Information Architecture Card Sorting

Information architecture (or IA) is the science -- some would say art -- of defining the structure, organization, navigation, labeling and indexing of a website. It is the role of the information architect to decide how a site should be structured, what kind of content it should host, and how to accommodate future growth. In short, information architecture defines the backbone of a website. The goal of the information architecture process is to develop a comprehensive site taxonomy that will apply to almost all aspects of a user's experience. High Monkey has skilled IAs to work with our clients and their stakeholders to understand the current environment of an existing website and its challenges in order to develop strategies that will increase the website's effectiveness.

Open Sort – Closed Sort

Card sorting is one of the most basic tenants of information architecture strategies; card sorting can be utilized throughout the information architectural process. Utilizing an open card sort, users are given an opportunity to identify how they see and group information in a meaningful way to them. Performing this task with at least 10 different individuals will provide statistically significant patterns in the ways users group information. This can provide invaluable understanding and allow for more effective grouping of site content. HMC is recommending that the results from these open sort tests be verified by utilizing a closed sort test. In this test, users are asked to group information under newly determined category names and consistency is checked against the previous tests.