Website Usability Guidelines

(3) Conducting a card sorting session

Show the participant the set of cards and explain that you are asking for help to find what categories of information should be on the site's Homepage and what those categories should be called. Explain that you want to see what groupings of cards make sense to the participant and that when the participant has grouped the cards, you will ask for a name for each group of cards.
Ask the participant to talk out loud while working. (This is the same technique you use in usability testing.) You want to understand the participant's thoughts and rationale.
Let the participant work. Also, let the participant add cards - for example, to indicate lateral hyperlinks or additional topics. Let the participant put cards aside to indicate topics the participant would not want on the site. Minimize interruptions but encourage the participant to think aloud.
At the end, if the participant has too many groups for the Homepage, ask if some of the groups could be combined for the Homepage.

Give the participant a stack of different colored cards and ask them to use the colored card to name each group. What words would the participant expect to see on the Homepage or second-level page that would lead the participant to that particular group of content items?
At the end, thank the participant and give the payment or other gift (if promised).

(4) Analyzing Data

Use the numbers on the cards to quickly record what that participant has done. Write down the names that participant gave to each grouping and the numbers of the cards the participant included under that name. Then you can reshuffle the cards for the next session.
If you want a complete picture of the detailed site map each user has created, create a computer file for each session. Working from your original list of topics, move topics around to recreate each participant's groupings and enter that participant's name for the groupings.
For a less detailed analysis, use your notes and recordings of the participant's names and card numbers under each person's name to find commonalities from different sessions.
For a more detailed analysis, consider using an Excel spreadsheet to show the relationship between the cards or use one of the available software programs to analyze your data.