Card sorting: xSort in action
xSort is a card sorting application for OS X. Or “Card sorting, the Mac way”, as the xSort website likes to put it. I’ve known about xSort for a few months now, but finally used it in anger for the first time in a card sorting session this week in a project I’m working on for cxpartners.
In short, I was really impressed with it. It’s very simple to set up a test session – you simply give the project a title and say whether you want the sort to be open or closed. You can then define the ‘cards’ and add details of the people who’ll be doing the sorting. In the sorting session itself, you just hit ‘exercise mode’ and you’re away.
Setting the initial options in xSort.
The biggest concern I had was the move from paper to screen. Paper-based card sorting is a tried and tested technique in IA, and people like to physically touch and manipulate objects. However, I was genuinely surprised as to how easily the users took to xSort. All that was needed was a very brief tour of the functionality at the start and the occasional reminder during the test. No worries there.
Doing the actual sort in ‘exercise mode’.
Also, running the session was a breeze. With card-based testing, you’re up to your eyeballs in piles of cards, paper clips and staplers. You’re also worried in case you sneeze or drop a pile of sorted cards. And then there’s the filing you have to do to keep everything safe before you start the monumentally tedious job of analysing the cards. None of this is a problem with xSort. No mess at all – it’s all set up for you. It even analyses the results for you as you go along. You can also export the data to an XML file or produce your own reports.
Displaying the results: a dendrogram in xSort.
The downside? Well, you’re limited by the size of screen you have. I was testing on an iBook using around 35 cards, which was pushing it a little. While you have, in theory, a limitless ability to scroll horizontally and vertically, in practice you want all your cards to be visible at the same time. A 19” or 20” screen would be essential if you were testing with more cards.
However, the biggest negative of my experience with xSort was when it crashed towards the end of the very first session when the subject tried to remove a leftover grouping card. Although my heart sank at the time, it actually wasn’t too much of a problem; it’s the thinking bit that takes the time in card sorting and it only actually takes a couple of minutes to start again and re-sort the cards once you’ve decided where things go. It helps to have two people to remember where the cards were too. This is not something that I’d like to have do again, though.
I’d love something like this to be available for Windows. I’m happy to use a Mac, but 90% of my work is still done with Windows. There are some options: there’s uzCardSort from uZilla, which is a card sorting application that runs in Mozilla, and also Card Sword which is an open-source Java app. Neither of these even remotely come close to the elegance and simplicity of xSort for card sorting.
Maybe it’s no coincidence that there were two user experience designers behind xSort and only one programmer. I think I’ll just have to do card sorting on my iBook from now on…
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I'm Stuart Church, a user experience consultant with Pure Usability in Bristol, UK. Sensorydrive is my personal blog and covers user experience design, information architecture, product design, psychology, research methods, perception and pretty much anything else that takes my fancy! You can find out a bit more about me if you want...
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CardZort by Jorge A. Toro is also very capable, but it’s not free…
check it out at http://www.cardzort.com/cardzort/index.htm
Being using this myself: have you worked out how to increase the size of the text on the cards themselves? I can’t seem to do it…
Hi Dave – it’s funny, I’d never encountered this as a problem until the day after you posted your comment. I’m afraid that I don’t know how to alter the size of the text, either!