First look at SortLab

I've been quietly working on a side project called SortLab, and the designs are far enough along that I wanted to share a first look.

The problem

Anyone who has tried to run a card sort with a real team knows there are a myriad of logistical obstacles involved with scheduling the session, half the invites can't make it. Once you start the session, the participants are staring at a list of cards that you wrote, which means you've already decided what the conversation is about before it starts. The output is a tree that reflects your assumptions as much as theirs.

The tools that exist today are great at the mechanical part (drag a card, drop it in a bucket, generate a diagram) but they treat the participant as a sorter. In my experience, the most valuable signal isn't how a team sorts a fixed list, it's what they think belongs on the list at all, and which items they argue over.

SortLab is my attempt to build the tool I wish I'd had.

The concept

SortLab is a facilitated, asynchronous card sorting workshop. An admin sets up a session, invites a group, and drives them through four gated phases on the team's own schedule. Each phase opens, collects input, and closes — either on a deadline the admin sets, or whenever the admin decides the group is ready to move on.

The participants create the cards themselves before anyone sorts anything. The categories come from the team too. By the time you're sorting, you're sorting a vocabulary the group already agreed is worth talking about.

The session ends with a validated content map.

The admin experience

The admin home screen is built around the immediate needs of the facilitator. You can set up a workshop, invite people, and check in when a phase is ready to close.

The cockpit

This is the screen I've spent the most time on. I think of it as the cockpit: it's where the admin lives once a workshop is in flight. It surfaces the current phase, who has contributed, what's still outstanding, and a single primary action which is usually "close this phase and advance the group."

Key differentiators

To put a finer point on what makes SortLab different from the tools I've used before:

• Participants contribute, they don't just sort. Cards and categories come from the team. The tool is a structured way to surface and converge on a shared vocabulary, not a way to test one you've already written.
• Async and phased by default. Four gated phases run at the team's pace. No calendar Tetris. No "let's get everyone on a Zoom for ninety minutes."
• The admin is a facilitator, not an observer. Most card sorting tools are unmoderated. SortLab gives the admin a cockpit and explicit control over when each phase opens and closes. Real workshops have a facilitator for a reason.
• The output is a deliverable. A workshop ends with an exportable content map ready for stakeholders, not a CSV that you still have to interpret.

Where things stand

What you're seeing here are designs, not a shipped product. I'm building this out in the open and the next milestones are the participant-facing flows and the export. If any of this resonates — particularly if you've run content workshops and have opinions about where the existing tools fall short, I'd love to hear from you.

More soon!