Card Sorting vs Tree Testing: what's the best?

When it comes to designing and testing in the world of information architecture, it’s hard to beat card sorting. As a usability testing method, card sorting is easy to set up, simple to recruit for and can supply you with a range of useful insights. But there’s a long-standing debate in the world of card sorting, and that’s whether it’s better to run card sorts in person (moderated) or remotely over the internet (unmoderated).

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This article should give you some insight into the world of online card sorting. We've included an analysis of the benefits (and the downsides) as well as why people use this approach. Let's take a look!

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How an online card sort works

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Running a card sort remotely has quickly become a popular option just because of how time-intensive in-person card sorting is. Instead of needing to bring your participants in for dedicated card sorting sessions, you can simply set up your card sort using an online tool (like our very own OptimalSort) and then wait for the results to roll in.

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So what’s involved in a typical online card sort? At a very high level, here’s what’s required. We’re going to assume you’re already set up with an online card sorting tool at this point.

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1. Define the cards: Depending on what you’re testing, add the items (cards) to your study. If you were testing the navigation menu of a hotel website, your cards might be things like “Home”, “Book a room”, “Our facilities” and “Contact us”.
2. Work out whether to run a closed or open sort: Determine whether you’ll set the groups for participants to sort cards into (closed) or leave it up to them (open). You may also opt for a mix, where you create some categories but leave the option open for participants to create their own.
3. Recruit your participants: Whether using a participant recruitment service or by recruiting through your own channels, send out invites to your online card sort.
4. Wait for the data: Once you’ve sent out your invites, all that’s left to do is wait for the data to come in and then analyze the results.

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That’s online card sorting in a nutshell – not entirely different from running a card sort in person. If you’re interested in learning about how to interpret your card sorting results, we’ve put together this article on open and hybrid card sorts and this one on closed card sorts.

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Why is online card sorting so popular?

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Online card sorting has a few distinct advantages over in-person card sorting that help to make it a popular option among information architects and user researchers. There are downsides too (as there are with any remote usability testing option), but we’ll get to those in a moment.

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Where remote (unmoderated) card sorting excels:

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• Time savings: Online card sorting is essentially ‘set and forget’, meaning you can set up the study, send out invites to your participants and then sit back and wait for the results to come in. In-person card sorting requires you to moderate each session and collate the data at the end.
• Easier for participants: It’s not often that researchers are on the other side of the table, but it’s important to consider the participant’s viewpoint. It’s much easier for someone to spend 15 minutes completing your online card sort in their own time instead of trekking across town to your office for an exercise that could take well over an hour.
• Cheaper: In a similar vein, online card sorting is much cheaper than in-person testing. While it’s true that you may still need to recruit participants, you won’t need to reimburse people for travel expenses.
• Analytics: Last but certainly not least, online card sorting tools (like OptimalSort) can take much of the analytical burden off you by transforming your data into actionable insights. Other tools will differ, but OptimalSort can generate a similarity matrix, dendrograms and a participant-centric analysis using your study data.

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Where in-person (moderated) card sorting excels:

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• Qualitative insights: For all intents and purposes, online card sorting is the most effective way to run a card sort. It’s cheaper, faster and easier for you. But, there’s one area where in-person card sorting excels, and that’s qualitative feedback. When you’re sitting directly across the table from your participant you’re far more likely to learn about the why as well as the what. You can ask participants directly why they grouped certain cards together.

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Online card sorting: Participant numbers

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So that’s online card sorting in a nutshell, as well as some of the reasons why you should actually use this method. But what about participant numbers? Well, there’s no one right answer, but the general rule is that you need more people than you’d typically bring in for a usability test.

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This all comes down to the fact that card sorting is what’s known as a generative method, whereas usability testing is an evaluation method. Here’s a little breakdown of what we mean by these terms:

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Generative method: There’s no design, and you need to get a sense of how people think about the problem you’re trying to solve. For example, how people would arrange the items that need to go into your website’s navigation. As Nielsen Norman Group explains: “There is great variability in different people's mental models and in the vocabulary they use to describe the same concepts. We must collect data from a fair number of users before we can achieve a stable picture of the users' preferred structure and determine how to accommodate differences among users”.

