Card Sorting for Innovative Design Solutions

🔎 How To Redesign Complex Navigation: How We Restructured Intercom’s IA (https://lnkd.in/ezbHUYyU), a practical case study on how the Intercom team fixed the maze of features, settings, workflows and navigation labels. Neatly put together by Pranava Tandra. 🚫 Customers can’t use features they can’t discover. ✅ Simplifying is about bringing order to complexity. ✅ First, map out the flow of customers and their needs. ✅ Study how people navigate and where they get stuck. ✅ Spot recurring friction points that resonate across tasks. 🚫 Don’t group features based on how they are built. ✅ Group features based on how users think and work. ✅ Bring similar things together (e.g. Help, Knowledge). ✅ Establish dedicated hubs for key parts of the product. ✅ Relocate low-priority features to workflows/settings. 🤔 People don’t use products in predictable ways. 🤔 Users often struggle with cryptic icons and labels. ✅ Show labels in a collapsible nav drawer, not on hover. ✅ Use content testing to track if users understand icons. ✅ Allow users to pin/unpin items in their navigation drawer. One of the helpful ways to prioritize sections in navigation is by layering customer journeys on top of each other to identify most frequent areas of use. The busy “hubs” of user interactions typically require faster and easier access across the product. Instead of using AI or designer’s mental model to reorganize navigation, invite users and run a card sorting session with them. People are usually not very good at naming things, but very good at grouping and organizing them. And once you have a new navigation, test and refine it with tree testing. As Pranava writes, real people don’t use products in perfectly predictable ways. They come in with an infinite variety of needs, assumptions, and goals. Our job is to address friction points for their realities — by reducing confusion and maximizing clarity. Good IA work and UX research can do just that. [Useful resources in the comments ↓] #ux #IA

Card sorting is a method used to uncover how users comprehend and categorize information. It’s great for understanding mental models and how people naturally group features, topics, or terms. It’s often used in early design phases to inform navigation, information architecture, or table of contents structures. Type of method ➤ Can be both qualitative and quantitative ➤ Exploratory, generative When to use it ➤ When defining or restructuring navigation ➤ When working on content-heavy products (menus, settings, portals, etc.) ➤ When user comprehension and labeling is key What it’s useful for ➤ Understanding how users group and relate information ➤ Informing information architecture or taxonomy ➤ Identifying content gaps or mismatches in terminology ➤ Generating structure for things like navigation, settings, or categories What it’s not useful for ➤ Understanding why users make certain groupings (unless paired with follow-up questions) ➤ Validating visual layout or interaction patterns ➤ Deep behavioral insights (it's more about structure than behavior) Open vs. Closed card sort Open: Participants group cards and label the categories themselves Closed: Participants sort into pre-defined categories Bonus tips: ➤ Involve a moderator who knows the content ➤ Keep group sizes small (1–5 max) ➤ Aim for 30–100 cards for meaningful results ➤ Let participants add their own cards if needed Designers and researchers alike benefit from this method—it’s low-cost, easy to run, and packed with insight. Have you tried a card sort before? I’d love to hear how you used it.

Unlocking Better UX with Card Sorting 🚀🔥 Ever struggled to organize content in a way that makes sense to your users? That’s where Card Sorting comes in! 🔹 What is Card Sorting? It’s a simple yet powerful UX research technique where participants categorize content into groups that feel natural to them. This helps teams design intuitive navigation and structure for websites, apps, or products. 🔹 Why It Works: ✅ Reveals how users think about information ✅ Improves IA (Information Architecture) ✅ Reduces friction in user journeys ✅ Data-driven decision-making for content organization 🔹 How to Run a Card Sorting Workshop: 1️⃣ Define your goal (e.g., improve website navigation) 2️⃣ Prepare a set of cards with key topics or features 3️⃣ Let participants sort them into categories 4️⃣ Analyze patterns and refine your structure 💡 Whether you’re designing a new product or revamping an existing one, card sorting is a game-changer for creating user-friendly experiences. #UXDesign #UserResearch #CardSorting #InformationArchitecture #DesignThinking