So, what we want is content that is all at the *same level*. So, what I mean by that is we need it to be the same kind of granularity, the same kind of part of a hierarchy. An example that I saw a very long time ago that's a good example for this is I saw somebody running a card sort about tourism content. And in the tourism content, they had things like a hotel name, a zoo to visit,
a winery to visit, they had some stuff about the geography, and then they had a card called 'accommodation'. So, you can think like if you've got a hotel – actually, I think they had a card of 'things to do' as well. So, you have like a 'hotel' card and an 'accommodation' card. They're different levels of hierarchy. A hotel is more detailed than the broad concept of accommodation. So, we don't want that 'accommodation' card in the mix because people will put those together
– you cannot stop them from putting a hotel and accommodation together. And then, you haven't really learned about the content and the sort. You've just learned the thing that was going to happen. So, you want to make sure that they're – and the level is a hard concept, but you can see it in your content; like, you want either quite detailed things or fairly broad things, but they need to be the same. You want the cards to be a good selection that represents the content you'll be working with in the end.
If you were card sorting for a supermarket, a grocery store, but you didn't include anything cold, so no frozen foods, no refrigerated foods, and then you ran the card sort, you're going to learn about some things but you're not going to learn about everything. And then you won't have information to cover the things that you haven't covered in the sort. So, you want to have really good coverage across everything that you're arranging.
And this can be hard because if you're working on a site that's large, you need to be able to get good coverage. You also need people to be able to actually group the content. So, if you get a good broad selection that covers your content but then people look at it and they go, 'Well, I can see some chocolate and some apples and some cheese and some tinned foods and things, but I can't make a *group* out of those,'
then you haven't learned anything from the activity. So, this is a juggle – you need to get a breadth that covers your content but still people can make groups out of.