User Tested

CHAPTER 3What're You Trying to Answer?: Mapping a User Test Approach to Your Desired Learnings

Getting meaningful, actionable, high‐quality human insight from user testing is all about asking the right questions of the right people. We desperately want more businesses to seek and apply human insight, but we know from experience that asking misguided, unfocused, or badly formulated questions of your customers can be disastrous.

Remember in 2009 when Walmart surveyed their customers about store layout? The retail giant asked its shoppers what seemed like a straightforward, customer‐centric question: “Would you like Walmart to be less cluttered?”

When the answer turned out to be a resounding “Yes!” leadership swung into action. Hoping to both declutter stores for current customers and potentially start attracting higher income Target shoppers in the process, they rolled out an initiative called Project Impact.

This five‐year plan for streamlining stores, improving navigation, and upgrading interior aesthetics was ambitious and aggressive. Millions were spent replacing fixtures and renovating existing stores, but the most noticeable change was removing the merchandise that traditionally sat in the aisles between fixtures. To do this, the leaders of Project Impact had to remove nearly 15 percent of the items sold in physical Walmart stores.

Although initial customer survey responses to these changes were positive, the eventual results were catastrophic. Once the Project Impact renovations ...