Crazy card sort

Card sorting is a great way to get a different angle on your site. All you need is some willing users, 30 minutes over lunch, and a bunch of index cards and post-its (oh, and I recommend recording it too on your phone -some of the juiciest insights come through people’s reactions while they’re discussing the sort)

For our first card sort I tested it out on some internal Nesta peeps to make sure the cards were easily sortable. But then I branched out and started sorting with our real users .

The results were really interesting. We know we’ve got a design problem with our site – it’s difficult to navigate because it’s been set up without users in min. But the scale of the problem is only coming to light now that card sorting is underway – we’ve had 5 sorts so far, and each one is throwing up really interesting and different.

As soon as the final data is in, I’ll share it with you.

But for now, here are some great off-the-cuff responses from our sorters to the problem they were trying to solve:

“It’s like a big soup!”

“People don’t care who’s in which team – they just want to know what’s happening”

“Nesta needs to talk more around a programme, rather than just after it”

“It’s all very jargony” (that was from a new Nesta staffer staring at the cards in front of her)

Useful tip:

I recommend reading Card Sorting by Donna Spencer (kindle edition is cheaper) – really practical instructions on how to run a sort. She’s also got a great spreadsheet for analysing the data afterwards. There’s nothing like hard evidence for persuading people they need to change what they do.