Overview
Tree testing allows you to test navigation branches, before designing them.
A Tree Test is a great way to validate the ease of finding items in your product structure.
How to create a Tree Test:
- Open your draft Discovery project or create a new one.
- In the draft maze, choose Tree Test from the list of blocks.
- Type in your title and write a description.
- Create your Tree Structure based on your site structure
- You can view how the Tree Test will look on the right side of the draft maze page.
When to use a Tree Test
- When testing the usability of your navigational items
- Validate ideas before designing
- Building a foundation for the design that will lay on top of your site structure.
Tree Tests can answer questions like:
- Do my labels make sense?
- Is my content grouped logically?
- Can users find the information they want easily and quickly. If not, what's stopping them?
If designing from scratch, we recommend card sorting first, then Tree Testing. A Tree Test does not require a prototype.
Analyzing Tree Test results
When you've completed a project containing a Tree Test, your results will appear similar to below:
Here, you can see both the most popular final category selected by testers (listed as the "End screen") and the most common hierarchy that testers selected (listed under "Most common paths") which enables you to see if there's consensus or disagreement over how to categorize/navigate to content.