Card sorting

A method in which people group and name cards with content items to reveal how they mentally organize information.

Origin: Miller (1969), in psychology; on the web, Nielsen and Sano (1995); systematized for design by Spencer (2009)
Output: The groups and labels people use to organize the content

What it’s for

It helps you structure menus, categories or websites according to people’s logic, not the institution’s.

A city government website with dozens of procedures.

By the org chart

Procedures are grouped by department: Urban Planning, Finance, Social Services. Internal logic.

By the people

When grouping the cards, people create groups like “My home,” “My taxes” or “My kids.” The searcher’s logic.

Card sorting shows how people would search, which often doesn’t match how the institution is organized.

When to use it
Before defining the menu of a website or app with a lot of content.
Avoid
Using cards with technical names only the team understands.
Don’t fall for it
After an open card sort, validate the structure with a closed one or with findability tests.

2009
Donna Spencer
Brought together the practice of card sorting in Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories.
1969
George A. Miller
Used the task of freely sorting words into groups in psychology to infer how concepts are organized.
1995
Jakob Nielsen and Darrell Sano
Documented one of the first uses of card sorting to organize an internal website.

Miller, G. A. (1969). A psychological method to investigate verbal concepts. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 6(2), 169–191. View source: Miller, G. A. (1969)
Nielsen, J., & Sano, D. (1995). SunWeb: User interface design for Sun Microsystem's internal Web. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 28(1–2), 179–188. View source: Nielsen, J., & Sano, D. (1995)

Last reviewed: October 25, 2026