Unlock the potential of your UX with Card Sorting

Summary

In this guide, you will learn:

• What card sorting is and how it helps design or evaluate a website’s information architecture

• The three main types of card sorting: open, closed, and hybrid

• When to use each card sorting type

• How to run a card sorting session using Miro’s templates and tools

• Benefits of using Miro for card sorting

• Best practices for analyzing card sorting outcomes and using participant feedback

Card sorting is a user-centered design tool that offers a unique insight into the minds and preferences of users. It helps designers to understand how content should be organized and navigated, ensuring that final designs align with user expectations.

Too often, processes and tools overshadow the individuals who actually use them - a challenge cited by 69% of Agile practitioners in our recent research. Card sorting flips that balance, putting users back at the center of the design process and revealing how they naturally group and navigate information.

What is Card Sorting in UX?

Imagine you're organizing a party, and you have a deck of cards representing different elements of the event—food, music, guest list, and decor. How do you categorize these elements to ensure the party is a hit? That's card sorting in a nutshell, but for UX design.

Card sorting is a technique that can be used to design or evaluate the information architecture of a website. During this process, participants are asked to categorize topics in a way that makes sense to them.They may also help label these groups.

This user-centric method provides valuable insights into users' expectations and understanding of the website's content. It helps create an intuitive site navigation and organization, making it easier for users to find what they want.

Types of Card Sorting

Card sorting is a versatile user experience (UX) research method tailored to specific stages of the design process or insights you aim to uncover.

There are various types of card sorting techniques that you can use, each with its own nuances. Understanding these nuances can help you choose the most effective approach for your project's needs.

The three primary types of card sorting techniques are explained below, along with the scenarios in which they are best suited:

Open Card Sorting

Participants create and label their own categories. It’s the best for:

• Exploratory research: Ideal in the early stages of design to explore how users conceptualize and categorize information without any preconceived structures.

• Generating new ideas: Useful for generating new categories or labels that reflect user terminology and perspectives.

• Identifying user mental models: Helps understand the mental model of users, how they naturally group your content, which can inform the foundation of your information architecture.

Closed Card Sorting

Participants sort cards into pre-defined categories. It’s best for: 

• Validating information architecture: Perfect for testing whether your proposed categories and structures make sense to your users.

• Refining categories: Use it to refine and streamline existing categories, ensuring they align with user expectations and understanding.

• Comparative testing: Effective for comparing different sets of pre-defined categories to see which set aligns best with user expectations.

Hybrid Card Sorting

A combination of open and closed, allowing for both pre-defined and user-generated categories. It’s the best for:

• Flexibility in research: Offers a balanced approach when you have some established categories but also want to explore new potential groupings or labels.

• Iterative design processes: Useful when you want to validate existing structures while still being open to user-driven modifications or additions.

• Bridging gaps: Helps identify gaps in your current information architecture by providing insights into both expected and unexpected ways users categorize your content.

To gather meaningful insights that drive user-centric design decisions, it's important to choose the right type of card sorting that matches your research goals and project stage.

Each method has unique strengths, such as generating new insights with open card sorting, validating existing structures with closed card sorting, and enjoying the best of both worlds with hybrid card sorting.

Understanding these differences ensures that your UX research is effective and aligned with your project's needs. If you need more guidance, use our Card Sorting template.

What are the benefits of Card Sorting?

Why should you consider card sorting for your next UX project? Here are a few compelling reasons:

User-centered design

Directly involves users in the design process, ensuring the final product aligns with their expectations and preferences.

Clarity and organization

Helps organize content in a way that's intuitive to your audience, improving the usability of your site or app.

Identifies patterns

Uncovers patterns in how users think about your content and categories, which can guide your information architecture decisions.

Cost-effective

It's a low-cost method that can be conducted in person or online, making it accessible for projects of all sizes.

What are the downsides of Card Sorting?

Card sorting is a powerful method, but it’s not without its challenges. Here are a few to keep in mind:

Analysis takes time

Running a card sort is quick, but making sense of the results can be slower - especially with offline sessions. Online tools like Miro help speed this up by automating parts of the analysis.

Not a complete solution

Card sorting offers valuable insights, but it’s rarely the whole picture. Pairing it with methods like tree testing gives you a stronger foundation for structuring content that works for all users.

