If all this sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry – it’s not. Most of this is very straightforward, and we’ll be able to fill in most of the answers in a single sitting (or a single kick-off meeting, if we're working with a team).
Whether our tree-testing plan is simple or more complex, we do recommend:
- Collaborating with the team on it, so everyone’s in the loop (and can be involved as they want to be)
- Writing it down and sharing it, so that everyone can keep updated as the project moves along (and sometimes changes as it goes). We typically use a project spreadsheet that we fill in as we go, shared in real-time using Google Drive, but the exact tools used matter less than the fact that it’s documented and “lived in” by the team.
- Reusing it next time, adding or deleted steps as we go, until we get a process that is tailored to our situation.
A planning questionnaire
When you're planning a tree test, you may find it helpful to use this simple questionnaire to fill in the answers to the questions posed throughout this chapter:
A sample plan for tree testing
Here’s a typical high-level plan for 3 rounds of tree testing (testing the existing tree, testing our new trees, then testing our even-better-with-revisions “final” tree):
| Time required | Activity | Details |
|---|
| (varies) | Earlier IA work | - User research (surveys, contextual inquiry, etc.)
- Content inventory/auditing
|
| 1 week | Round 1 | - Open card sort
- Baseline tree test (existing site)
|
| 3 days | Create new trees | - Try alternative groupings and terms
|
| 1 week | Round 2 | - Test new trees against each other
- Compare to existing tree's results
- Pick best tree and revise
|
| 1 week | Round 3 | - Test revised tree
- Revise and finalize based on results
|
If we’re just planning 1 or 2 rounds of testing, it should be easy to take this and cut it down to what is needed.
- show detailed checklists for each stage in subsequent chapters
Next: Chapter 4 - key points