In the second UX Book Club Switzerland of 2012 we discussed the book “Card Sorting” by Donna Spencer. This time it took place at the Liip office.

All in all you can say that we have a positive impression of the book.

1. It’s practical because it provides you with a lot of lessons learned
2. Also the theoretical background is interesting. For example: Have categories really clear boundaries? No! Take the category “game”: team sports and board games are both games but not identical.

Then we discussed experiences with card sorting in our work. E.g. Memi found out that a lot of the statements in the book are true. E.g. With closed card sorting you don’t find out if someone can find content in groups. Finding content is harder than grouping content. This confirms my experience, that you always should do a usability test after card sorting to test if your navigation works.

You can also use a closed card sorting to prioritize features in an application. E.g. write the features on cards and make 2 groups: must-have and, nice-to-have. Let users sort features in these groups to persuade project members which think some unnecessary feature needs to be in the product by all means.

We finished with some tips and tricks about different workshop techniques.

Does the concept of the UX Book Club sound cool to you? Join our next meeting. It’s fun!