Comments on: A new card sorting tool

By: Donna Maurer

Donna Maurer — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:08:32 +0000

Hi Veronica, sorry I’m slow to answer.

The best way to make dendrograms useful is to:
1. Understand the statistics behind them
2. Vary the way ‘closeness’ is measured and generate a few different versions of the dendrograms
3. Don’t look at one dendrogram, but at the differences generated by different algorithms

And don’t collect more data than you need - that way it is easier to analyse anyway

By: Veronica Hinkle

Veronica Hinkle — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:27:36 +0000

Hi, Donna. Great comments!

Do you have any recommendations on making dendograms useful? I agree with some of the problems for “interpreting” dendograms, specially when the groups are not easy to distinguish because of poor (or lack of) color representation, etc.

I personally like dendograms, but I do find that most designer’s mental models of how dendograms ought to look make them hard to use for analyzing card sorting results (even for those of us with statistical backgrounds!).

I do wonder what are the top ten complaints that most people have with the use of dendograms for analyzing card sorting results. Do you have any ideas?

By: louise

louise — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:31:18 +0000

Oooh, my god! The best stuff!

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By: Donna Maurer

Donna Maurer — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:23:46 +0000

OptimalSort has far better analysis capabilities. And I like the sorting method better - websort has some interaction oddities.

But go and have a look. It is free at the moment.

By: Stephan Schillerwein ¦ Schillerwein Net Consulting

Stephan Schillerwein ¦ Schillerwein Net Consulting — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:33:30 +0000

This looks real good and easy to use!
So far, I’ve been advising clients to use WebSort (websort.net) if they wanted to do online/remote card sorting. Can you tell me how the two compare/differ?

Thanks a lot!
Stephan