User Tested

CHAPTER 4You Are Not Your Customer: How to Get Access to the Perspectives That Matter

If you're not user testing with the right people, you'll capture misleading human insight.

Even if you've spent ages choosing and honing your question and you're absolutely sure it's been calibrated to prompt honest, helpful answers, you need to make sure you ask it of the right individuals and groups. Otherwise, the human insight you gather will lead you astray.

Here, let us prove it to you. In the 1950s, smooth‐tasting Arabica coffee beans began to rise in price, in part because they were delicate and prone to dying under cold or inclement weather conditions. So, in 1954, Maxwell House, a popular brand of grocery store coffee, began blending Robusta beans into their mix to lower costs.

Not only are Robusta beans cheaper and more plentifully grown—they're pest and weather resistant.¹ Unfortunately, they taste bitter and harsh. To mitigate this issue, Maxwell House introduced Robusta slowly and gradually so customers could acclimate to the flavor. They performed user tests along the way, asking longtime drinkers of Maxwell House to weigh in, and virtually none of them noticed a difference between all‐Arabica and Arabica cut with a hint of Robusta. So they continued to add more Robusta, test among loyal customers, and roll out blends with less and less Arabica.

For many years sales boomed and profits were healthy, but over the decades, sales began to decline. Maxwell House's U.S. market share ...