Card Sorting - Huge Company

Question

We're going to redesign the company's website that I work on but I have a lot of menus and different services to organize

We offer all these kind of services:

Education Short-Term Courses, Certificate Programs, University, Distance Learning

For Companies In-Company Training, Product Development, Research, Workshops, Financing, etc

We also have a TV program and a publishing company.

For each of these things we have many technical areas like: chemistry, mechanics, Construction and Building Technology, Manufacturing and Engineering, Information and Communication, etc. Spread over 90 unities across the state

I dont now how can I create cards for my Card Sorting Session, because I can be very specific like "Basic Excel Training" Or not like "Software Development Courses"

How can I decide what level of cards Im going to use? And What granularity could I use?

Answer 1

You have a complex scenario for sure, but remember you don't need to have a card for each and every item. As a matter of fact, according to Card Sorting at usability.gov:

Create your list of content topics. Topics can be phrases or words, very specific or more general. As a suggestion, limit yourself to 50-60 topics or less. This means there might not be a card to sort for every page on the site.

• For a new site, list the content topics of types of information that you are likely to have on the site

• For an existing site, list the most important / popular types of content

• To create this list:

  • Review the content listed in your content inventory.
  • Identify the most important or most frequently used content

So, granularity will be defined by you, but you won't need every course, or every micro-page, just the most important branches in your trees. For example:

Home --> Taxonomy1 --> Taxonomy2 --> Any Item

where taxonomies are identified, but "Any item" is literally "any item" (for example, each specific course).

Additionally

When building a hierarchy tree for your scenario, you'll have a hub/umbrella, and several business areas. You can treat each business area on a one by one basis, and perform card sorting tests on each of these business areas. Then you go up the tree and perform a secondary card sorting instance for each business area. So, using the same example above:

Hub --> Site Home --> Taxonomy1 --> Taxonomy2 --> Any Item