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I started reading this as "wow, they live in a very different world in SV where you can advise startups to set up a room like this". I am in Brazil and here the
by soneca 13y ago
I started reading this as "wow, they live in a very different world in SV where you can advise startups to set up a room like this". I am in Brazil and here there are lots of startups with founders working at home, not even an office, much less a usability room. At the end, at least the author sugests that this is for post-series A.
But then I remembered, I did this myself! At home. With my father. In a much leaner way.
I am a sole founder, working at home, while my wife pay for our bills (all that to say, I have no money to invest). My product is sort of "online pills dispenser as a service", a SaaS B2C helping elderly people organize their medicine. And my father is just my target (actually, I started all this thinking of solving his problem). When created the first version I went to his home and let him use the site. I just typed the URL and then just kept watching. He pains attention to details, so I left, one hour and a half later, with literally more than 50 notes of changes that I should made. From small design and copywrite details, to whole new features.
And you don't need webcam, microphones and a soundproof glass. This is the case if you have bosses for whom you must report. If you are the founder, just you, there, taking notes(and asking the right questions) while the user experiment your product, it is enough.
If your friends are the target, your house is fine. If you must talk to strangers, a public computer is enough. Even Eric Ries on his book talks about customers going to their office to do this - not a whole "usability room". Sometimes I think funded startups spend their investor's money just for the sake of it.
- sebkomianos 13y agoI think it has to do with culture: They don't spend it exactly for the sake of it but because rooms with shiny iMacs that get featured on blogposts like this one are usually the validation of one's investment. One trend I have noticed a lot in Berlin is money being spend in all sorts of things that are in no way related to the product or service the startup was trying to create - and the few times I dared asked I got the same "they are investing a lot of money on us man, that party should better show it!".
- soneca 13y agoI think you are right. The founder thinks: "If I don't spend all their money, they will think I raised more money that I needed, which is probably true, but they don't have to know." While the investors think: "If they don't spend all our money I will think they are lowing the chances that this investment will pay back, so they better spend it all".
- potatolicious 13y agoI agree. This sort of usability testing is valuable - more valuable than simpy A/B testing in a vacuum - but it's important to remember that this is extremely qualitative and unscientific. Throwing in the webcams, eye-tracking, or what-haves-you IMO incorrect lends an air of specificity and scientific-ness that isn't warranted. Before we launched our last product update we brought people in to use the app. It was very much as you described - we invited them to come into the office where our PM sat with them, watch them used the app, and asked good questions. The much more subtle behaviors are IMO not determinable via pseudoscientific things like watching facial expressions, eye movement, heart-rate, or whatever these things are supposed to measure. Best A/B test for the rest.
- soneca 13y agoI totally agree. This is a qualitative experiment. You try to generate insights, assumptions, hypothesis from it. Then after that you test these insights more scientifically. Including this, very well put, pseudoscientific things, on the qualitative phase must do more harm than good. Maybe they act as an excuse not to really test the assumptions.