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You don't buy a car without test driving, right?
Bryce Thompson
ou don't buy a car without test driving, so why would you spend thousands of dollars without testing your ideas inside of the design process?
See, if car buying were like building web products today, you'd just pick the best looking car that met the requirements.
When selecting the car, you'd defer to the most experienced and knowledgable person to make the decision for you so you don't have to. You might even conscript a group of advisors to help you bring data to your decision maker.
All you would then need is the best looking car to call it a day. Right?
But what if there was a better car?
✅ One that made you feel alive.
✅ One that made you happier.
✅ One that didn't hurt your pocket book.
✅ One that revealed a desire that you were completely unaware of.
✅ One that proved that your assumptions were wrong once you were in the driver seat.
👨🔬 There's a stat from Framer UXR that says that only 20% of designers at enterprise prototype and test.
That possibly means that in tech, it's common practice to make decisions with data coming from outside of design.
It does sound appealing that other functions bring the data and experience, so what's the value of design performing testing?
Turns out, a lot of reasons.
In fact, it more closely resembles how you've made decisions your whole life. Testing a couple ideas, and making a decision.
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✨ Here's a personal anecdote:
Few years ago I thought I was going to get an electric BMW i3.
Had my heart set on it.
Went to go test drive, and I was so disappointed. It didn't make a sound (I hated that) and it felt cheap. Instead, I test drove something else that would get me to where I need to go. It wasn't experimental, or new, it just worked. Decided to go with what my driving experience was conveying to me.
No experts. No data. Just experience.
However, when I first came into the buying decision, I wanted to live way in the future, but a couple test drives brought me back to down to Earth.
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🔬 So when you test, we're helping you get to where you need to go, but we're not using past success and experience to do it.
We're saying:
"Hey let's test drive this idea a little. We'll put you in the driver's seat, and you can live in the future for awhile.
Is this the future you want?"
What other functions in tech can reach into the future like that? Not many.