Analytic Design Group

I’ve always hated card sorts, they’re the sucker punch of user research. The goal of user research is to find out about user behaviors,  preferences, current experience, expectations and so on. We are seeking to understand user needs or requirements. There are numerous techniques with which to do user research and we generally approach whatever we’re doing with the caveat that we’re NOT asking the user how to design something, just what their impressions, experience, and feelings are towards an existing or proposed product, site, concept etc.

When we conduct a card sort we give up our collective role as designers and ask our users to effectively design the categorization system. This is especially true of open card sorts where we ask users to also define the categories.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why we use card sorts. Our users, especially if we’re talking about a corporate intranet, are much more familiar with the content than we are. It does make sense to validate the categorization system, I just don’t think asking 10 or 12 users to design a system, taking the best cross-section of the results, and filling in the gaps with related content is necessarily the best way to create the information architecture of a site.

We’re (IAs, Interaction Designers, Usability People, etc.) so good about not asking our users to design the system, for interaction design, out of box experience, and visual design. And yet when it comes to information architecture we hand over the design reigns to a small group of users and design by committee.

My strong preference is that we do the user research (find out about needs, tasks, preferences etc.), map a proposed IA then test that. So instead of “User A, please put  content B into a category and name that category,” I’m much happier with “User A please tell me under which of these categories do you think you would find content B and why did you choose that category?”

I know my position will be heresy for some. And I’m totally open to hearing why. I’d love to be convinced that card sorts are not a user research sucker punch. Also, does anybody know where card sorting came from? As best as I can tell, and I may be wrong here, card sorting for user research is an adaptation from a neurophyscological test.