Just do it… when we should stop deliberating and start testing ideas
By: Jordan Dalladay-Simpson
Tags: Startup, User Experience, Design Thinking, Product Management, Innovation

We might have a product or service up and running, want to make some improvements, but can’t seem to build consensus on what is an improvement. Or we might be creating something entirely new, but keep going back and forth over the best approach, features, or scope.

It’s easy to end up paralysed, debating and deliberating over too many decisions for far too long. We could continue to go round in circles hoping something eventually gives, or we could try a different approach. We could try to test our way out of it.

When we start testing any idea, its merits and faults become obvious, we will know if it works or not. We can start framing our discussions with real-world data, rather than just opinion, speculation, and inevitably force-of-will.

“Exposure to reality will validate or invalidate your ideas, harder and faster than anything else“ — a wise colleague

And testing can be surprisingly quick and easy when we take a lean approach. As we are looking for insight to steer our decision making — rather than fully comprehensive answer or rigorous academic study — we can design our tests to be fast and lightweight. And if designed well, a small team should easily be able to run a handful of tests in parallel, feeding back learnings almost continuously.

What happens when we mix them? Photo by Alex Kondratiev on Unsplash

There are many different tests we could run. For example, spinning up a landing page to test a proposition, talking to customers over the phone, running an A/B test between two features, walking customers through a journey, putting a paper prototype in front of potential users, sending a survey to the customer base. (for more details on testing approaches, Crazyegg has a good guide on various testing methods)

There are many approaches, but what is most important is knowing what we need to learn, and picking the simplest way of learning it. As time is critical, simplicity is key.

Ready the launch-pad

So, when we find ourselves in a point of contention, we need to pause and think about how we can test our way out of it.

Here are some key considerations to ensure we’ve designed our tests well:

Who do we need to test with? Can we reach out to existing customers, use friends and family, or need to do some fresh recruitment? What is the smallest number of people we need to test with to get a meaningful answer? How should we test the idea? Do we want in-person observations, to ask specific questions, or analyse overall engagement? What tools and resources could we leverage to help? Which approach is the simplest and fastest? What does success look like? How are you going to measure the results? How does it align with our overall business goals? What would be the minimum result or outcome to be considered successful?

Once you’ve answered these, you’re almost ready for your test flight! Once it’s up and running and you find something isn’t working well, just learn and tweak as you go.

3… 2… 1… Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

Conclusion

We need to ensure we are investing our time where it will be most impactful, and regular testing can be a great way to ensure we are learning whilst still moving forward.

Testing ideas can shift our team discussions from what could we be building, to ones of how to best act on our learnings. Creating a good internal framework for product testing can help teams quickly set up and test their assumptions, whilst ensuring results are framed in ways that our stakeholders understand.

And if we successfully nurture an organisational culture of testing and learning, even things like our strategy and roadmap discussions can become more focused on issues of what do we need to learn, and when do we need to learn it.

I’m not advocating going full data-driven design—as there is always room for creative instinct, and full anything is often problematic in the long run — just that the more we seek validation directly from outside, the faster and more effective our decision making becomes.

“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” – Reid Garrett Hoffman

Feel inspired to jump in and test your next idea, feature or improvement?