When is it convenient to perform this method?

This kind of method is useful when we have some understanding of the user mental model and that we want to confirm it with user input. We want to clarify our conceptual model in order to get the best findability for our content.

This easy method can be very useful in different phases of our project, although we will need to apply it slightly differently depending on the current stage of the development process. When we start designing the structure of our application we can apply the method with a reduced set of cards, that correspond to the main functionalities with which the first versions of the product will be launched. We can perform this method with 10 or 15 cards and let the participants propose different organizations and groups that fit their mental models. Conversations can lead to interesting insights that you will be able to apply in your design solutions.

If you have different options to organize the sections of your application, you can perform the method several times and evaluate the results as you apply different organization schemes. You can give a set of cards with features and a few groups that match the suggested organizations. You could then propose the organization of your application based on groups of content according to their nature, for instance in an application about recipes. Another way of planning our application navigation is according to the relationship that these contents have with your users, for example in a magazine and newspaper application you could create groups according to the user interests or behavior whilst using the application. You could also think of an application that offers a set of actions the user can perform, for example in a camera application the users could open the app and take some pictures, edit their preferred ones or print some of them on paper. By having several options and letting your participants express their thoughts when they see the proposed organizational options, you can get an idea of which structure works the best, or how you can improve it to better meet the needs of your target user groups.

In more advanced phases of a project or if our application covers a larger set of content, you can have more elements to organize. Although it is better to limit the number of cards to avoid overloading your participants, you can increase the number of cards to 30 or 50, thus obtaining a broader spectrum of conversations and reasoning on which to work to create new ideas that improve your application. You can even apply this method to organize just a section of your application to improve how intuitive your app feels for your users when they are exploring the content of that specific section.