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However, we may also find that two terms work equally well, in which case we can decide based on other factors. For example, a consumer-review site in New Zealand considered renaming their “Electronics” section to “Technology”, and this became the subject of prolonged internal arguments about whether users would understand the new term properly. When they ran tree tests, they made sure to include tasks that targeted these alternative terms in their trees. The result was a 49/51 split; both terms worked well, so they could use either depending on other preferences.

Sharing and documenting issues and goals

When we tree test, there are several problems we typically want to fix, but yours may not completely overlap with mine. To run a good study, we need to be clear about what we're trying to find out, which means discussing it and writing it down.

To do this, we typically run a short workshop (1 to 1.5 hours) to:

• make a list of the problems we're trying to solve, and rank them
• make a list of our specific goals for this study (some of which will spring directly from our issues list).
  
  

We record this list in a shared, public place (a project whiteboard, an online spreadsheet, etc.) so we can keep it handy when designing our tree tests:

•  pic of lists
  

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Next: How many rounds of testing?

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