Before sending a study live, we recommend previewing and extensively testing it to confirm that everything works as intended. But, in some cases, you might need to go back and make adjustments after a study has been published. For example, if you need to fix a typo, or change the setup of a block.
This article walks you through the process and implications of editing a study that has already been published.
In this article:
- What can I update on a live study?
- Before you start
- Edit a live study
- Viewing results for an edited study
What can I update on a live study?
Some changes can impact how testers experience the test and the accuracy of your results data. This is particularly sensitive if you’ve already started receiving responses for that study.
Learn more about the changes you can make when editing a study
Allowed changes
These changes won’t affect your data:
- Fixing typos or small grammar mistakes
Although allowed, you should note that some changes may impact how your testers interact with your study, and affect your results:
- Editing task instructions
- Updating block settings
- Changing block order and/or conditional logic
Breaking changes
Other types of changes are considered breaking changes — i.e. those significant enough that it would be challenging to reconcile data collected before and after the edit.
Breaking changes are disabled on your blocks by default. To edit a disabled field, you’ll need to duplicate/hide that block.
Not allowed
Prototypes are linked to the entire study, not to an individual block. Changing a prototype in a live study would affect all prototype blocks within that study. This could lead to errors when running through the study or its results and reporting.
For this reason, global prototype settings can’t be changed after sending a study live, even if you duplicate the mission block. These include:
- Refresh or replace the linked prototype
- Toggle interactive components
To change any of these settings, you’ll need to duplicate the study, or create one from scratch.
Before you start
- At the moment, it isn’t possible to refresh or replace the linked prototype on a live study. If you need to refresh or replace a prototype, you’ll need to create a new study altogether.
- When you edit a study with an active panel order, any hired testers that have already completed the study won’t be asked to participate again. Only new testers will see the edits you’ve made to a study.
- All responses received prior to editing the study will still be accessible in the results and the report. However, every time you edit a studt, the report is replaced with a new version. This means that any custom report content is lost.
- Some edits aren’t highlighted on the Results page.
Edit a live study
You can make non-breaking changes (e.g. editing the instructions) to the block directly.
However, breaking changes on the block will be disabled (e.g. changing mission paths, or the options on a card sort). This is meant to protect the integrity of your results data.
If you need to edit disabled fields, you have the option to create a new version of the block, and hide the original one.
To update a study you’ve already sent live:
- Open your live study and navigate to the Build tab.
- You’ll see a warning: Editing blocks in a live study
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Click the What's safe to edit? link to view the implications of editing the study. Click Duplicate and hide block if you want to edit disabled fields.
- Allowed changes: To edit the instructions fields or make other allowed changes, you can edit the original blocks directly.
- When you’re ready, click Update live study to save your changes.
- You’ll see a modal listing all the changes you've made. If everything looks good, click Update to confirm the changes to the live study. This action is irreversible. Version control isn’t currently available in Maze.
Viewing results for an edited study
Editing a live study doesn't affect the responses you've already received. All responses received prior to editing the study will still be accessible in the results and report.
Please note that the Results dashboard doesn’t highlight most changes. For example, changes in the order of the blocks or in the conditional logic won’t be visible in the Results dashboard. Nevertheless, these changes may impact how testers respond to your study. Please keep this in mind when editing live studies and when viewing results for a study that’s been edited.
How do these changes affect the study report?
- All responses received prior to editing the study will still be accessible in the report.
- Every time you edit a study, the report is reset—that is, the current version of the report is deleted, and a new version is created. This means that any report share links, embeds, report comments, and custom content are lost. This action can’t be reverted. For this reason, you should be careful around editing a study if you’ve done significant work on the report, such as comment threads or custom sections/slides, or have distributed links to the report to your stakeholders.
- Hidden blocks are visible by default in the study report. If needed, you can hide those blocks in the report.
- Changes in the order of blocks don’t affect custom slides. If you’ve added custom slides to your report and reordered the blocks in the study, you’ll need to go back to the report and reorder the custom slides again.
How can I see changes in the blocks?
Hidden blocks are grayed out on the list of blocks in the results dashboard.
Can I merge duplicated blocks?
Generally, you’d duplicate a block when making changes that are significant enough that it would be difficult to match the data collected before and after editing.
For this reason, it isn’t possible to merge blocks, either in the study editor or in the results/report.