The tasks we create should cover the most common and critical activities that visitors will do at our website, and any “suspect” areas of our tree. |
We can “borrow” tasks from any previous card sorting or usability testing that we’ve done for this site. |
Create as many tasks as you need to cover the key parts of your tree, but don’t ask a given participant more than 8-10 tasks. |
Decide if you need different tasks (and therefore separate tests) for different audiences, or if they can all “reasonably pretend” to do each other’s tasks. |
Avoid the most common tree-testing pitfall by using our guidelines to write clear, effective tasks. |
Be careful and consistent in marking your correct answers, because there may be more than you expected. |
In most cases, you should let participants skip (give up on) tasks to avoid user frustration and pollution of your results. |
Next: Chapter 8: Setting up a test