Card sorting

⏱ 3 min  ·  📅 2026

Card sorting is an information architecture research technique in which users are asked to group and label concepts, features, or content written on cards, according to their own mental judgement. Its goal is to understand how users categorize information in order to design navigation, menus, and product structures that are intuitive to them.

Why it exists

A product's information architecture tends to reflect the internal logic of the organization that builds it (teams, departments, databases), not the mental logic of the users who use it. Card sorting makes it possible to detect this misalignment before it gets built.

Types of card sorting

• Open: users can create their own categories. Ideal for understanding the user's mental structure without restrictions. It is used in the early stages of design.
• Closed: the categories are predefined, and the user only sorts the cards into them. Ideal for validating an already proposed structure.
• Hybrid: combines predefined categories with the option of creating new ones.

How to apply it

1. Write the concepts, content, or features to be sorted on physical or digital cards. Typically between 30 and 100 cards.
2. Recruit between 5 and 15 participants who are representative of the target users.
3. Ask each participant to group the cards in whatever way they find logical and to label each group.
4. Analyze the results looking for patterns: which cards tend to be grouped together and what names are given to the groups.
5. Use the patterns to design or validate the product's navigation structure.

Digital card sorting

Tools such as Optimal Workshop, UXtweak, or Maze make it possible to carry out card sorting remotely with geographically distributed participants, which makes it easier to obtain larger and more diverse samples.

Common mistake

Doing card sorting without task context. Users sort the cards differently depending on whether or not they have a specific task in mind ("I'm looking for how to change my password"). A card sort without context may reflect the user's abstract categorization logic rather than the logic of how they would look for something specific. Adding task scenarios to the protocol produces more actionable results for navigation design.

Resources

🏦 Skill Design ThinkingState of the art and development guide · Skill Arena

See also

Think-aloud protocol Shadowing Design Thinking User persona Product discovery Story mapping

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