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Evaluation method: There’s already a design, and you basically need to work out whether it’s a good fit for your users. Any major problems are likely to crop up even after testing 5 or so users. For example, you have a wireframe of your website and need to identify any major usability issues.

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Basically, because you’ll typically be using card sorting to generate a new design or structure from nothing, you need to sample a larger number of people. If you were testing an existing website structure, you could get by with a smaller group.

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Where to from here?

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Following on from our discussion of generative versus evaluation methods, you’ve really got a choice of 2 paths from here if you’re in the midst of a project. For those developing new structures, the best course of action is likely to be a card sort. However, if you’ve got an existing structure that you need to test in order to usability problems and possible areas of improvement, you’re likely best to run a tree test. We’ve got some useful information on getting started with a tree test right here on the blog.

In 2009, Bob Bailey and Cari Wolfson published apaper entitled “FirstClick Usability Testing: A new methodology for predicting users’ success on tasks”. They’d analyzed 12 scenario-based user tests and concluded that the first click people make is a strong leading indicator of their ultimate success on a given task. Their results were so compelling that we got all excited and created Chalkmark, a tool especially for first click usability testing. It occurred to me recently that we’ve never revisited the original premise for ourselves in any meaningful way.

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And then one day I realized that, as if by magic, we’re sitting on quite possibly the world’s biggest database of tree test results. I wondered: can we use these results to back up Bob and Cari’s findings (and thus the relevanceof Chalkmark)?Hell yes we can.So we’ve analyzed tree testing data from millions of responses in Treejack, and we're thrilled (relieved) that it confirmed the findings from the 2009 paper — convincingly.

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What the original study found

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Bob and Cari analyzed data from twelve usability studies on websites and products ‘with varying amounts and types of content, a range of subject matter complexity, and distinct user interfaces’. They found that people were about twice as likely to complete a task successfully if they got their first click right, than if they got it wrong:

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If the first click was correct, the chances of getting the entire scenario correct was 87%If the first click was incorrect, the chances of eventually getting the scenario correct was only 46%

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What our analysis of tree testing data has found

We analyzed millions of tree testing responses in our database. We've found that people who get the first click correct are almost three times as likely to complete a task successfully:

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If the first click was correct, the chances of getting the entire scenario correct was 70%If the first click was incorrect, the chances of eventually getting the scenario correct was 24%

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To give you another perspective on the same data, here's the inverse:

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If the first click was correct, the chances of getting the entire scenario incorrect was 30%If the first click was incorrect, the chances of getting the whole scenario incorrect was 76%

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How Treejack measures first clicks and task success

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Bob and Cari proved the usefulness of the methodology by linking two key metrics in scenario-based usability studies: first clicks and task success. Chalkmark doesn't measure task success — it's up to the researcher to determine as they're setting up the study what constitutes 'success', and then to interpret the results accordingly. Treejack does measure task success — and first clicks.

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In a tree test, participants are asked to complete a task by clicking though a text-only version of a website hierarchy, and then clicking 'I'd find it here' when they've chosen an answer. Each task in a tree test has a pre-determined correct answer — as was the case in Bob and Cari's usability studies — and every click is recorded, so we can see participant paths in detail.

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Thus, every single time a person completes an individual Treejack task, we record both their first click and whether they are successful or not. When we came to test the 'correct first click leads to task success' hypothesis, we could therefore mine data from millions of task.

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To illustrate this, have a look at the results for one task.The overall Task result, you see a score for success and directness, and a breakdown of whether each Success, Fail, or Skip was direct (they went straight to an answer), or indirect (they went back up the tree before they selected an answer):

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In the pietree for the same task, you can look in more detail at how many people went the wrong way froma label (each label representing one page of your website):

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In the First Click tab, you get a percentage breakdown of which label people clicked first to complete the task:

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And in the Paths tab, you can view individual participant paths in detail (including first clicks), and can filter the table by direct and indirect success, fails, and skips (this table is only displaying direct success and direct fail paths):

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How to get busy with first click testing

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This analysis reinforces something we already knew that firstclicks matter. It is worth your time to get that first impression right.You have plenty of options for measuring the link between first clicks and task success in your scenario-based usability tests. From simply noting where your participants go during observations, to gathering quantitative first click data via online tools, you'll win either way. And if you want to add the latter to your research, Chalkmark can give you first click data on wireframes and landing pages,and Treejack on your information architecture.

