Sometimes when conducting user testing – your user does not always give you the answer you want. Recently I put together a tree test for a client. The client took the test to the user base and when reporting back the results, she informed me that the users were getting one question consistently wrong.
We asked users where they would go to find forms related to upcoming training events. Currently, they are housed with the division that creates them – but all of the users went to the training page to find the forms.
Tree testing helps us see where our ideas or assumptions about the navigation and the content are right and wrong. It helps us see where users would go to find the information they need. It provides us with a quick way to test our ideas and validate new ones.
