Now a hard time lies ahead. Its time to face your customers and test your idea. The moment of truth. People will test your solution. Maybe this will be your saddest moment in the whole project or you will be really happy about it in the end. But there is also an outcome if the solution will not fit. So no worries. So what needs to be done now?
Prototype against user
So its time to go outside again. Take your problem statement and your designed prototype to a real user. Now you can go for different ways of testing. This depends on what kind of prototype you have build. If you want to create a whole new prototype you should face the user in the way they will do it in real live. Functional prototypes should be tested in a more precise way.
Test a new product
In this case you should not prepare the tester in a long way. Just tell them a minimum of information about they want. Let them do the rest. Let the prototype do the work. Let them see, feel, try what they want to do. You as the thinker should not influence the user at all. You will be impressed what kind of thoughts you will receive by the tester.
Functional testing
In this case you need do some test preparation. Inform the tester what should be done and what information you want to have. This can be managed for a single function or a group of functions. To make it easier you should also define what topics are excluded from the test to not confuse the tester.
Preparation and how to
Prepare some notes on how you want to prepare your tester. Make some notes about the information you want to offer before the test. Define some questions you want to ask. Everything you need.
Prepare your prototype for the journey. Keep the weather in mind. Wind and rain can be a bad surprise for your prototype and can destroy the whole good work. So be prepared.
Then you need to define your target for the day. Very soon you will realize sometimes it is not very easy to speak to people who are in a rush on the street. It will be easier if you are in a building. But this depends on where you are and what type of project you want to achieve. It makes also sense to test the prototype where possible target customers can be found.
At the end you should collect as many thoughts as you can. but at least you should do five interviews at least. But you should try to collect as much as possible. You need to prepare a statement out of it.
Which leads again to a very important point
Dokumentation
Before you start you should again prepare yourself for the interviews and test. Prepare sheets where you want to collect thoughts, notes and ideas in a way on who you can work with them later on. Prepare the questions and the space for answers.
Enjoy the time
And of course you should enjoy this part of the project. Can lead to a lot of fun with the testers. Many people like to try new things. Collect the thoughts they give. Even if the testers will detect some critical mistakes or issues. As said there will also be an outcome for this too. So enjoy and have some fun.
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