🔆Card Sorting

Card Sorting is is a technique in user experience design. It is a brainstorming technique to enable the creation of associations between information.

1. Use a dark pen or sharpie to write

2. Get four different colors of post-it notes or index cards

3. Take pictures of each step along the way. Make sure the photos are well lit and have good contrast.

Step 1: Theme Cards

Identify at least three themes that are of interest to you. Create theme cards by writing the name of the theme on separate, individual cards.

Step 2: Descriptor Cards

Choose a second color of card and create a set of descriptor cards for each theme by listing adjectives or traits of those themes. Try to extract at least five descriptor cards per theme.

Step 3: Enabler Cards

Choose a third color of card and create three enabler cards for each project. The enabler cards are underlying traits that would enable a project to exist for this theme—the technology, software, circumstance, environment, or tools that are needed for the project. For a painting, enabler cards would be paint, brushes, easel, subject, canvas, or light. (It is OK to use more than the suggested amount of cards.)

Step 4: Idea Cards

Now is the fun part. Take a look at all of your cards. Lay all the themes and their cards out on the table and start to pull descriptor and enabler cards that interest you (choosing from all the themes). Start to make associations between the cards to form ideas. If you don’t see what you want on an existing card, add more descriptor and enabler cards in a miscellaneous group that is not attached to an existing theme.

Take the cards and play with them so they come together to form ideas for a project. Once you have an idea, write it on a new idea card. Do this multiple times and take photos of your idea cards. Try to play with the idea of contrast, and pairing complementary or opposite things together. Think also about what interests you in the existing themes, and why those themes are interesting. Look closely at the relationships between the elements of your newly created ideas.

Once you come up with a project idea, try to deconstruct it and organize different groups of descriptor and enabler cards that would be relevant to the same idea. For example, if your project idea is to provide the experience of weightlessness, think of different ways to make that happen—it could be a 3-D goggles project, or a physical experience, or a sound installation. Try to come up with different sets of cards that describe the same idea, or describe a different realization of the same idea.