Card Sorting and Usability in Web Design
Card sorting is a technique in usability design where a group of subject experts or users are asked to categorise concepts. It's a technique that is useful and is therefore often used in deciding menu structure or navigational pathways in website design.
Usually a fairly low-tech approach, concepts are identified and written onto index cards or post-it notes. Users then arrange these concepts into groups or structures to create a taxonomy.
Open and Closed Card Sorting
An open card sort allows users to provide their own categories and category names but in a closed card sort, the participants are provided with a predetermined set of category names.
Card Sorting and Usability
A card sort is often undertaken when designing a navigational structure for a web site. In this context, the items to be organised are those that are significant to the website such as key pages, functionality or sections of the site. The way that the items are organised should make sense to the target audience. Information architecture is founded upon the study of the structure of information. Card sorting can be a useful strategy is creating a usable architecture.
There are a number of online tools available that are useful in website usability design - take a look at Optimal Sort