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The simplest way to cut a large tree down to a more manageable size is to cut everything below a certain level. That is, if you have a tree 5 or 6 levels deep, cut it off at 3 or 4 levels instead:
- diagram of pruning levels
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This is easy, but be careful – you’re clearly giving something up by axing the lower levels. In the full tree, you would have been able to see if participants could follow the full path down to the exact answer you intended (and if not, where they strayed off the path). With a “short” tree, you’ll only find out if they were able to get to the right general area.
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Suppose you also have an About Us section that’s equally deep. If you’re not really interested in testing it (perhaps because that section gets infrequent traffic), you may want to cut it off at, say, level 2 (at topics like Company History, Staff, Our Vision, Careers Jobs, etc.).
- diagram of pruning “About Us”
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You may also want to do some selective pruning after you’ve written your tasks (covered in Chapter 7). If there’s a section of your site that none of your tasks come anywhere near, you can probably chop its lower sections without affecting your results. While it won’t save users time during the test (you don’t expect them to visit that section anyway), it will save you time preparing the tree.
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