Card Sorting best practices

To get the most out of your card-sorting sessions, keep these best practices in mind:

1. Clearly define your goals

Know what you want to achieve with your card sorting session—whether it's testing a current structure or exploring new organizational possibilities.

2. Choose the right type

Select open, closed, or hybrid card sorting based on your project's needs and the insights you're looking to gain.

3. Recruit representative participants

Your results are only as good as your participants. Ensure they represent your actual user base for relevant insights.

4. Keep instructions clear

Ensure participants fully understand the task and what's expected of them to avoid confusion and skewed results.

5. Analyze results thoughtfully

Look for patterns, common categories, and unexpected insights. This data is gold for refining your UX design.

Is Card Sorting right for you?

Card sorting isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. It's most effective when you're looking to:

• Understand how users conceptualize and categorize your content.

• Refine the structure of your website or application for better navigation.

• Validate or challenge your assumptions about your current information architecture.

If these align with your current UX challenges, then yes, card sorting could be a valuable tool in your design process.

Why use Miro for Card Sorting?

Ready to take the plunge into card sorting? Miro is your go-to platform to make this process as smooth and insightful as possible. With its intuitive interface and collaborative features, Miro simplifies the organization of card sorting sessions, be they open, closed, or hybrid. It also enhances the participant experience and makes analyzing results a breeze.

Here's how you can use Miro for your next card-sorting effort:

Preparation is key

Use Miro's vast template library to set up your card sorting exercise, whether you're hosting it live or asynchronously.

Engage and collaborate

Invite participants to join your board and sort cards in real time, fostering collaboration and immediate feedback.

Analyze with ease

Use Miro's analytical tools to identify patterns, categorize responses, and derive actionable insights from your session.

Embarking on a card-sorting journey with Miro elevates your UX research and brings you closer to creating user-centric designs that resonate with your audience. So, why wait? Dive into Miro today and watch your project's information architecture transform.

How Melewi powers remote UX research with Miro

To streamline UX research across industries and time zones, Melewi built a UX Workshop Canvas for remote workshops - enabling clients to add comments, share multimedia, and vote on design ideas in real time.

This delivered UX research with more engaging collaboration, sharper insights, and a more efficient design process.

“Our UX Workshop Canvas on Miro is our whiteboard for our global, remote workshops. Having a real-time canvas greatly benefits participation — clients can add comments, throw in multimedia and vote on design ideas.”

- Melewi

See how we do UX research at Miro

Card sorting is just one way to understand your users. At Miro, we take research further by running everything from generative studies to co-design sessions - all within our own platform.

Get started with Card Sorting today

If you’re keen to improve how users find and understand your content, card sorting offers a direct route. Tap into how people organize information and find clarity in navigation, labels, and structure. 

With Miro, the process is seamless: use our templates, invite stakeholders, gather real-time input, and analyze insights without switching tools. 

Card sorting FAQs

When should you run a card sorting exercise in the design process?

Card sorting is most useful early in a project, when you’re shaping or restructuring navigation. It can also be valuable mid-project if you need to validate assumptions before finalizing an information architecture.

How do you analyze card sorting results effectively?

The key is to look for clusters and patterns across participants. Online tools like Miro simplify this by automatically grouping responses, making it easier to spot common structures or outliers without hours of manual sorting.

Can card sorting be done remotely?

Yes. Remote card sorting tools allow participants to sort cards digitally, making it easier to gather input across geographies and time zones. This broadens your pool of participants and speeds up analysis.

How do you decide between card sorting and tree testing?

Card sorting is best for exploring how users expect content to be grouped. Tree testing, on the other hand, evaluates whether users can successfully find information in an existing structure.

Together, they provide a stronger foundation for designing navigation.

How many cards should you use in a session?

Generally, you’ll want anywhere between 20-60 cards. Fewer may not surface enough insights, while more can overwhelm participants and dilute the quality of results.

How does Miro help my team collaborate on card sorting projects?

Miro centralizes collaboration for both real-time and async sessions. Participants can sort cards together, leave comments, and share feedback in one place. This reduces the need for extra meetings and keeps the research process moving.

Are there resources or templates available from other product teams?

Yes. The Miroverse community has templates from UX researchers and design teams worldwide. You’ll find proven setups for card sorting, journey mapping, and other research methods to get started quickly.

Author: Miro Team

Last update: October 22, 2025