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In many cases, the email summary described above may be enough for the project team to get on to the next steps in site design. In this (happy) case, we can move right on to Chapter 14 , - Revising and re-testingretesting.

However, there are some situations where we must produce a more formal, substantial report on our tree-test results:

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• Background
  A slide or two about the study – why we ran it, when, how many participants, etc.
  
  
• About tree testing
  A slide or two about how tree testing works, from the participant’s point of view, and later during analysis.
  
  
• The tree(s)
  We show an abbreviated summary of the tree(s) we tested (usually just the first and second levels) to give an idea of the various schemes we tried.
  
  
• What we looked for
  A short list of the questions we asked ourselves while creating the trees and writing the tasks, and the issues that could be resolved by testing.
  
  
• Our findings and actions/recommendations
  This is similar to what we sent earlier in our email summary, but we now have the room to add visuals (e.g. graphs from our tree-testing tool) and more details. Each task is typically a slide, with slides at the end for more general findings.
  
  
• Next steps
  What we plan to do next, when it will happen, who will be involved, and when we plan to be “done” with the site tree.
  
  
• How to find out more
  We wrap up by linking to more resources (e.g. the results in the tree-testing tool, our detailed working documents, etc.) and who to contact for more info (probably you).
  
  

So that you don’t have to start with a blank slate, here Below is a PowerPoint template and some sample decks that we’ve produced for past clients:

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deck with sample content. Feel free to customize it as needed:

As consultants doing IA work for corporate and government clients, we traditionally wrote a formal report as part of our deliverables. Originally, this was a long-form document created in Word, InDesign, or other “document” software, and usually delivered as a PDF.

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• More detailed discussion of each finding, and more detailed rationale for recommended actions.
  
  
• Summaries of related activities (e.g. card sorts and content audits we did beforehand, other up-front customer research), to add context.
  
  
• Anything else we think the reader will need to understand the tree-test results at both high and low levels.
  

To help you get your own report started, here is a Word template and some sample reports that we’ve produced for past clients:

• ~template
  ~List or table of reports with a note about each
  
  

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Next: Passing along participant feedback

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