Concept Value Test
A design research method that’s a spin on a discovery interview that actually includes early concept ideas. You leverage the concept(s) to encourage more discussion and ground the participant in potential rather than formative evaluation of the execution. Focused on high-level hypothesis validation.
Research Details
| Research Type | Sample Size | Session Time |
|---|---|---|
| Qualitative, Generative | Small (3 - 5 participants) | 15 min to 1 hour |
When to Use
- To learn if there is value and usefulness in a new utility
Tips
- Designs ends imagination. It’s important to prime the user specifically about your opportunity hypothesis and get them to imagine what it is before showing them. Ask questions like:
- “Do you use our product to do ____?”
- “Would you?”
- “How would you imagine you’d do that?”
- “Is there a recent example of when something that lets you do X would have been useful?”
- You’re designing a question not a final UI. Treat the utility change as the most important aspect of the UI even when in final execution it is not. It does two things. 1) Reduces awareness as a distraction. 2) Causes tension in the participants mind around is this new utlity more valuable than other rest of the UI that it’s disrupting.
- Stay away from multiple approaches to execute the opportunity. That’s for directional or formative research. The goal is about usefulness not usability.
Caution
Users always want more features, so they’ll almost always concoct a scenario or say something would be useful however if they cannot point to a time recently when it’d have helped them then it’s probably not something of high value.