Product validation is the process of testing your idea with real people in order to get feedback on its viability. By doing product validation the risk of product failure when launched in the market can be minimized.
The process of product validation involves understanding market trends, identifying the user needs and requirements, and then testing the product with real users.
Product validation is a very crucial step before starting work on any new product. Before starting your product development process, you must know whether people will go for your product in the market or not.
Ways to Validate Your Product
Below are a few proven ways that help you validate your product idea before going into the development stage.
1. Validate Your product Vision and Objectives
In order to validate your product vision, you must find answers to the following questions:
- What is the difference between your product and the competitors who already exist in the market?
- What is the underlying premise of your product’s concept, pricing, and model?
- How your product will benefit your users?
- Will your product fulfill the current market trends?
Validation of objectives is all about consulting users about their problems and then designing a product that solves those problems. If you notice any gap between the user needs and your design solution, then improve your idea and validate it again. This helps you to ensure that you are designing the right product.
2. Build and Test a Prototype Using Design Sprint
A design sprint is a five-day process carried out to fulfill the purpose of defining a minimal viable product (MVP) in the early stages. In the design sprint, a business challenge around your product will be understood and resolved. User testing is also part of the sprint and the solution is improved based on feedback. A design sprint is a proven methodology to test your idea in a quick yet effective way.
3. Measure Search Volume of Your Product Idea
A way to validate your idea is to search your product-related terms on Google and measure their search volume. A higher search volume indicates a high demand for products in the market whereas a low search volume indicates low or no demand. Thus to figure out whether your product will succeed in the market or not, you can measure search volume for your product. The results will make it easier to improve your idea as per market demands.
4. Perform Customer Validation
A thorough analysis of customer goals and challenges can be performed by meeting your customer. This way you can know about their problems and what they want to achieve using your product. This will help you design a product that satisfies the customers. The customer feedback will help you to improve your product idea during the early stages of the process.
5. Use Social Media
You can use social media platforms to validate your idea or product. Use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, to advertise your product to your potential customers. Through social media platforms, you can grow your audience. A large audience will help you to test your prototype and learn about its shortcomings. You can work on resolving them before the product development and launch.
6. Build an MVP
An MVP allows you to share with your audience what your product will look like. An MVP includes basic features that have the potential to attract users. This will enable the validation of your idea at an early stage of the design process.
After building an MVP share it with your users through a landing page or social media platforms for testing. Then collect their feedback and see if there are any improvements required to make in your idea.
Conclusion
Product validation is the first and most important step in the development process. This involves testing your idea with real users to find out whether it is viable or not. Nothing is more disappointing than wasting your time and efforts on designing a product that has no demand in the market. Hence to avoid this situation, the validation of the idea is important which helps you to find out the user’s needs and requirements. As a result, you can launch a product that has higher demand in the market.
Learn UX Design
To learn more on how to design better experiences, consider the Interaction Design Foundation’s (IDF) online courses on User Research – Methods and Best Practices.
Apart from courses, webinars and bootcamps, the IDF is also home to the biggest and most authoritative library of open-source UX Design Resources. Check out the free UX Literature here.
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