How Exactly does Card Sorting Work?

Card sorting is a simple method to figure out how people group and prioritize information.

• Prepare Materials: First, you need to get everything ready. Make cards with different things related to your product or service written on them. These could be features, ideas, or topics. Make sure the cards are easy to read. Decide if you want participants to create their own groups or if you’ll provide groups for them.
• Find Participants: Next, you need people to join the sorting session. You can ask users, stakeholders, or anyone else involved in your project. It’s good to have a mix of different people to get diverse perspectives.
• Sorting Time: During the session, give participants the cards and ask them to organize them into groups. They can decide how to group them based on what makes sense to them. If you’re doing an open sorting, they’ll also come up with names for each group. Encourage them to talk about why they’re making certain groups.
• Collecting Data: As participants sort the cards, take notes or record what they’re doing and saying. Pay attention to how they’re grouping things and any reasons they give for their choices. This helps you understand how they think about the information.
• Understanding the Results: After the session, look at the data you collected. See if there are any patterns or common themes in how people grouped the cards. This gives you insight into how users see connections between different parts of your product or service.

By using card sorting, you can learn a lot about how users think and what’s important to them. This helps you make better decisions about how to design your product or service to meet their needs and preferences.

In product management, card sorting helps you organize information better. It’s like sorting cards into piles based on how they’re connected. This method is important because it shows how people think about a product’s features or content. By involving people in this process, product managers learn what matters most to them. This helps in designing products that match what people want, leading to better experiences and happier users.