This week has been very busy with having three sessions of card sorts. In looking back at the week it was not a good idea to have three sessions taking place on three consecutive days. If you plan on doing a card sort with different groups, I would highly recommend that you allow for at least a day off in between each one or have schedule them take place over a two work period.

Here is what are schedule looked like for the card sort:

• Tuesday 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.
• Wednesday 2:20 p.m. to 3:30 p.m
• Thursday 10 a.m to 11 a.m.

The reason for selecting three days in a row at three different times was to make it easier to recruit people and to schedule a group study room within the Crumb Library. About the only thing that made these times easy to work with was the ability to schedule a group study room. When taking a look at the dates it looks like things would not be all that time consuming; However, this was not the case.

I was the only person that was conducting the card sort which had the advantage of consistency. When talking to each group about the card sort allowed for consistency. After each group had completed the card sort my work really only just began. Once the participants where finished organizing the words on the index cards into categories we would talk for a few minutes about the terms and phrases on the cards.

Once the participants left it was time to take some pictures of the organization of the cards. Without having the use of a ladder it made taking pictures challenging because it was not possible to take a direct over head shot of the cards on the table. Instead all of the pictures were taken at an angle which presented its own unique issues.

Along with taking pictures it was time to collect the cards and keep them into categories. By keeping the cards into categories it made it easier to create an HTML document that represented the categories and items that belonged in each one. Future posts will contain the results of the card sorts. Most of my time was spent between taking pictures, keeping things organized, and recording the results by writing a web page. If the card sort dates were spread out over time it would have made it easier to upload pictures and record the results.