Article
The Concept Test
A few weeks ago I read Marty Neumeier’s outstanding book, The Brand Gap. In some ways, this book really changed the way I think about brands. In other ways, it reinforced the opinions I have formed in response to some great writing about branding (1, 2, 3, 4) in the past few months.
I enjoyed this book so much that I read it twice, and on the second pass I stuffed it full of tiny Post-It notes, marking the page each time I was blown away. One of the best things I marked was on page 118 — Neumeier’s Concept Test, a simple way of testing your icon, tagline, or whatever before you invest in it. In his words:
A simple concept test can help you develop names, symbols, icons, taglines, and brand promises by addressing two issues: 1) getting the right idea, and 2) getting the idea right. In other words, it not only helps you sort through a range of alternate approaches, it helps you polish the one you pick.
Running a concept test is simple. Here’s how you do it:
- Develop several prototypes of the brand element in question (icon, name, etc)
- Show it to at least 10 members of the audience (not company insiders)
- Assess understanding of the element, not preference (i.e. don’t ask “which one do you like?”) by using questions like these:
- “Which of these icons catches your eye first?”
- “What made you notice it?”
- “What do you think this particular icon means?”
- “If it’s supposed to mean X, do you think one of these other choices expresses it better?”
While Neumeier focuses on stuff like taglines and logos, concept tests can be equally useful in the early stages of web development. Even before reading The Brand Gap, I had taken to using concept tests to figure out what users expect from a site, what kinds of navigation makes sense to them, and as a general pre-development “catch” to make sure we weren’t pushing X when everyone wanted Y.
Most designers and developers think of “usability” whenever testing is mentioned, but the concept test is getting at something very different. It’s not about being able to use the site (often to complete some specific task). It’s about understanding the site so a user’s experience falls in line with their expectations.
On a recent project for the University of Wisconsin Arboretum (still under development), we used a concept test to help us make some decisions about navigation, site identification and general content strategy. After showing the home page to our testers, we ran through a series of questions like this: 1. What site is this? What do you think this site is going to be about? 2. What catches your attention first? Is that interesting to you? What else would you like to see here on the home page? 3. Let’s say you were looking for X — how would you find it? 4. What else do you want to know about the Arboretum?
Although basic (and quite cheap), this test helped us make some really key changes to the site, and made us confident about the things we didn’t change. More internal discussion wouldn’t have done that, and usability testing wouldn’t have done that. I think it’s safe to say that concept tests have become a uniquely valuable part of the design process for me.