Moderated vs unmoderated card sorting

Moderated vs unmoderated card sorting Bad Practice
Moderated vs unmoderated card sorting Best Practice

During unmoderated card sorting sessions, users distribute cards by themselves, which usually happens with online tools. It's an inexpensive and fast way to collect data about users' ways of thinking. The downside of this method is that you don't have a chance to hear users' thoughts when organizing cards. Thus, the analysis is more time-consuming.

A moderated card sorting implies having a moderator — a person who facilitates the session. This method provides more insights because a moderator can ask participants questions like "Which item was the hardest to categorize?" or "Why do you think this card belongs to this group?" This method is more expensive and requires more planning.[1]

If you need to run a card sort with a large sample size, you can save your company's budget by mixing unmoderated and moderated methods. Run a few moderated studies to hear users' thoughts and conduct unmoderated studies with the rest to gain more statistical proof.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>