Add a tree test

A tree test is an interactive exercise inside your question guide. The participant reads a task, such as "Your order arrived damaged. Where would you go to report it?", then clicks through an outline of your labels until they reach the place they would expect to find it. It tells you whether your structure and wording lead people to the right place, with no visual design to help or distract them.

Tree test is a Test element. Like a survey question, the participant answers it. Like a section, it holds follow-up questions of its own, which are asked while the outline stays on screen. See Step types for how it sits alongside the other elements.

Steps

1. Add the tree test

   In Build, click + Add element and choose Tree test under Test. The element joins the guide like any other, and its properties open on the right.

2. Write the task

   The element's question text is the task. Describe a situation and ask where the participant would go, without using the words of the label you want them to find.

3. Build the tree

   Click Add item to add a top-level label, and use Add child on a row to nest labels under it. Click a row to rename it, and drag rows to reorder them or move them under another label. Every item needs a label.

4. Pick the correct destination

   Choose the right answer under Correct destination, or use Set as correct answer from a row's menu. Each tree test has one task and one correct destination. To test a second task against the same tree, duplicate the element and change the task and destination.

5. Choose how the tree opens

   Tree style sets how the outline reveals your labels:

   • Focused opens like a menu. Opening a section hides the sections beside it, so only the path the participant took stays on screen. This is the default.
   • Full keeps every top-level section visible, and sections expand in place under their parent.

   The style changes only what the participant sees. Results are measured the same way in both.

6. Decide whether sections can be answers (optional)

   With Branches selectable off, participants answer with a label that has nothing under it, and sections only open and close. Turn it on when a section itself is a valid destination, such as a landing page.

7. Add follow-up questions (optional)

   A tree test can hold its own follow-ups: open questions, tasks, statements, and survey questions. Drag them inside the tree test the way you'd nest steps in a section. The outline stays on screen while they run, so use them to ask why the participant went where they did.

What the participant sees

The participant first sees a card with the task, and the outline hidden behind it. They click Click to view to reveal the outline, then open sections and select the label where they would expect to find what the task describes.

They confirm their answer in either of two ways: by clicking I'd find it here beside the selected label, or by telling the AI moderator, for example "I'd find it here." Either way, Strella saves the answer, including when the tree test is the last step of the interview.

For a participant interviewed in another language, Strella translates the labels before the outline appears, and the confirm button and selection bar use the translated labels. The AI moderator names the buttons in that language too. Your results keep the labels you wrote.

Reading the results

The question's results show how many participants chose the correct destination, how many got there without backing up, the median time on task, and the most common first click. Below them, Strella lists every distinct path participants took, with how many took it and whether it ended at the correct destination. Each participant's transcript also shows their own path step by step.

Related