itk-card-sorting

name	itk-card-sorting
description	This hands-on activity allows participants to communicate and document their mental model and how they think about a set of information, creating a logical structure (e.g., relationships, sequences, timing).
intent	Determine how to organize and structure information that makes sense to users. Understand the mental models of an individual or a group of people. Explore and assess multiple arrangements and architectures.
type	component
phase	understand
outcome	understand
difficulty	advanced
group_size	4+ people
time_required	45+ minutes
best_for	["Designing or restructuring information architecture for a product's navigation, menus, or feature taxonomy before UI design","Validating whether your proposed feature grouping matches how target users mentally categorize the domain","Reconciling conflicting stakeholder views on how to organize a complex settings page, dashboard, or content hierarchy","Discovery research to surface user mental models when designing onboarding flows or categorizing a large content library","Reducing navigation confusion and support tickets by grounding menu structure in actual user categorization patterns"]
sources	["MITRE Innovation Toolkit (ITK)","https://itk.mitre.org/toolkit-tools/card-sorting/"]

Card Sorting

What Is It

This hands-on activity allows participants to communicate and document their mental model and how they think about a set of information, creating a logical structure (e.g., relationships, sequences, timing).

Why Use It

Determine how to organize and structure information that makes sense to users. Understand the mental models of an individual or a group of people. Explore and assess multiple arrangements and architectures.

When to Use It

When you need to produce an information architecture, introduce structure into a large collection of data, or validate assumptions about how participants categorize information.

How to Do It

1. Write or print the information onto index cards, paper, or labels. The information on the cards could be single words, phrases, or sentences. Mark each card with an identification number for easy documenting after the sort.
2. Create a set of category titles you think may help get the participants started, or provide blank cards for participants to create their own categories. Differentiate the category titles from the rest of the cards for the participants to sort.
3. Ask the participant to sort the cards one by one in a way that makes sense to them on a large, blank surface, using the existing categories and creating any categories they feel are missing. Asking the participant to speak through their sorting process can provide additional insights about how they think about the information at hand.
4. After the participants sort the deck, take a picture for your records and use the identification numbers to record the categories and card order. Shuffle the card deck between users to eliminate any card order biases.
5. After collecting sort results from all participants, look for trends such as common categories, cards that end up grouped together, or cards grouped under similar categories.

Key Concepts

Mental Model — The internal map users hold of how concepts relate and where things belong. Surfacing it reveals the gap between your product's structure and users' expectations, which drives findability and learnability.

Open vs. Closed Sort — In an open sort participants create their own category labels; in a closed sort they sort into predefined categories. Open sorts reveal natural groupings and vocabulary; closed sorts validate an existing architecture.

Information Architecture — The structural design of how content and features are organized, labeled, and navigated. Card sorting produces the evidence base for IA decisions instead of relying on internal assumptions.

Card Granularity — The level of detail on each card (single word, phrase, or task). Mismatched granularity skews groupings, so cards should represent comparable units of information at the same level of abstraction.