Hello, and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast I might pass since I'm the CEO of QualityNet and we are in the third installment of our rapid prototyping series. And in this show, we're going to talk about creating a direct. Product response from a user that you're testing with and this stuff, ladies and gentlemen, this is some of the real good stuff.

I'm really getting into some of the magic of rapid prototyping in this show because, you know, When you're rapid prototyping and building all these prototypes and it's pretty intense process, uh, and there's a real art to getting the right feedback from a, from a user and making sure that your not getting misled.

Or making sure that they're not misleading, uh, themselves about what they are actually testing and what I've discovered over the years. There's a bit of a formula actually to getting the best user insights. So let's dig into the world of getting the direct response. The first thought here for me, uh, is kind of the cheat that you get with rapid prototyping.

And that is that you don't have to build an entire product in order to test it. Uh, that really, for me is. The magic of rapid prototyping and rapid prototyping enables you to get some really quality feedback early on, you know, kind of a simple, quick and easy manner. And this is great because you don't have to defer all of your testing until the product is finished.

Actually, here's the real thing. You can make it feel like a finished product for the user without it being. A finished product. So you can get all this really great feedback, which will help you build a better product. And we've lived in a world where the default approach. To building products, particularly with technology used to be, uh, informed by what they call this waterfall approach.

And, um, that would usually defer a lot of the user testing to the very, very, very end. And that always, uh, scares the hell out of me because that's when you get so many issues, um, all at the one time. Simply put with rapid prototyping, you can avoid all of that stress and you can work with a lot more clarity and knowledge upfront because you can create these simple prototypes that still give you really good feedback, even though the product is not finished.

And the reason this is, so is that the. Prototype gives people the opportunity to really respond to what the product may look like and how it may work. And it's completely opposite of how a lot of people do early stage testing, which is where the focus group and the problem with the focus group is everybody.

Sits in a room. So there's a lot of social bias and conditioning. Cause you might have, you know, four to eight people, users recruited, uh, audience. Uh, how are you? You want to call them that are being asked questions by a moderator. So you've got all these social pressures as to what you say is a bit of group thing, but there's something more important here.

You know, if you have a bunch of people in an office room. All right. In a meeting room and they're sitting there and they're asked the question, you know, how would you like a service that made a, that was like a digital mortgage service. So you didn't have to go into the bank and. They would have to kind of think about, well, I guess that sounds interesting.

And people would share stories of the hassles of going into the branch. If you're rapid prototyping, you would create a moment where someone would be likely, uh, you know, filling out an online, um, mortgage calculator and you would give them a prototype of the mortgage calculator and you would ask them to get.

The figure that the loan amount from the CalCare, you would actually set them a task. And this is what we mean by creating directly response. This is now we get great feedback and I'm going to give you the formula. I'm going to explain why this works and what you need to do in order to create this.

Because in the day when we go back to this mortgage example, it makes so much sense. I mean, Rather than asking someone, would you be interested in a, in a digital mortgage loan calculator or digital app for a mortgage? Give them the app, ask them to complete a task and experience. And then that feedback will tell you if it's a good idea.

And this, this is really at the heart of what we mean by creating the direct experience, getting direct exposure response from your users. So let's now go break it down and let's see how we can do it. Because remember the opportunity here is that you can create a prototype that feels like the finished product experience, but you haven't had to build it.

So as a creator builder, entrepreneur designer, developer, This is enormous because you can create these quick prototypes, get some feedback without all the risk of spending days, weeks, months building the product. All right. I've made the case that let's, let's see what it actually looks like. What is that direct experience formula?

Now the context to this, is it all about the perception of the end user who's testing? Okay. So we want to create a, the kind of thing following flow. We want to build a prototype that is as lean as possible. But does enough, uh, to create a, um, uh, a set of experiences, task features for the end user. So pretty lightweight, it could be pen and paper.

It could be using some digital tools like envision and Adobe XD. Now here's the key thing is when you have that prototype, that evokes just one little journey within the, in the product you need to add to that. The situational context. For example, if you're building a product for college students, you would have to say you're at, yeah, you're in your college dorm.

Um, it's two 30 in the afternoon. You've got 30 minutes before your next lecture. And we would like you to, uh, use the, uh, to get a loan amount from the digital mortgage app. You've got, uh, the job you've got your environment, you know, where you are. Go for it. So when you give them the prototype in that context, and particularly in that context, they know where they are, who they're with.

What's the time you've also set them a task to do. And therefore, because they're actually trying to achieve a task and remember they're not in a focus group where they're thinking, trying to guess how they would react. They are actually in. The situation. And therefore we have this great moment where they shift from, um, being an indirect experience and they go into the experience.

They're really looking for the buttons on the app to get the job done. And if you do enough, With your brief to them giving them the context in the task. And if the prototype is sufficient in terms of a basic flow, what you're going to have is the, uh, Evoking of sufficient sensory information, sensory stimulus that shifts them into the direct experience.

Now, once you've got them there, you will be amazed at, you can keep them there for 40 minutes, getting them to do tasks and getting feedback and revising and changing your prototype. This is. Really where some of the great moments you'll have with rapid prototyping. So let's kind of just break this down one more level, just so you really understand why the direct experience, um, can work for you and it can produce all these great insights.

So. You know, you want them to respond viscerally. You want them to respond to your rapid prototype. You want them to respond from the point of view, like they're there and they're doing it. And this is like really essential, uh, for them in order to give you this great quality feedback. So what you want to be able to do is when you have the prototype.

In your hands as a user, you need to touch it. See it here. Now you think...