Our card sort had a total of nine participants, which included our classmates who shared the same level of knowledge on our topic. This was an open card sort where users had to create their own categories and put items in that they think should be grouped together.

Figure 1 is our similarity matrix, where you can see the percentage of times cards got grouped together. The darker blue the square is, the higher the percentage of time people grouped the two cards together.

This data was useful as we can see that the content that was grouped together the most showed the strongest connections and should be placed in the same category. For example, “Oil Spill Preparedness” and “Scientific support for environmental emergencies” were grouped together 100% of the time, strongly indicating that users view them as part of the same topic area and should be placed in a group together. This diagram also shows what cards are rarely placed together. Suggesting that there may be an information architecture issue where labels are not clear. Addressing these findings will improve the overall clarity and usability of our content structure.

Figure 2 shows the different groups that users came up with, 25 in total. The most common groups were “pollution” and “land”, with five and four users creating those categories, respectively. A finding from the category table shows that although the themes were consistent, the labels used to categorize them were varied. The headings are difficult for users to categorize, emphasizing the need for further research to work on a better solution.

Figure 1: Card Sort Similarity Matrix