Playing with a Bad Deck: The Caveats of Card Sorting as a Web Site Redesign Tool

Abstract

Card sorting is a simple, low-tech usability assessment tool that can help Web designers restructure Web site navigation to better reflect user preferences. After employing card sorting in its Web redesign process, the Galter Health Sciences Library had great difficulty analyzing and understanding the results. Many methodological mistakes could have been avoided if certain caveats were observed throughout the process. These caveats are presented in detail, ensuring that other librarians and Web designers wishing to employ card sorting will be able to use the tool to its maximum efficacy.

KEYWORDS:

• card sorting
• Categorization
• usability
• user-centered design
• Web design
• Web site navigation