Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Participants

You can do each card sort with one person at a time or with several people at once. Both have advantages. Having more than one user in one session can be harder to schedule, and one person typically dominates the process anyway. On the other hand, having multiple participants may create conversations that offer valuable insights into how people think about these things.

If you go with multiple participants, be careful not to overdo it. More than three or four people typically won’t be able to participate in a card sort at the same time.

How many card sorts should you do in total? Jakob Nielsen recommends fifteen card sorts with one user each.^[34] Since card sorts are simple, doing many of them is easily possible. Different people ...