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To finish, here's a few invaluable insights from other researchers ongetting the most from first click testing:

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• Jeff Sauro details a useful approach to running a first click test, and shares the findings from a test he ran on 13 people.
• An article on Neoinsight describes three common usability problems that first click testing can solve.
• Gianna LaPin describes a first click test she ran on Netflix, VUDU, and Hulu Plus.

User research and design can be tough in this fast-moving world. Sometimes we can get so wrapped up in what we’re doing, or what we think we’re supposed to be doing, that we don’t take the time to look for other options and other ways to use the tools we already know and love. I’ve compiled this list over last few days (my brain hurts) by talking to a few customers and a few people around the office. I’m sure it's far from comprehensive. I’ve focused on quick wins and unique examples. I’ll start off with some obvious ones, and we’ll get a little more abstract, or niche, as we go. I hope you get some ideas flying as you read through, enjoy!
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#1 Benchmark your information architecture (IA)

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Without a baseline for your information architecture, you can’t easily tell if any changes you make have a positive effect. If you haven’t done so, benchmark your existing website on Tree testing now. Upload your site structure and get results the same day. Now you’ll have IA scores to beat each month. Easy.
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#2 Find out precisely where people get lost

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Use Tree testing Pietree to find out exactly where people are getting lost in your website structure and where they go instead. You can also use First-click testing for this if you’re only interested in the first click, and let’s face it, that is where you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck.
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#3 Start at the start

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If you’re just not sure where to begin then take a screenshot of your homepage, or any page that you think might have some issues and get going with First-click testing. Write up a string of things that people might want to do when they find themselves on this page and use these as your tasks. Surprise all your colleagues with a maddening heatmap showing where people actually clicked in response to your tasks. Now you’ll know have a better idea of which area of your site to focus a tree test or card sort on for your next step.

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#4 A/B test your site structure

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Tree testing is great for testing more than one content structure. It’s easy to run two separate Tree testing studies, even more than two. It’ll help you decide which structure you and your team should run with, and it won’t take you long to set them up. Learn more.
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#5 Make collaborative design decisions

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Use Optimal Sort to get your team involved and let their feedback feed your designs: logos, icons, banners, images, the list goes on. By creating a closed image sort with categories where your team can group designs based on their preferences, you can get some quick feedback to help you figure out where you should focus your efforts.
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#6 Do your (market) research

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Card sorting is a great UX research technique, but it can also be a fun way to involve your users in some market research. Get a better sense of what your users and customers actually want to see on your website, by conducting an image sort of potential products. By providing categories like ‘I would buy this’, ‘I wouldn’t buy this’ to indicate their preferences for each item, you can figure out what types of products appeal to your customers.
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#7 Customer satisfaction surveys with surveys

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The thoughts and feelings of your users are always important. A simple survey can help you take a deeper look at your checkout process, a recently launched product or service, or even on the packaging your product arrives in, your options are endless.

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#8 Crowdsource content ideas

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Whether you’re running a blog or a UX conference, Questions can help you generate content ideas and understand any knowledge gaps that might be out there. Figure out what your users and attendees like to read on your blog, or what they want to hear about at your event, and let this feed into what you offer.
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#9 Do some sociological research

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Using card sorting for sociological research is a great way to deepen your understanding of how different groups may categorize information. Rather than focusing solely on how your users interact with your product or service, consider broadening your research horizons to understand your audience’s mental models. For example, by looking at how young people group popular social media platforms, you can understand the relationships between them, and identify where your product may fit in the mix.
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#10 Create tests to fit in your onboarding process

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Onboarding new customers is crucial to keeping them engaged with your product, especially if it involves your users learning how to use it. You can set up a quick study to help your users stay on track with onboarding. For example, say your company provided online email marketing software. You can set up a First-click testing study using a photo of your app, with a task asking your participants where they’d click to see the open rates for a particular email that went out.

