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Guides for running card sorts, pairwise studies, and Best–Worst studies in SortedResearch, from setting up your first study to reading the results and sharing them with your team.
Getting started
SortedResearch runs four kinds of study: card sorts, pairwise studies, Best–Worst studies, and Findability studies. In a card sort, you give participants a set of cards (items, features, topics), they sort them into groups that make sense to them, and the platform turns the results into clear analysis and a Graham-written insight report (Graham is the platform's AI assistant). Pairwise ranks a list of needs by importance and satisfaction and plots them on an opportunity matrix, and Best–Worst ranks a longer list by what matters most. Findability (tree testing) takes a menu you already have and finds out whether people can actually find things in it. Card sorting is used to design information architecture, navigation, taxonomies, and content groupings; Findability tests the structure you end up with; pairwise and Best–Worst are used to prioritize needs, features, and ideas.
Creating a study
Click New study on the dashboard (the same button starts a card sort, a pairwise study, or a Best–Worst study, pick Card sort here; pairwise and Best–Worst have their own articles, [pairwise](pairwise.md) and [Best–Worst](maxdiff.md)). You'll set:
Pairwise studies
Pairwise is the second kind of study you can run in SortedResearch, alongside card sorts. Where a card sort shows how people group things, a pairwise study ranks a list of needs on what matters to you, most often how much each one matters to people and how well those needs are met today, or on a question you write yourself. It does this by asking participants lots of simple two-at-a-time questions ("which of these matters more to you?") and turning the answers into a ranking.
Best–Worst studies
Best–Worst is the third kind of study you can run in SortedResearch, alongside card sorts and pairwise studies. Where a card sort shows how people group things and a pairwise study ranks a list two-at-a-time, a Best–Worst study ranks a longer list by what matters most. It shows each participant a small handful of items at a time and asks them to tap the one that matters most and the one that matters least. Those best-and-worst picks add up to a clear, reliable ranking of the whole list.
Findability studies (tree testing)
Findability is the fourth kind of study you can run in SortedResearch, alongside card sorts, pairwise studies, and Best–Worst studies. It answers one question: can people find things in your menu?
The screener
A screener is an optional set of questions shown before the study, used to qualify or disqualify participants and to manage quotas. Build it in the study's Screener tab. If you add no questions, participants go straight to the study.
Sharing & launching
Transitions (on the Launch step): Draft → Use your audience → Live; Live → Pause → Paused; Paused → Go live again; any state → Close study; Closed → Reopen as draft (back to an editable draft).
The participant experience
This is what someone sees when they open your study link. Participants never sign in and never see Graham or your dashboard.
Analysis & results
Open a study and go to its results to explore how participants sorted. All analysis is computed live in your browser, so sliders and filters update instantly.
Reports & exports
Graham writes a plain-English insight report for your study. It covers:
How many responses do I need?
Graham uses this to recommend a target number of completed responses for each study. The goal is enough participants for stable, trustworthy groupings, without paying to recruit people you don't need.
Graham's smarts (AI features)
The AI throughout SortedResearch is Graham. He works in a few specific places, and every Graham feature degrades gracefully: if he's briefly unavailable, the platform falls back to a sensible non-AI behavior and nothing is ever blocked. Graham's group-naming, quality checks, screener import, and insight reports are paid-plan features (Individual and up); the Free plan gets one view-only insight report, and Graham chat as a trial, full access until 3 days after your first response arrives, after which any monthly plan brings him back.
Plans & billing
> Note: billing ships with the platform build. Keep this article in step with the live pricing, quotas, and Stripe flows as they're implemented.
Data, privacy & security
Your studies and data are visible only to your workspace (organization). Access is enforced at the database level, with row-level security scoped to your organization, so members of your workspace (for example your teammates on a Team plan) share access to its studies, and no other organization can reach them, even through the API. If you're a single-seat account, that workspace is just you.
Troubleshooting & FAQ
A network sent too many actions in a short window (rate limiting). It clears within about a minute. This usually only happens with many participants on the same office/campus network at once, or automated testing. Normal use never hits it.