An Introduction to Treejack

Out on a limb with your IA

Dave O’BrienOptimal Usability

Welcome

Dave O’BrienOptimal UsabilityWellington, New Zealand

22 Jan 2010

36 attendeesUSA, CA, UK, NZ, AU, BR, CO

Agenda• Quickie Treejack tour• What is tree testing?

• Planning a tree test• Setting up Treejack• Running a test• High-level results• Detailed results

• Lessons learned

• (Q&A throughout)

Poll• Have you used Treejack yet?

• No, haven’t tried it yet = 20%• Yes, but only a practice test =

60%• Yes, have run a "real" test = 20%

Tree testing - the 5-minute tour

• Creating a medium or large website• Does your top-down structure make

sense?

Does your structure work?• Can users find particular items in the

tree?

• Can they find them directly, without having to backtrack?

• Could they choose between topics quickly, without having to think too much?

• Which parts of your tree work well?– Which fall down?

Create a site tree

Write some tasks

Put this into Treejack

Invite participants

Participants do the test

You see the results

Live demo for participants*

What is tree testing, really?• Testing a site structure for

–Findability–Labeling

What’s it good for?• Improving organisation of your site• Improving top-down navigation• Improving your structure’s

terminology (labels)• Comparing structures (before/after,

or A vs. B)• Isolating the structure itself• Getting user data early (before site is

built)• Making it cheap & quick to try out

ideas

What it’s NOT• NOT testing other navigation routes• NOT testing page layout• NOT testing visual design• NOT a substitute for full user testing• NOT a replacement for card sorting

Origin• Paper tree testing

– “card-based classification” – Donna Spencer

– Show lists of topics on index cards– In person, score manually, analyse in

Excel

Make it faster & easier• Create a web tool for remote testing• Quick for a designer to learn and use• Simple for participants to do the test• Able to handle a large sample of

users• Able to present clear results• Quick turnaround for iterating

But I already do card sorting!• Open card sorting is generative

– Suggests how your users mentally group content

– Helps you create new structures

• Closed card sorting – almost not quite

• Tree testing is evaluative– Tests a given site structure– Shows you where the structure is strong &

weak– Lets you compare alternative structures

A useful IA approach• Run a baseline tree test (existing

structure)– What works? What doesn’t?

• Run an open card sort on the content– How do your users classify things?

• Come up with some new structures• Run tree tests on them (same tasks)

– Compare to each other– Compare to the baseline results

Planning a tree test• Stakeholder interview• Find out who, what, when, etc.

– fill in "planning questions" template

• Get the tree(s) in digital format– use Excel tree-import template, etc.

Getting the tree• Import a digital format

– Excel– Text file– Word

• Or enter in Treejack

Poll

• How big are your trees?

• Small (less than 50 items) = 25%• Medium (50 - 150 items) = 39%• Large (150 - 250 items) = 22%• Huge (more than 250 items) = 14%

Tree tips• Recommend <1000 items• Bigger? Cut it down by:

– Using top N levels (e.g. 3 or 4)– Testing subtrees separately*– Pruning branches that are unlikely to be visited

• Remove “helper” topics– e.g. Search, Site Map, Help, Contact Us

• Watch for implicit topics!

Implicit topics• Create your tree based on the content, not just the page structure.

Contact Us

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South America

Europe

Home

Products

Support

Contact Us• South America• Europe

Home

Products

Support

Contact Us• North America• South America• Europe

User groups and tasks• Identify your user groups

• Draft representative tasks for each group– Tasks must be “real” for those users!

• ~10 tasks per participant– Beware the learning effect– Small tree ~8, large tree ~12– More tasks? Limit per participant– Randomise the task order

Drafting tasks• What parts of the tree do you want to test?

– Coverage should reflect importance

• Each task must:– Be specific– Be clearly worded– Use the customer’s language– Be concise

• Beware “give-away” words!

