Watch a Demo Prototype Thinking User Test
A Deeper, More Powerful Test than Standard User Interviews
Last night I was watching The Residence, a recent comedy mystery show on Netflix, and it gave THE BEST description/analogy I have ever heard of the Prototype Thinking discovery and testing process.
In it, the grouchy, brilliant detective says, "I don't have suspects, I just have people I find Interesting."
(And then she runs around discovering various suspicious people that everyone else assumes is the murderer, but she just keeps saying they're interesting until she builds the whole picture.)
To my delight, this is actually THE MAIN THING that differentiates Prototype Thinking from every other 0-1 validation approach. I have literally never seen it expressed better anywhere in my life, including by me.
How Other Design Approach’s User Tests Work
Pretotyping by Alberto Savoia uses a very similar type of early, non-functional prototype (enough that I would have called it Pretotyping Thinking if I had know about it at the time, it's a delightful framing), but their testing process is centered around testing a very specific, metrics-centric hypothesis.
The famous GV Sprint approach by John Zeratsky & Jake Knapp also goes into rapid testing depth on one idea and testing for a range of metrics.
But for years, when people ask me to compare Prototype Thinking to other design approaches, I've been saying that Prototype Thinking uniquely does NOT start with ideation. Instead, it's the LAST step of our process: Ideate from Data.
How a Prototype Thinking User Test Works
Instead, we start prototyping and testing wherever we have the least visibility and see the most risk. We build designs that provoke insights, reveal hints at deeper importance/fit, and map the space of possibilities--not designs that are likely to be right.
In other words: We don't have suspects, we have moments that we think are Interesting.
An Example Prototype Thinking User Test
This demo video explains how our no-suspects, provoke-insights, find-meaning approach to testing works.
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Bonus: We are looking for more companies/products who want to be featured in one of these demos! We can help you recruit the user. We are especially looking for someone selling enterprise saas to LARGE organizations, but really want a wide range :) Comment below if you’re interested.