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#11 Quantify the return on investment of UX

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Some people, including UX Agony Aunt, define return on UX as time saved, money made, and people engaged. By attaching a value to the time spent completing tasks, or to successful completion of tasks, you can approximate an ROI or at least illustrate the difference between two options.

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#12 Collate all your user testing notes using qualitative Insights

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Making sense of your notes from qualitative research activities can be simultaneously exciting and overwhelming. It’s fun being out on the field and jotting down observations on a notepad, or sitting in on user interviews and documenting observations into a spreadsheet. You can now easily import all your user research and give it some traceability.

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#13 Establish which tags or filters people consider to be the most important

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Create a card sort with your search filters or tags as labels, and have participants rank them according to how important they consider them to be. Analytics can tell you half of the story (where people actually click), so the card sort can give another side: a better idea of what people actually think or want.

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#14 Reduce content on landing pages to what people access regularly

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Before you run an open card sort to generate new category ideas, you can run a closed card sort to find out if you have any redundant content. Say you wanted to simplify the homepage of your intranet. You can ask participants to sort cards (containing homepage links) based on how often they use them. You could compare this card sort data with analytics from your intranet and see if people’s actual behavior and perception are well aligned.

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#15 Crowd-source the values you want your team/brand/product to represent

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Card sorting is a well-established technique in the ‘company values’ realm, and there are some great resources online to help you and your team brainstorm the values you represent. These ‘in-person’ brainstorm sessions are great, and you can run a remote closed card sort to support your findings. And if you want feedback from more than a small group of people (if your company has, say, more than 15 staff) you can run a remote closed card sort on its own. Use Microsoft’s Reaction Card Method as card inspiration.

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#16 Input your learnings and observations from a UX conference with qualitative insights

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If you're lucky enough to attend a UX conference, you can now share the experience with your colleagues. You can easily jot down ideas quotes and key takeaways in a Reframer project and keep your notes organized by using a new session for each presenter Bonus, if you’re part of a team, they can watch the live feed rolling into Reframer!

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#17 Find out what actions people take across time

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Use card sorting to understand when your participants are most likely to perform certain activities over the course of a day, week, or over the space of a year. Create categories that represent time, for example, ‘January to March’, ‘April to June’, ‘July to September’, and ‘October to December’, and ask your participants to sort activities according to the time they are most likely to do them (go on vacation, do their taxes, make big purchases, and so on). While there may be more arduous and more accurate methods for gathering this data, sometimes you need quick insights to help you make the right decisions.

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#18 Gather quantitative data on prioritizing project tasks or product features

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Closed card sorting can give you data that you might usually gather in team meetings or in Post-its on the wall, or that you might get through support channels. You can model your method on other prioritization techniques, including Eisenhower’s Decision Matrix, for example.

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#19 Test your FAQs page with new users

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Your support and knowledge base within your website can be just as important as any other core action on your website. If your support site is lacking in navigation and UX, this will no doubt increase support tickets and resources. Make sure your online support section is up to scratch. Here’s an article on how to do it quickly.

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#20 Figure out if your icons need labels

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Figure out if your icons are doing their job by testing whether your users are understanding them as intended. Uploading icons you currently use, or plan to use in your interface to First-click testing, and ask your users to identify their meaning by making use of post-task questions.

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#21 Give your users some handy quick tools

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In some cases, users may use your website with very specific goals in mind. Giving your users access to quick toos as soon as they land on your website is a great way to ensure they are able to get what they need done easily. Look at your analytics for things people do often that take several clicks to find, and check whether they can find your ‘quick tool’ in a single click using First-click testing.

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#22 Benchmark the IA of your competition

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We all have some sort of competitors, and researchers also need to pay attention to what they get up too. Make life easy in your reporting by benchmarking their IA and then reviewing it each quarter for the board and leaders to be wowed with. Also, not a perfect comparison, as users and separate sites have different flows, but compare your success scores with theirs. Makes your work feel like the Olympics with the healthy competition going on.