• Review now, preview before the real test

Setting up a Treejack project• Creating a Treejack project• Entering your tree• Entering the tasks and answers

• Less on mechanics, more on tips

Creating a project• New vs. Duplicate• Survey name vs. address• Identification

– The “Other” option– Passing an argument in the URL

https://demo.optimalworkshop.com/treejack/survey/test1?i=12345

Entering your tree• Paste from Excel, Word, text file, etc.• “Top” – how to replace• Randomising

– Not the same as randomising tasks

• Changing the tree after entering answers

• Lesson learned:– Edit/review/finalise the tree elsewhere

before putting it into Treejack

Entering tasks and answers• Preview is surprisingly useful

• Multiple correct answers– The “main” answer is usually not enough

– Check the entire tree yourself

• Must choose bottom-level topics– Workaround: Mark all subtopics correct

– Workaround: Remove the subtopics

• Choose answers LAST

Task options• Randomising tasks – almost always• Limiting the # of tasks

– 20-30 tasks = 10 per participant– Increase the # of participants to get enough

results per task

• Skip limit– Eliminate users who didn’t really try– Defaults to 50%

Testing the test• Not previewing/piloting is just plain

dumb– Spot mistakes before launch

• Preview the entire test yourself• Pilot it with stakeholders and sample

users– Launch it, get feedback, duplicate,

revise

• Look for:– Task wording (unclear, ambiguous,

typos)– Unexpected “correct” answers– Misc. problems (e.g. instructions)

Poll• How many participants do you get

per test?

• 1 – 20 = 44%• 21 – 40 = 20%• 41 – 100 = 24%• Over 100 = 12%

Running the tree test• Invite participants

– Website-page invitations– email invitations

• Recommend >30 users per user group/test• Monitor early results for problems

– low # of surveys started• Email invitation not clear? Subject = spam? Not

engaging?

– low completion rate• email didn’t set expectations? Test too long? Too

hard?

• Generally less taxing than card sorting

Skimming high-level results• 10/100/1000 level of detail

• Middling overall score– Often many highs with a few lows

• Inspect tasks with low scores (low total or low sub-scores)

• Inspect the pie charts

Success• % who chose a correct answer

(directly or indirectly)

• low Success score– check the spreadsheet to see where they

went wrong– Destinations tab– Path tab

Directness• % of successful users who did not

backtrack– Coming soon: making this independent of

success

• low Directness score– check the spreadsheet for patterns in their

wandering– Paths tab

Speed• % who completed this task at about the same speed as their other

tasks– % who completed task within 2 standard deviations of their average

task time for all tasks

• 70% Speed score– 7/10 users went their “normal” speed

– 3/10 users took substantially longer than normal for them

• Low Speed score– indicates that user hesitated when making choices

– e.g. choices are not clear or not mutually distinguishable

• Wish: add the raw times to the spreadsheet, so you can do your own crunching as needed.

• Overall score uses a grid to combine these scores in a semi-intelligent fashion

Detailed results – destinations• Where did people end up?

• # who chose a given topic as the answer

• Wrong answers– High totals - problem with that topic (perhaps in

relation to its siblings)

– Clusters of totals – problem with the parent level

• Ignore outliers– For >30 sessions, ignore topics that get <3

clicks.

Detailed results – destinations• Look for high “indirect success” rates

(>20%)– Check paths for patterns of wandering

• Look for high “failure” rates (>25%)– Check the wrong answers above

• Look for high skip rates (> 10%)– Check paths for where they bailed out.

• Look for "evil attractors"– Topics that get clicks across several seemingly

unrelated tasks.

– Usually a vague term that needs tightening up

Detailed results – first clicks• Where they went on their first click

– Important for task success

• Which sections they visited overall

– Did they visit the right section but back

out?

Detailed results – paths

• Click-by-click paths that they took

through the tree

• Useful when asking:

– How the heck did they get way over

there?

– Did a lot of them take the same detour?

• No web UI for removing participants.

– Email Support and we’ll fix you up.

Some lessons learned• Test new against old• Revise and test again – quick cycles• Test a few alternatives at the same

time• Cover the sections according to their

importance• Analysis is easier than for card

sorting• Use in-person testing to get the

“why”– Paper is still effective (and free!) for this

• Tree testing is only part of your IA work

What’s coming

• Better scoring for Directness, Speed

• Improved results (10/100/1000)

• General enhancements across

Treejack, OptimalSort, and

Chalkmark

• Whatever you yell loudest for…

– GetSatisfaction lets you “vote” for

issues

Tree testing – more resources• Boxes & Arrows article on tree testing

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/tree-testing

• Donna Spencer’s article on paper tree testinghttp://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_based_classification_evaluation

• Treejack websiteWebinars, slides, articles, user forumhttp://www.optimalworkshop.com

Getting your input• Specific issues/questions

– support@optimalworkshop.com

• Feature requests– Check the support forum (GetSatisfaction)– “Feedback” button

Thanks!