How to Test Prototypes with Customers: The Five-Act Interview
Startups spend a lot of time trying to predict the future: Will people like this idea, or that idea?
Customer interviews can help answer those questions. You can use a prototype to basically fast-forward to the day when your product is in the market, and watch how real humans react to those ideas.
But reading about customer interviews is not the same as seeing one for yourself. So we recorded a short-ish (7 minute) video of our awesome researcher, Michael Margolis, conducting what we call a Five-Act Interview. Here’s what it looks like:
Here’s the basic outline of the Five-Act Interview:
- Friendly welcome
- Context questions
- Introduction to the prototype
- Tasks
- Quick debrief
If you want to learn more, check out our book Sprint. It explains how to plan and run these kinds of tests, how to find customers, how to prepare a script, and some advanced tips from Michael. You can find Sprint on Amazon or anywhere books are for sale. And check out thesprintbook.com for links to more free resources.
