Disciplined Entrepreneurship Startup Tactics

TACTIC 9User Testing: Validating the Product Actually Works

In the early days of a new venture, the product changes both significantly and quickly. User testing is the natural follow-on to early PMR to iterate quickly in the product development process. Entrepreneurs can tweak a design much faster and at a lower cost than they can tweak code, which is why we spend so much time refining the product in this phase rather than when you're paying engineers to write and test code.

In This Tactic, You Will:

• Explore a new form of market research, user testing, to iterate on your designs.
• Source participants and write a script for your user testing sessions.
• Run live observed user testing sessions with end users of your solution.
• Learn to run unmonitored user tests and employ tools for unmonitored observation.
• Iterate on your design from Tactic 8 based on the insights gained from user testing.

PMR versus User Testing: One and the Same

User testing is a continuation of Tactic 3, Market Research. A form of PMR, user testing serves a purpose distinct from inquiry-based approaches. Unlike other PMR methods, user testing is closer to advocacy mode than inquiry mode. While you aren't advocating for your solution when conducting user testing studies, you are most certainly showing a proposed solution to gather feedback.

Moving forward with user testing should only come after extensive ...