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#23 Improve website conversions

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Make the marketing team’s day by doing a fast improvement on some core conversions on your website. Now, there are loads of ways to improve conversions for a check out cart or signup form, but using First-click testing to test out ideas before you start going live A/B test can take mere minutes and give your B version a confidence boost.

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#24 Reduce the bounce rates of certain sections of your website

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People jumping off your website and not continuing their experience is something (depending on the landing page) everyone tries to improve. The metric ‘time on site’ and ‘average page views’ is a metric that shows the value your whole website has to offer. Again, there are many different ways to do this, but one big reason for people jumping off the website is not being able to find what they’re looking for. That’s where our IA toolkit comes in.

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#25 Test your website’s IA in different countries

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No, you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to go to all these countries to test, although that’d be pretty sweet. You can remotely research participants from all over the world, using our integrated recruitment panel. Start seeing how different cultures, languages, and countries interact with your website.

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#26 Run an empathy test (card sort)

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Empathy – the ability to understand and share the experience of another person – is central to the design process. An empathy test is another great tool to use in the design phase because it enables you to find out if you are creating the right kind of feelings with your user. Take your design and show it to users. Provide them with a variety of words that could represent the design – for example “minimalistic”, “dynamic”, or “professional” – and ask them to pick out which the words which they think are best suited to their experience.

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#27 Test visual hierarchy with first-click testing

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Use first-click testing to understand which elements draw users' attention first on your page. Upload your design and ask participants to click on the most important element, or what catches their eye first. The resulting heatmap will show you if your visual hierarchy is working as intended - are users clicking where you expect them to? This technique helps validate design decisions about sizing, color, positioning, and contrast without needing to build the actual page.

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#28 Take Qualitative Insights into the field

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Get out of the office or the lab and observe social behaviour in the field. Use Qualitative Insights to input your observations on your field research. Then head back to your office to start making sense of the data in the Theme Builder.

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#29 Use heatmaps to get the first impressions of designs

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Heatmaps in our First-click testing tool are a great way of getting first impressions of any design. You can see where people clicked (correctly and incorrectly), giving you insights on what works and doesn’t work with your designs. Because it’s so fast to test, you can iterate until your designs start singing.

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#30 Multivariate testing

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Multivariate testing is when more than two versions of your studies are compared and allows you to understand which version performs better with your audience. Use multivariate testing with Tree testing and First-click testing to find the right design on which to focus and iterate.

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#31 Improve your search engine optimization (SEO) with tree testing

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Yes, a good IA improves your SEO. Search engines want to know how your users navigate throughout your site. Make sure people can easily find what they’re looking for, and you’ll start to see improvement in your search engine ranking.

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#32 Test your mobile information architecture

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As more and more people are using their smartphones for apps and to browse sites, you need to ensure its design gives your users a great experience. Test the IA of your mobile site to ensure people aren’t getting lost in the mobile version of your site. If you haven’t got a mobile-friendly design yet, now’s the time to start designing it!

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#33 Run an Easter egg hunt using the correct areas in first-click testing

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Liven up the workday by creating a fun Easter egg hunt in first-click testing. Simply upload a photo (like those really hard “spot the X” photos), set the correct area of your target, then send out your study with participant identifiers enabled. You can also send these out as competitions and have closing rules based on time, number of participants, or both.
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#34 Keystroke level modeling

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When interface efficiency is important you'll want to measure how much a new design can improve task times. You can actually estimate time saved (or lost) using some well-tested approaches that are based on average human performance for typical computer-based operations like clicking, pointing and typing. Read more about measuring task times without users.

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#35 Feature prioritization and get some help for your roadmap

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Find out what people think are the most important next steps for your team. Set up a card sort and ask people to categorize items and rank them in descending order of importance or impact on their work. This can also help you gauge their thoughts on potential new features for your site, and for bonus points compare team responses with customer responses.

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#36 Tame your blog

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Get the tags and categories in your blog under control to make life easier for your readers. Set up a card sort and use all your tags and categories as card labels. Either use your existing ones or test a fresh set of new tags and categories.

