Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Advanced Concept Testing Approaches To Guide Product Development and Business Decisions
Gold
Friday, March 11, 2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Share the love for this talk
Advanced Concept Testing Approaches To Guide Product Development and Business Decisions
Speakers: Michaela Mora
Link:

Summary

Learn about the concept testing methodology and various approaches available, when to use them, the types of decisions they can support, and the process to conduct good concept testing with mixed methodologies in mind.

Key Insights

  • Concept testing is crucial before product development to validate market need but is underutilized in UX research.

  • Three types of concept testing address different questions: what a product does, why users should care, and how to communicate benefits.

  • Monadic, sequential, and trade-off testing methods offer varying cost, complexity, and discrimination power trade-offs.

  • Trade-off techniques like MaxDiff and conjoint analysis provide stronger discrimination and work well across cultures.

  • Combining qualitative research before and after quantitative concept testing improves hypothesis formulation and insights interpretation.

  • Including pricing in concept tests impacts user responses and business decisions significantly.

  • Brand presence in tests alters multiple metrics, requiring strategic decisions on branded vs. blind studies.

  • Online scrappy tests like A/B experiments capture behavior but lack insight into motivations and messaging impact.

  • Concept testing helps bridge the gap between UX discovery and business outcomes, strengthening business cases for UX research.

  • Expertise is needed to design and analyze complex trade-off tests; partnering with specialized researchers can maximize value.

Notable Quotes

"Concept testing is about testing ideas before development to confirm there is a real need for the product."

"UX researchers tend to focus on the experience after features are approved, missing the chance to validate earlier."

"People care not about product features but what these features do for them."

"Showing several concepts side by side and forcing choices yields better discrimination than rating scales."

"Qualitative research is excellent for discovering needs but poor at quantifying their scale or priority."

"If you have limited resources, start with a simple monadic test using low-cost survey tools."

"MaxDiff is great for prioritizing feature backlogs, especially when you have long lists to evaluate."

"Testing price effects requires careful design because user behavior can be irrational when prices are shown or hidden."

"No research method is perfect; use a mix and triangulate results depending on whether you want to predict or explain."

"When you start concept testing, be clear about what parts of the concept describe the what, the why, and the how."

Ask the Rosenbot
Dan Ward
Failure Friday #1 with Dan Ward
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
David Cronin
The GE Design System and Thoughts about Craft at Scale
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Yalenka Mariën
Designing for Digital Inclusion in the Belgian Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Kate Kalcevich
Integrating Accessibility in DesignOps
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Sarah Auslander
Insights Panel
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Victor Udoewa
Research in the Pluriverse
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Matt Duignan
HITS, Microsoft's internal human insight system: From research library to living body of knowledge
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Chelsea Mauldin
Let's Talk About Money
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Opening Remarks
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Nidhi Singh Rathore
Embracing participation to unlock deeper truths in commercial research
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Marjorie Stainback
What Research Ops Professionals Have Learned from COVID-19
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Davis Neable
How to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Lisa Welchman
Cleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Welcome / Housekeeping
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Crystal Yan
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Mark Interrante
Collaboration Flows in Product Development
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold

More Videos

Alison Rand

"You need support from the top down and from grassroots; those two have to meet in the middle to make change happen."

Alison Rand Sarah Brooks

Scaling Impact with Service Design

March 25, 2021

Carl Turner

"At the turning point, the team realized they were in charge of their own process and got engaged."

Carl Turner

You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project

March 28, 2023

Sarah Flamion

"Our big idea was big and they wanted it, but what they wanted way more was the foundational features."

Sarah Flamion

Complex Problem? Add Clarity by Combining Research and Systems Thinking

March 31, 2020

Silke Bochat

"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. You have to keep moving forwards even if the destination keeps changing."

Silke Bochat

5 Antifragile Strategies for a DesignOps 2.0

September 23, 2024

Uday Gajendar

"We don’t have meetings without all three sides of the business, product, and design coming together now."

Uday Gajendar Lada Gorlenko Dave Malouf Louis Rosenfeld Dan Willis

10 Years of Enterprise UX: Reflecting on the community and the practice

June 18, 2025

Dan Willis

"When the dot com bubble burst, I had a great design job. Unfortunately, it was at another dot com."

Dan Willis

Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

June 8, 2017

Kara Kane

"We created recruitment events for underrepresented groups because it was harder for them to get permission and sign up in time otherwise."

Kara Kane

Communities of Practice for Civic Design

April 7, 2022

Nalini Kotamraju

"For the first time, I was able to advocate for funding directly for the research function at high executive levels."

Nalini Kotamraju

Research After UX

March 25, 2024

Bria Alexander

"We have over a thousand members in the #do-general Slack channel, and that’s where the party is at."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

October 1, 2021