Intranet Card Sorting: How to Organise Your Intranet
Intranets drift into org-chart structure: HR pages under HR, IT pages under IT, even when employees need payroll, laptop requests and leave policies in the same workflow. Card sorting helps you organise by employee tasks rather than by department. This guide walks through picking cards from top tasks, recruiting employees, running the sort, and validating the structure with a tree test.
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Why Intranets Drift Into Org-Chart Structure
Most intranets mirror the org chart: HR pages under HR, IT pages under IT, Finance pages under Finance. This structure serves departments, not employees.
Employees don't think in departments when they need to get work done. They think in tasks: "I need to book leave," "I need a new laptop," "I need to submit expenses." Those tasks often cross department boundaries, but org-chart navigation forces employees to guess which department owns what.
Card sorting helps you organise by employee workflow instead of departmental ownership.
Picking Cards From Top Tasks
Your cards should represent common employee tasks, not department names or abstract concepts. Sources for cards:
- Existing intranet content audit: List every page or tool employees use regularly.
- Search logs: What are employees searching for? Those queries reveal their mental models.
- Support tickets: "Where do I find X?" requests show findability problems.
- Employee interviews: Ask "What do you need to do on the intranet?" not "What sections should exist?"
Aim for 30-50 cards covering the most frequent tasks. Too few and you miss structure; too many and participants get fatigued.
Recruiting Employees
Sample across departments, seniority levels, and locations to capture diverse workflows:
- 20-30 participants total for stable patterns.
- Mix of departments: Don't recruit only from HR or IT. You want navigation that works for everyone.
- Mix of seniority: New hires and long-tenure employees may have different mental models.
- Avoid power users: People who administer the intranet know its current structure too well and can't sort with fresh eyes.
Remote or in-person? Remote online card sorts scale better and reach distributed teams. In-person moderated sorts work for small organisations where you can gather people in one room.
Running the Sort
Use an open card sort first. Let participants create their own categories without departmental labels. This prevents anchoring on the existing (broken) structure.
Instructions that encourage task-based thinking:
"Group these tasks by when you'd need them or how they relate to your work, not by which department owns them. Create category names that make sense to you."
If participants still default to org-chart groupings ("HR Stuff", "IT Stuff"), it signals that the intranet culture is deeply siloed and navigation alone won't fix it. But you'll still get data on which tasks employees see as related.
Open Sort, Then Closed, Then Tree Test
- Run an open card sort to discover natural task groupings. Analyse the similarity matrix and dendrogram to identify strong clusters.
- Optional: Run a closed card sort with your candidate categories to validate placement agreement. Use different participants.
- Design the intranet navigation from the card sort clusters. Use clear, task-oriented labels ("Get paid", "Request time off", "Find a colleague") rather than department names.
- Tree test the structure to measure whether employees can actually find tasks in your new navigation. Card sorting reveals mental models; tree testing validates findability.
Tree testing is available on ValidateThat.
Intranet Card List (Copy or Adapt)
Here's a ready card list covering common intranet tasks. Copy this list, adapt it to your organisation, or use it as a starting point:
Adapt these cards to your organisation's terminology and workflows. Add or remove cards based on what employees actually need to do.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many employees should participate in an intranet card sort?
Recruit from different departments and seniority levels to capture diverse workflows. Avoid recruiting only from one department; a narrow sample produces navigation that works for one group but not the whole organisation.
Should I use open or closed card sorting for an intranet?
Start with an open sort to discover how employees naturally group tasks without departmental bias. Then, if you want to validate specific navigation proposals, run a closed sort with a different group. Open sorting first prevents you from anchoring on the existing (often broken) structure.
What if employees group tasks by department anyway?
That's common in the first draft. Encourage task-based thinking in your instructions: 'Group these by when you'd need them, not by which department owns them.' If participants still default to org-chart groupings, it may signal that your intranet culture is deeply siloed and navigation alone won't fix it.