When to do a card sort?
Research Insights can tell you what to research next.
I was recently working on a client product. Where we found the 6 out of 10 participants and 2 out of 4 participants from 2 different usability studies were having trouble finding the link to get their task started. They would click around on all kinds of links hoping it would get them to their desired place so they can quickly finish their intended task.
This led me to believe we needed to understand how the majority of our users' mental models made them think about how tasks were grouped into categories and what they would name those categories.
So this one use case where card sorts are effective.
The card sort study was able to help us redesign the navigation for the client that matches the way users think about the tasks and categories.
Green Field Products: Another use case for card sorts is more obvious.
When your designing a new product from scratch that does not exist yet. It will be helpful to understand how users group and label categories of information so you know how to organize the information in the navigation and in the design itself.
Examples of Research Insights
Research insights might show you that user group tasks based on how often they would do them (frequency), how urgent they are when they need them (importance) or just that they like grouping similar tasks together.
Online Tool
It was easy to use and it will only cost you $99 per study.