Test to Design, Not Design to Test

The early spring sunshine welcomed us back to Manchester in April, where we were joined by guest speakers Stephen Situ, Product Manager at Forbes, and Tom Charteris, Principal Solutions Consultant at User Testing.

Stephen led us through a presentation on how legacy media brands, such as Forbes, can look to survive – and thrive – in a digital world.

This fascinating discussion covered what brand loyalty looks like in today’s world, how behaviour is changing between millennials through to Gen Z, and the impact this is having on all of us (including why in your Google search results you are likely seeing more and more results from Reddit!), and, ultimately, how brands are leveraging authenticity within their content to thrive in the modern world.

Next up, Tom Charteris took to the stage to with his talk titled, Test to Design, Not Design to Test.

The presentation argued the case for using qualitative testing earlier in the product development process, rather than using it as late stage validation, e.g. once stakeholders have already invested significant time and effort, thus are more inclined to push out (substandard) products/features because it’s their ‘baby’.

Tom argued that discovery, when done right, can be done in days rather than weeks or months, effectively allowing you to do it for every project. He also made the case for continuous learning; that the point of failing fast is not to fail, it’s to maximise the speed of learning – something many have forgotten.

Both presentations sparked lots of healthy debate and conversations in their respective Q&A session – a reliable indicator the audience was heavily invested in the topics covered.

A final thank you to everyone who attended on the evening – we hope you enjoyed your evening and we look forward to seeing you again at one of our future events.