A total of four different groups participated in the card sort and three of them took place on three consecutive days during the week of April 4th. To learn more about the details you will want to read through the post called Lessons Learned from a few days ago. I met the three groups that participated last week in the lobby of the Crumb Library at the agreed upon time and we either headed upstairs to Room 215 or to Room 117. The reason for using room 117 was that I was expecting anywhere from 5 to 12 people to show up, so a larger room was necessary; However, only a total of 5 people actual showed up to participate. In retrospect Room 215 upstairs in the library would have been large enough to accommodate the number of people that came, but it was nice to have the extra space. I met the last group at the Crane Library on Thursday, April 14th.
At the beginning of each card sort, I took a moment to briefly talk about why a card sort was being conducted. It was followed up by a description of what we would be doing. While talking with the participants, I told them that the I was in the process of redesigning and rebuilding the college libraries website (there is actually a difference between the two) and that a card sort will help me understand how people organize items into different categories. By having people that represent the target audience participate it will make it easier for people who use the libraries new website find the information they need.
Next we talked about what a card sort was and how it will be used to help people use the new website. A card sort is where you take words and phrases written on index cards and organize them into categories based upon similarities. Before the groups began working on putting the cards into categories, I gave a brief demonstration with a separate set of index cards. The important thing to note is that the example that was presented did not contain any of the words or phrases on the index cards that where given to the group. This was done on purpose so that the group would not be influenced by the demonstration. After the demonstration, I left the room and said that I would come back in about 20 minutes.
After coming back most groups where finished except for one, so I left and came back again. Once the groups were finished putting things into categories it was time to gather some additional information that would provide to be very useful. At this point, I asked two general questions
- Was it hard to put things into categories?
- Was this pretty easy to do?
Everyone who participated found it easy to put things into categories. Each group took a different amount of time to put things into categories and there was no relationship to the size of the group. The largest group of people fell right into the middle as far as the amount of time it took them to put things into categories. It took them about 25 minutes to put things into categories.