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#37 Test your home button

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Would an icon or text link work better for navigating to your home page? Before you go ahead and make changes to your site, you can find out by setting up a first-click testing test.

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#38 Validate the designs in your head

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As designers, you’ve probably got umpteen designs floating around in your head at any one time. But which of these are really worth pursuing? Figure this out by using The Optimal Workshop Suite to test out wireframes of new designs before putting any more work into them.

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#39 ‘Buy now’ button shopping cart visibility

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If you’re running an e-commerce site, ease of use and a great user experience are crucial. To see if your shopping cart and checkout processes are as good as they can be, run a first-click test.

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#40 IA periodic health checks

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Raise the visibility of good IA by running periodic IA health checks using Tree testing and reporting the results. Management loves metrics and catching any issues early is good too!

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#41 Focus groups with qualitative insights

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Thinking of launching a new product, app or website, or seeking opinions on an existing one? Focus groups can provide you with a lot of candid information that may help get your project off the ground. They’re also dangerous because they’re susceptible to groupthink, design by committee, and tunnel vision. Use with caution, but if you do then use with Qualitative Insights! Compare notes and find patterns across sessions. Pay attention to emotional triggers.

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#42 Gather opinions with surveys

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Whether you want the opinions of your users or from members of your team, you can set up a quick and simple survey using Surveys. It’s super useful for getting opinions on new ideas (consider it almost like a mini-focus group), or even for brainstorming with teammates.

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#43 Design a style guide with card sorting

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Style guides (for design and content) can take a lot of time and effort to create, especially when you need to get the guide proofed by various people in your company. To speed this up, simply create a card sort to find out what your guide should consist of. Find out the specifics in this article.

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#44 Improve your company's CRM system

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As your company grows, oftentimes your CRM can become riddled with outdated information and turn into a giant mess, especially if you deal with a lot of customers every day. To help clear this up, you can use card sorting and tree testing to solve navigational issues and get rid of redundant features. Learn more.

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#45 Sort your life out

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Let your creativity run wild, and get your team or family involved in organizing or prioritizing the things that matter. And the possibilities really are endless. Organize a long list of DIY projects, or ask the broader team how the functional pods should be re-organized. It’s up to you. How can card sorting help you in your work and daily life?

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#46 Create an online diary study

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Whether it’s a product, app or website, finding out the long-term behaviour and thoughts of your users is important. That’s where diary studies come in. For those new to this concept, diary studies are a longitudinal research method, aimed at collecting insights about a participant’s needs and behaviors. Participants note down activities as they’re using a particular product, app, or website. Add your participants into a qualitative study and allow them to create their diary study with ease.

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#47 Source-specific data with an online survey

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Online survey tools can complement your existing research by sourcing specific information from your participants. For example, if you need to find out more about how your participants use social media, which sites they use, and on which devices, you can do it all through a simple survey questionnaire. Additionally, if you need to identify usage patterns, device preferences or get information on what other products/websites your users are aware of/are using, a questionnaire is the ticket.

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#48 Guerrilla testing with First-click testing

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For really quick first-click testing, take First-click testing on a tablet, mobile device or laptop to a local coffee shop. Ask people standing in line if they’d like to take part in your super quick test in exchange for a cup of joe. Easy!

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#50 Ask post-task questions for tree testing and first-click testing

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You can now set specific task-related questions for both Tree testing and First-click testing. This is a great way to dive deeper into the mushy minds of your participants. Check out how to use this new(ish) feature here!

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#51 Start testing prototypes

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Paper prototypes are great, but what happens when your users are scattered around the globe, and you can’t invite them to an in-person test? By scanning (or taking a photo) of your paper prototypes, you can use first-click testingto test them with your users quickly and easily. Read more about our approach here.

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#52 Take better notes for sense making

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Qualitative research involves a lot of note-taking. So naturally, to be better at this method, improving how you take notes is important. Reframer is designed to make note-taking easy but it can still be an art. Learn more.

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#53 Make sure you get the user's first-click right

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Like most things, read a little, and then it’s all about practice.We’ve found that people who get the first click correct are almost three times as likely to complete a task successfully. Get your first clicks right in tree testing and first-click testing and you’ll start seeing your customers smile.

