Stop wasting valuable assumptions
De-risk assumptions by making user research a part of your workflow
Imagine you had so much robust user research that you could build products without ever assuming anything because you know your users so well.
Sounds great, but it’s never the case — there’s always something new to learn. But without making assumptions, design work is paralyzed. In Lean UX, you need assumptions to get your team on the same page and get started.
They’re key to product development, but assumptions can cost you if you get your users wrong. With user research, you can validate or disprove your assumptions as you build your product, without letting what you don’t know slow down your pace.
Capture all your assumptions
Build a culture on your team of calling out and capturing assumptions. If somebody makes an assumption, jump on it — whether you quickly jot it down on a whiteboard or throw it into a spreadsheet, call attention to the assumption so the team is on the same page.
Your system for tracking them can be as simple as a spreadsheet. The key things you want to capture are what the assumption is, where and when it emerged, and its status.
Knowing how the assumption came up gives you context to recall what caused it to arise. The status helps you make sure that you are not just capturing assumptions; you’re also investigating them.
You may also want to capture some probes on the spot — what would we ask to test this assumption? What don’t we know, and how does it impact our product? These can serve as a foundation for user research.
Investigate with user research
Investigating assumptions takes the risk out of making them — if you got it right, great! If not, you can reassess your decisions and make your product better.
If you have a prototype, you can investigate your assumption by asking users to respond to an area of the prototype that reflects it and see what they think.
If you want to quickly get a pulse check on whether you’re right about something, you can just ask your users, being careful not to lead them. Taking the example in the table above, you wouldn’t want to ask teachers, “do you plan lessons plan daily?”— your assumption is baked into that question. Instead ask, “how often do you prepare lesson plans?”
Take action
Action items help you turn insights into actions—they’re a reminder to take what you learn from user research and use that knowledge to improve your product.
Determine a workflow for taking action when assumptions are disproven. You may set these as agenda items for a meeting or have someone on the team take on trying to come up with different solutions to present to the team.
Meta tracking
The best part about tracking your assumptions is that you can get better at assuming things!
You can take a look back at your assumption statuses and see if you’re getting better—over time, are more and more of your assumptions being validated? If not, you may want to reconsider whether your team has done enough foundational discovery research to understand your users and their needs.
TL;DR
Assumptions are a helpful and necessary part of building a product, but they can be costly if you get your users wrong. De-risk assumptions by capturing, tracking and investigating them.
Looking for a quick way to investigate assumptions with users? Try Steadfast. Get in touch.
