Culture: Always Be Testing
Many many moons ago, in what feels like a lifetime ago (and certainly was many tech lifecycles ago), I received a copy of Bryan Eisenberg, John Quarto-vonTivadar, and Lisa Davis’s seminal book on Google Website Optimizer at a Google performance marketing summit. I’m that special kind of nerd who actually reads the books handed out at conferences (I know, I know).
But this is a book that you should read too!
The title of the book is Always Be Testing (available on Amazon or free PDF courtesy of John’s website).
While the book focuses on Google’s now retired A/B testing platform, Website Optimizer, the spirit of “Always Be Testing” quickly became a central tenet in the dao of my career as both a digital marketer and company builder.
Build Something People Want
Startupland is a giant echo chamber, and scarcely a week goes by without hearing some variation of the Paul Graham-ism (and YC motto) “Make something people want.”
Aside from or in addition to building something you yourself want, it’s actually dead simple to know whether you’re on the right track with building something people want… test it!
The bar to running insightful (and quick!) user tests is staggeringly low — allowing for super fast validation, pain point discovery, and iteration cycles.
Test it early, and test it often…
In Action
Here’s a highlight reel we put together last autumn following our TechCrunch coverage while Ideally was in early alpha as “Compelation” (version 0.9.2).
As of today (June 2016), Ideally is on app version 1.2.3, so there have been many many improvements along the way. And while we still have a long journey ahead to fully realizing our vision for the platform, it’s fun to share this video and pop back in time…
We uncover SO much from these videos that we’ve made user testing a core part of our design and development flow, and broader culture.
Getting out of our heads, watching others discover and explore the platform that we work so hard on is both incredibly gratifying and powerful. Sometimes they are filled with uplifting pats on the back (see above), sometimes they are filled with sharp kicks to the groin (see below, particularly the end of the video), but they are ALWAYS vital to further optimizations/refinements.
Here’s a fail reel from that same version of the alpha for a wince and chuckle…
Taking It Home With You
It’s super simple to start incorporating an “Always Be Testing” mentality into your own ethos and design/development process.
3 tips...
…to easily unlock the power of user testing for your project or company:
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- Leverage Peek for three free (FREE!!!!) mini-tests per month.
- The wise folks at UserTesting advise 5–10 participants/tests per study. 5 is their recommended minimum and 10 is their optimal number whereby you’ll see diminishing returns/insights thereafter.
- Create both a highlight and fail reel for each study. Your team will laugh, cry, and your product will get better and better and better!
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If you’d like to see how Ideally has evolved since the alpha days of yore (or are simply excited to join the early community), you can download it for iOS on the App Store…
Onwards and upwards, and always be testing,
David Gudai
Co-founder and CEO
Ideally, Inc.
*p.s. coffee’s for testers
