Direct response marketing 150 years ago employed A/B split testing and MVPs (minimum viable products) to determine what the market would respond to.
This reduced waste, minimised risk, and maximised value creation for both seller and customer.
Now, the field of UX applies the same attitude explicitly and formally at every level of experience design, as nicely described in the book Lean UX:
- Our goal is not to create a deliverable, it’s to change something in the world – to create an outcome.
- The focus is on learning which features have the biggest impact on customers.
- We begin our work with an assumption. Assumptions instead of requirements.
- We use experiments to test our assumptions and then build on what we learn in those experiments.
- We create and test hypotheses.
- We measure to see whether we’ve achieved our desired outcomes.
- We aim for speed first.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. — Dr. Richard Feynman