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#54 Run a cat survey. Yep, cats!

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We’ve gained some insight into how people intuitively group cats, and so can you (unless you’re a dog person). Honestly, doing something silly can be a useful way to introduce your team to a new method on a Friday afternoon. Remember to distribute the results!

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#55 Destroy evil attractors in your tree

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Evil attractors are those labels in your IA that attract unjustified clicks across tasks. This usually means the chosen label is ambiguous, or possibly a catch-all phrase like ‘Resources’. Read how to quickly identify evil attractors in the Destinations table of tree test results and how to fix them.

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#56 Affinity map using card sorts

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We all love our Post-its and sticking things on walls. But sometimes you need something quicker and accessible for people in remote areas. Try out using Card Sorts for a distributed approach to making sense of all the notes. Plus, you can easily import any qualitative insights when creating cards in card sort. Easy.

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#57 Preference test with first-click testing

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Whether you’re coming up with a new logo design, headline, featured image, or anything, you can preference test it with First-click testing. Create an image that shows the two designs side by side and upload it to First-click testing. From there, you can ask people to click whichever one they prefer!

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#58 Add moderated card sort results to your card sort

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An excellent way of gathering valuable qualitative insights alongside the results of your remote card sorts is to run a moderated version of the sorts with a smaller group of participants. When you can observe and interact with your participants as they complete the sort, you’ll be able to ask questions and learn more about their mental models and the reasons why they have categorized things in a particular way. Learn more.

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#59 Test search box variations with first-click clicking

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Case study by Viget: “One of the most heavily used features of the website is its keyword search, so we wanted to make absolutely certain that our redesigned search box didn’t make search harder for users to find and use.”

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#60 Run an image card sort to organize products into groups

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You can add images to each card that allows you understand how your participants may organize and label particular items. Very useful if you want to organize some retail products and want to find out how other people would organize them given a visual including shape, color, and other potential context.

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#61 Test your customers' perceptions of different logo and brand image designs

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Understand how customers perceive your brand by creating a closed card sort. Come up with a list of categories, and ask participants to sort images such as logos, and branded images.

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#62 Run an open image card sort to classify images into groups based on the emotions they elicit

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Are these pictures exhilarating, or terrifying? Are they humoros, or offensive? Relaxing, or boring? Productive, or frantic? Happy memories, or a deep sigh?

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#63 Run an image card sort to organize your library

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Whether it’s a physical library of books, or a digital drive full of ebooks, you can run a card sort to help organize them in a way that makes sense. Will it be by genre, author name, color or topic? Send out the study to your coworkers to get their input! You can also do this at home for your own personal library, and you can include music/CDs/vinyl records and movies!

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#64 HR exercises to determine the motivations of your team

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It’s simple to ask your team about their thoughts, feelings, and motivations with a Questions survey. You can choose to leave participant identifiers blank (so responses are anonymous), or you can ask for a name/email address. As a bonus, you can set up a calendar reminder to send out a new survey in the next quarter. Duplicate the survey and send it out again!

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#65 Designing physical environments

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If your company has a physical environment in which your customers visit, you can research new structures using a mixture of tools in The Optimal Workshop Suite. This especially comes in handy if your customers require certain information within the physical environment in order to make decisions. For example, picture a retail store. Are all the signs clear and communicate the right information? Are people overwhelmed by the physical environment?

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#66 Use tree testing to refine an interactive phone menu system

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Similar to how you’d design an IA, you can create a tree test to design an automated phone system. Whether you’re designing from the ground up, or improving your existing system, you will be able to find out if people are getting lost.

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#67 Have your research team categorize and prioritize all these ideas

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Before you dig deeper into more of these ideas, ask the rest of the team to help you decide which one to focus on. Let’s not get in the way of your work. Start your quick wins and log into your account. Here’s a spreadsheet of this list to upload to card sort. Aaaaaaaaaaand that’s a wrap! *Takes out gym towel and wipes sweaty face.
*Got any more suggestions to add to this list? We’d love to hear them in our comments section — we might even add them into this list