First, you need your tree in a form where you can easily work with it – typically, a simple text-document format on a computer. If you’re working with an online tree-testing tool, this will also let you easily copy your finalized tree into the tool later.

(While you can prepare your tree directly in your tree-testing tool, we’ve found that this is usually slower and fussier than working in a dedicated document app first.)

Some people use plain ASCII text files (e.g. tree1.txt), while others use a word processor (e.g. tree1.doc). Each heading is a separate line of text, and its level in the tree is shown by indenting with spaces or (even better) tabs:

While either of these will work, we recommend using a spreadsheet instead, because:

• The separate columns make it easier to see which level a given heading is on, and to make sure you haven’t accidentally skipped a level.
  
  
• You can include several trees (e.g. the baseline tree and some revised versions) in a single spreadsheet by using the page tabs.
  
  
• Most importantly, you can add columns to annotate your tree. In the screenshot below, we’ve added columns for Tasks and Notes.
  
  

If you’re working alone, use your favorite spreadsheet program (e.g. Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, etc.).

However, if you’re collaborating with others, we highly recommend using a online spreadsheet (such as Google Sheets) that provides multi-user editing. This lets everyone stay current and contribute without having to email files around and manually consolidate changes later.

Here are sample files in Excel and Google Sheets formats to help you get started. Feel free to tweak them to suit your needs:

A few notes about our spreadsheet template:

• The first column is reserved for the root node of the tree, so it only has a single entry, typically labeled “Home” or “Top”, but you can rename  it to whatever suits your site.
  
  
• We’ve included 5 levels, but you can add or remove columns as you require.
  
  
• Each heading is on its own row. A common error is to start subheadings on the same row as the heading, but some tree-testing tools will get confused by this.
  
  
• The Task column lets you pencil in ideas for tasks you’d like to use to exercise a particular part of the tree. By writing tasks here in the tree, it also provides a quick way to check which parts of the tree you’re testing. For more on this, see the Writing Tasks chapter.
  
  
• The Notes column gives you a place to jot down comments, issues, or to-do’s for later work. If a note is particularly important (e.g. you think it should be discussed at your next meeting), color-code its cell to make it stand out.
  
  
• Add your own columns as needed. For example, if you’re dividing up work with others, you may want to add a Who column to track who’s responsible for each section of the tree.
  
  

For the remainder of this book, we’ll use the spreadsheet method, although these ideas should be easy to adapt to other methods as well.

Next: Getting your tree into a spreadsheet