Group Sort — for facilitators

Samvinas

• Pipe in the ideas (e.g. from Brainstorm). The first line of each idea becomes the card's title, and anything after it is shown as a description.
• Before a meeting: make the step visible and share the event link. With nothing Focused, people open Group Sort from the menu and sort when they have time. Live: Focus the step.
• Each person sorts the cards into as many groups as they like. On a phone they see one card at a time; on a laptop they see the whole pile beside the board. Sorting works with a tap, a click, the keyboard or a screen reader, and dragging is optional.
• Every saved sort counts, finished or not. Someone who places 20 of 34 cards and runs out of time still contributes those 20. Their work saves as they go, so nobody needs to press I'm done.
• Sorts are anonymous, and the projector shows only how many have come in until you finalise, so nobody is steered by the room.
• Open the step's Data tab to watch the sorts arrive and preview the groups. Choose the number of groups (2–10). Greyed-out numbers are ones the sorts can't produce. When the preview looks right, press Finalise.
• Then name the groups on the Data tab. If you set Everyone can: Edit on the Settings tab, participants can name them too.
• Once the groups are final, the projector has four views: the named Groups, the Tree showing how the ideas joined, a Similarity map with the most-agreed pairs, and Ideas by group. The event report and the CSV export carry the same results.
• Later steps receive the groups by name. Pipe Group Sort into Voting to vote on the themes. Nothing passes on until you finalise, and renaming a group afterwards keeps any votes on it. Reopen takes the groups back out of later steps, so do it before anyone votes.

Paper and pen

You need: one envelope per person holding a numbered set of cards (one idea per card, 15–40 cards), paper clips, and a recording sheet.

• Ask each person to sort their deck alone and in silence into piles of ideas that belong together. Allow as many piles as they like, and allow a single card to sit on its own.
• Have them clip each pile and write the card numbers of each pile on the recording sheet. That sheet is the data.
• Tally which numbers share a pile across the sheets. Pairs that most people put together form the core of each group. With more than a dozen sheets, type them into a spreadsheet rather than counting by hand.
• The failure mode is a deck that's too big. Past about 40 cards people tire and start making one large "miscellaneous" pile, which tells you nothing.
• Harvest: the recording sheets, plus a flip chart of the agreed groups once the room has named them.

When & why

Reach for Group Sort when you want the room's independent view of how the ideas fall together. Clustering is social, and the first confident voice often decides the shape. In Group Sort, everyone's judgement carries the same weight.

• It saves meeting time. Run it before the session and arrive with the groups already formed, ready to name and discuss.
• Agreement is information. A tight group is a theme people already share. A loose one deserves a conversation, and an idea that floats between groups is often the interesting one.
• Naming is a group activity. Look at each group together and give it a name that says what it is about. A name that does something, such as a verb phrase or a fresh "How might we…?", turns a pile into a proposal.
• About 15–40 ideas works best. For fewer, Clustering in the room is quicker. For more, narrow the list first with Voting.
• What usually follows: Voting or Ranking on the named groups. To compare with the social version, see Clustering.