How to persuade your team to invest in user research through loss aversion
How to concept test to avoid losing resources through bad Product decisions
In this economy, the best way to advocate for user research is by reframing it as a way to avoid costly mistakes.
Whether at a startup or a large organization, you might have noticed tight user research (and design) budgets. What’s more, there has been increased demand for organizations to create quality products based on factors like low-quality AI-generated applications and products.
This is why one of the most critical user research methods to learn is one you may need to become more familiar with: concept testing. It’s a crucial method for tackling assumptions that cause businesses to waste resources building things no one uses.
After all, concept testing often touches upon one of the trickiest factors available: user motivation.
User motivation is tricky to discover
User motivation is trickier to design for than you realize. The reason is that there are often three key aspects to user motivation:
A good User Experience
Meeting a valuable/critical user need
Good UX is not enough: the app store is littered with well-designed applications that users have abandoned. If you don’t address those other factors, you won’t be able to touch on what motivates users to keep using your product.
However, the two most common user research methods, user interviews and user testing, often don’t effectively tackle this.
User interviews can be done early, uncovering many user needs, but without a visual for the user to review, the amount of user feedback is limited.
On the other hand, user testing occurs when you’ve decided on product features and designed (and built) it. It’s a little late to discover that this feature is one that the user doesn’t want.
This is where concept testing can help. Rather than approaching users after you’ve designed and built something, concept testing allows you to test with users, with your mockups or prototypes, and uncover whether you’re on the right track in the first place.
Why Concept Testing Matters So Much
The premise around concept testing is simple: it’s about gathering data about whether or not what you’re building is helpful to specific users.
Concept testing is when you take a detailed description, along with a prototype, of a product and test it with users to check impressions, gauge user interest, and determine whether it’s worth building further.
While it can be used at any stage, it’s often centered around the early stages of product development, when teams often want to rush out and build features rather than validate your ideas with users.
It’s crucial for one key reason: assumptions kill products (and businesses).
If a business assumes a user wants a feature and rushes to design and develop it, they’ve already invested much time and resources. The last thing they want to discover is that they wasted many resources on something users don’t want.
I’ve seen million-dollar features fail because they didn’t understand their target user group. At the same time, many teams are reluctant to invest heavily in user research when they haven’t built or shipped their product.
After all, shipping the product is how they earn enough money to keep the lights on (and pay your salary), so it’s hard to advocate for stopping entirely to run user testing.
This is why concept testing can be helpful, especially in fast-paced environments like startups. If a product launch is in six months, and development is busy tackling everything, it may not be conducive to typical user testing.
After all, it’s hard to get a reliable feel of things if the QA or production environment is constantly changing. However, by testing with your Figma prototype, you can get valuable feedback around your core research question (user needs and motivations) without worrying about maintaining a static testing environment.
All we need to assess is if we’re on the right track or if we need to inform decision-makers that we need to modify the feature.
Think Strategically as a Designer with Concept Testing
Before, I talked about learning to think strategically as a designer, and my journey started with concept testing.
Sometimes, you hear about a ‘critical’ feature from the Product team that doesn’t seem that important to users. It’s hard to refuse to design a feature for no reason, and at the same time, it’s not good to go along with a lousy Product decision either.
Concept testing allows you to push back against the Product team by gathering user data and testing viability to avoid wasting resources on low-priority features.
If you design a prototype of the feature and concept test it, you can come back to the team with data that states that this feature may be a lower priority than they think. While you’ve unfortunately put in the design effort to build it, the team can still pivot to avoid wasting Engineering time building it.
This is why this test can be so valuable. However, a couple of steps exist to pull off a concept test successfully.
Test with whoever you can get a hold of as quickly as possible
Concept testing is not always intended as an academic research method with high scientific rigor. Often, it’s a simple assessment of whether you’re on the right track or if the Product team should spend their resources elsewhere.
So, the most essential thing about concept testing is to squeeze it into your limited time. Consider a list of potential target users who may fit your target user group and who you can test with quickly.
Some examples may include:
Friendly users from previous user testing sessions
Internal Subject Matter Experts working on other projects
Users who have expressed interest in being more involved with the process
Secondary stakeholders who have a vested interest in this success, etc.
Etc.
The main idea is to figure out people you can talk to besides your team whose insights might convince your team to re-prioritize a particular feature.
Ideally, this would have happened earlier at the Product discovery/Product Vision stage, but doing this as early as possible allows designers to ensure the user’s viewpoint is present when designing a product.
This is why the design mockup or prototype helps: by seeing the feature visually and seeing how it might be implemented, you can then check to see whether this is the right approach.
At this stage, the other thing to mention is to avoid surprising your team with this test. Don’t find yourself embedded in organizational politics if you happen to talk with the one manager that another manager hates. Essentially, introduce the idea as a low-cost, low-effort thing you can do after designing it to ensure we’re on the right path.
In the best-case scenario, you’ve validated what you’re designing, something that your team would like. Worst case scenario, you’ve found feedback that causes the product team to pivot at little to no cost to the rest of your team, the sprint, and more.
In addition, this also helps build a culture of user research early on within startups, which can be a crucial benefit and avoid future struggles around getting resources and time to test.
Frame this effort as “Helping to shape the future of our product.”
You don’t want any confusion around versioning: you want users to strictly understand that this is a future vision of the product. In many ways, this is similar to an ‘architectural sketch’ of the final product.
As a result, think about how you should best phrase this and provide proper context as to what you’re hoping to learn. These may include questions like:
What are [customer problems] you would search the internet for?
How important is solving [customer problem] for you?
Does this Product/concept solve [customer problem]?
How frequently do you think you would use this product?
How likely are you to buy this product?
Based on the provided information, do you understand the purpose of the product?
What do you think is the main use of this product?
Etc.
While concept testing can be as thorough as a detailed user interview, it can be as informal as asking a few questions about customer problems, the expected use of the product, and more. Ensure that the scale of your concept test is paired with what you need to know.
Doing this can help determine whether your team should prioritize certain features.
Reducing loss is one of the strongest arguments for user research
In the current economy, one of the most significant persuasive arguments for user research is that you can avoid wasting resources.
It’s not just about saving the company money; it’s a psychological concept called loss aversion. Loss aversion is why individuals feel the pain of loss twice as intensively as the pleasure of gain, and it often drives many lousy business decisions.
This is why UX professionals are often laid off: it’s easier to cut costs and avoid losing money than working with Designers to quickly build products that gain them money.
So, one of the most substantial demonstrations of the value of user research (and UX) is showing how to avoid losing resources by concept testing with users. Doing so helps minimize waste and can help you build out a product users want and will use.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Data and Design newsletter writer. His new free book, The Resilient UX Professional, provides real-world advice to get your first UX job and advance your UX career.