See how participants sorted your cards

When participants complete a card sort, each of them drags your cards into groups and names those groups. In Results, on the card sort question, Strella shows the combined picture at the top, as one card with an Overall sort tab and a Similarity matrix tab, and each individual sort below, on the participant who made it.

The Overall sort table

The Overall sort table combines every participant's sort. Cards run down the left side, and every group name participants used runs across the top, both in alphabetical order. Each cell shows how many participants placed that card in that group, and the cell's shading deepens as more participants agree, so the strongest patterns stand out at a glance.

• Groups with the same name are combined, even when participants typed them with different capitalization or extra spaces. The table shows the name the way the first participant wrote it.
• View as switches every cell between Percentage (the share of participants who answered the question) and Count (the number of participants).
• Select a group's column header to order the cards by that group, most-placed first. Select it again to flip the order, and a third time to return to alphabetical.
• The group filter above the table narrows the view to the groups you choose. Cards that were never placed in a chosen group drop out of the table until you clear the filter.
• Long card and group names are shortened to fit; hover over one to see the full name.

The Similarity matrix

The Similarity matrix tab shows how often participants placed each pair of cards in the same group, whatever they named it. Cards run along the diagonal, and the cell where two cards meet shows the percentage of participants who grouped them together. The deeper the shading, the stronger the agreement. Hover over a cell to see both card names and the underlying numbers, like "10 of 12".

• Strella places cards that participants often group together next to each other, so blocks of dark cells along the diagonal show the natural clusters in your participants' mental model.
• A 0% cell is a finding too: no participant ever put those two cards together.
• A blank cell means the pair can't be measured: no single participant sorted both cards, which can happen if you changed the card list while the study was running.
• Percentages compare each pair against the participants who sorted both of its cards, so results stay accurate even when the card list changed mid-study.

Each participant's sort

Every participant's own sort appears in their entry in the Participants list at the bottom of the page. Expand a participant to see each group they made and the cards they placed in it. If they spoke during the sort, their transcript for the question appears alongside.

The AI summary reads the sort itself

Participants answer card sorts by dragging, not speaking, so Strella's AI writes the question's summary from the submitted sorts rather than from a transcript. The summary reads like a researcher's findings. It covers:

• The summary describes where cards landed, never why a participant placed one; nothing was spoken, so motivations are not guessed at.
• Judgments about where a card belongs come from which cards it was grouped with, so a stable cluster still appears even when every participant named their groups differently.
• Sentiment and themes stay off for card sorts, and questions answered with a file upload have no summary at all; the sort table remains the detailed analysis.

Tips

• Sort by your most important group first to see which cards participants most agree belong there.
• Disagreement is a finding: a card spread thinly across many groups is one participants could not place confidently.
• If the table has near-duplicate groups (like "Pricing" and "Price stuff"), participants named the same idea differently. Read those groups together.

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