' Model of the Information Space - Jakob Nielsen, Useit (May 1995)

Card-Sorting Exercise: Instructions: Part 1 - Part of the documentation of a web redesign project at MIT

Card Sorting - EMMUS (European MultiMedia Usability Services)
Basic instructions

Methods: Card Sorting - UsabilityNet
Overview and general introduction

Analysis

Analyzing Card Sort Results with a Spreadsheet Template by Joe Lamantia in Boxes and Arrows. Includes sample templates and detailed examples. (August 26, 2003)

Card Sorting and Cluster Analysis - Tutorial by Thomas Myer on IBM developerWorks

Everything You've Wanted to Know About Card Sorting - William Hudson
Slides from a talk at the UK UPA. General introduction to analysis. (Feb 18, 2005)

Advanced Techniques

Beyond cardsorting: Free-listing methods to explore user categorizations - by Rashmi Sinha on Boxes and Arrows. Extensions of card sorting research methodology. (Feb 23, 2003)

Card-Based Classification Evaluation by Donna Maurer in Boxes and Arrows - Good basic description

Other resource lists

Card Sorting on IAWiki - A large collection of links

Dey Alexander's collection of card sorting links - good annotations

Tools

OptimalSort - (Web) - Online card sorting with a rich user interface and provides online and spreadsheet results.

CAPS - Computer Aided Paper Sorting (for Windows) - from William Hudson and Syntagm

Web Category Analysis Tool (WebCAT) (Web) - free from NIST

WebSort (Web) - Online sorting tool delivers spreadsheet and EZCalc files for analysis from Jed Wood and Larry Wood

Socratic Card Sort (Web) - Online sorting and analysis tool from Socratic Technologies. Part of a suite of  market research tools

Classified (for Windows 95 and 98)- free from Information & Design and UC Design 

CardZort - (Windows) - Standalone card sorting and analysis tool 

uzCardSort - (Cross Platform) - uzCardSort is an open source, MPL licensed, Mozilla based tool for conducting and analyzing card sorts.

xSort 1.5 - (Macintosh) - xSort allows you to model and conduct a card sorting exercise in a graphical view that simulates a table with physical cards that can be
dragged around. Ppresents the results of the exercise based on statistical analysis and clustering algorithms. Creates printable reports. (Universal Binary version runs on Intel Macs) 30 day trial. A Single User license costs $29, a Site licence costs $239, and there is also a $19. Academic license available.

EZSort (for Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT) - This tool was available free from IBM Ease of Use, but is no longer supported. See the page in the Web Archive for the original pages. The applications, USort (1.8 Beta) and EZCalc (1.3 Beta), and related paper are archived here as a convenience for the community.

Commentary and Related Articles

Information architecture: using card sorting for web classification design by Gerry McGovern

Hierarchical Card Sorting: A Simple Tool for Qualitative Research, by Rick Davies, editor, Monitoring and Evaluation News

Web-based Card Sorting for Information Architecture - Larry Wood, Jed Wood and John Anderson - Description based on their WebSort tool

1994 Design of SunWeb, Sun Microsystems' Intranet - A description of this project, including how they used card sorting,  by Jakob Nielsen and Darrell Sano

Consolidated Assessment by Seth Gordon on Boxes and Arrows - An overview that includes a discussion of card sorting

A User Input and Analysis Tool for Information Architecture by Jianming Dong, Shirley Martin and Paul Waldo, IBM. This paper introduced the EZSort tools from IBM.

Old links or pages we have not been able to confirm:

• http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/IT94/Proceedings/HCI/nielsen/sunweb.html
• http://www.internettg.org/newsletter/dec99/cluster_analysis.html