You’ve Got Questions, I’ve Got Tools
“I really should do user testing, but…”
You know that early validation can save weeks of working down the wrong path, right? You may have listened to a few tangential comments from users that illuminated a whole new path to differentiation. You’ve probably seen an interface that was completely intuitive to everyone in your company … and completely baffling to everyone outside it.
But if you’re like most product managers and entrepreneurs, you’re not testing.
First of all, testing has the sense of a big, lofty thing.
We all remember creating science fair projects years ago – you needed a formal hypothesis, a control group and an experimental group, all the variables had to be controlled, you needed to take notes, and the whole thing culminated in a typed, double-spaced report with graphs and charts. (If you’ve worked with User Research within a large enterprise company, you still see research presentations just like this – except in PowerPoint instead of a tri-fold posterboard.)
Axe it. Forget it. I officially absolve you of needing to be super-scientific and organized. If anyone asks, you can say “Cindy said this was okay,” and send them to me. Some data is better than no data.
Let me repeat that:
SOME DATA IS BETTER THAN NO DATA.
SOME DATA IS BETTER THAN NO DATA.
SOME DATA IS BETTER THAN NO DATA.
Are we okay now? Good. Let’s keep going.

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