Validating Product Ideas: Lean User Research by Tomer Sharon

About Tomer Sharon

Tomer Sharon is the Managing Director and Head of User Research and Metrics at Goldman Sachs. He writes that “Lean User Research is a book for practitioners who take part in product development and don’t have too much training in, time, or budget for UX research. I teach my readers how to learn from their users quickly, cheaply, on their own. I provide step-by-step guidance through answering their most burning questions about their users with far-from-robust, quick-and-dirty research techniques anyone can apply.”

Book Summary

Tomer’s book focuses on answering these key questions:

• What do people need?
• Who are the users?
• How do people currently solve the problem?
• What is the user’s workflow?
• Do people want the product?
• Which design generates better results?
• How do people find stuff?
• How to find participants for research?

In the book, he describes the survey he did, to find out more about where product ideas come from and discovered that 86% come from personal pain. There is a danger that people are developing products typically that nobody needs and asking relatives or coworkers to validate ideas or involving them in primary research isn’t enough.

Throughout the book, Tomer Sharon uses the scale; Strategise, Execute and Assess.

Below is a summary of the book as a diagram to show the key tools and timing he suggests to answer these key questions. The large icon shows the best time to do the activity.

Key takeaways from the book

• The questions are a useful starting point for product managers and entrepreneurs to use to decide which user research method to use.
• It shows how research can help at different points of the product development journey.
• Most of the work is done at the beginning and this could be seen as a linear approach, it is best to not pick and mix approaches without taking expert advice.