Summary: Card sort studies help shape information architectures; tree-testing studies evaluate them.
Card sorting and tree testing are specialty UX-research methods used to design and evaluate information architecture (IA). Many newcomers to IA often confuse these two methods due to their similar goals of enhancing the site’s navigation and content structure.
Card sorting is used to determine how people categorize content, while tree testing evaluates an established navigation structure or can help compare alternative structures.
Card Sorting: Discovering Possible Groupings
Card sorting is a research method in which study participants place individually labeled cards into groups according to criteria that make the most sense to them.