Concept Testing

Leverage concept sketches and interface designs to judge how well a product direction attracts your potential users.

👥 10 and more | ⏰ days | 💪🏼 low effort

Objectives

Concept testing can quickly identify whether a chosen solution appeals to potential customers and their needs through concept-based questionnaires, sketches, mockups, or simple interface screens.

While high-fidelity prototypes provide study participants with a test product to interact with, teams may want to take a step before that type of validation and see if customer responses to just the idea or concept are satisfactory. Whether this research technique is implemented through online surveys or in-person interviews, it will result in response data that the team can explore to determine whether the concept can succeed in the current market.

Who is involved?

Concept testing requires a recruiter to identify participants who are capable of attending a session in-house and verbalising whether the concepts your team comes up with are lacking or meet their needs; a moderator to present concepts to the participant; a note-taker or video recorder to capture any interesting remarks or observations about the session; and a team to analyse which concepts performed the best against varied user goals and attitudes.

How is it done?

  1. Determine how best to communicate the product concepts your team created to the participants. Should they be conveyed through verbal communication, or via sketches and low-fidelity mockups?
  2. Recruit around ten or so participants who are willing to come into the building and share their thoughts on these concepts; be sure to pick those who are capable of verbalising their reactions and attitudes toward the concept.
  3. During the session, present the concept to the user in a short, 5 or 10 second period, hide the material if using sketches or mockups, and subsequently ask them to describe what they remembered about the concept and if it held any appeal.
  4. Sit down as a team, go through the various concepts presented to the participants, and pick out the clear winners to build out and losers to avoid.

Source: 

https://www.slideshare.net/almingwork/nyt-product-discovery-activity-guide