(From a 10/19/15 post on uxmatters.com, link here)
Experts who contributed to the post:
- Carol Barnum—Director of User Research and Founding Partner at UX Firm; author of Usability Testing Essentials: Ready, Set … Test!
- Pabini Gabriel-Petit—Head of UX for Sales & Marketing IT at Intel; Principal Consultant at Strategic UX; Founder, Publisher, and Editor in Chief of UXmatters; Founding Director of Interaction Design Association (IxDA); UXmatters columnist
- Steven Hoober—Mobile Interaction Designer and Owner at 4ourth Mobile; author of Designing Mobile Interfaces; UXmatters columnist
- Jordan Julien—Independent Experience Strategy Consultant
- Cory Lebson—Principal Consultant at Lebsontech; Author of UX Careers Handbook (forthcoming); Past President, User Experience Professionals’ Association (UXPA)
- Daniel Szuc—Principal and Co-Founder of Apogee Usability Asia Ltd.
- Jo Wong—Principal and Co-Founder of Apogee Usability Asia Ltd.
Declare assumptions up front and validate them ASAP with users using the smallest possible prototype
Challenging assumptions ensures that you refine the core meaning of a product or service over time
One method:
- Identify what your product does
- Identify what it should do
- Identify what parts are well-understood because they’re built on well-understood principles and patterns
- Identify what parts aren’t built on well-understood principles and patterns—and test those
Another method:
- List out everyone’s assumptions
- Turn those assumptions into questions
- Map questions to research approaches to validate them
- While researching, be open to assumptions which reveal further assumptions upon testing
This isn’t a comprehensive summary of the article—be sure to use the link up top to read the whole thing!
