Time to read: 5 min
大多数以硬件为中心的初创公司只有一个机会来构建用户将重视，享受并采用并采用自己的生活的产品。If a user has difficulty using a new device or isn’t able to seamlessly integrate it into her life, chances are it will end up in the home ‘electronics graveyard’, banished to the closet or basement to live with the old stereo, first-generation iPads, and CDs.
没有硬件团队有时间。
众所周知，建立连接，功能齐全，有用和美丽的设备非常难以做到。与应用程序和网络开发不同，由于产品尺寸，传感器，住房和其他必要的材料限制，建造硬件充满了真正的制造障碍以及痛苦的成本和设计权衡。但是，如果您能够吸引用户的注意力，兴奋和与首张产品的关注，那么您将获得继续开发第二代和第三代硬件产品所需的动力。
团队测试他们的产品创意、概念和designs with users early on gain serious advantage over those who do not. These teams identify their product’s core focus and experience earlier, save time and money from re-works and re-builds, minimize waste, and maximize a product’s chances of success with consumers the first time around.
I’m excited to share with you a surprisingly easy and cost-efficient way to test your product with users before you tackle those tough hardware manufacturing hurdles! And it doesn’t take a lot of time or money, just a little elbow grease, getting out of your office, and leveraging some research know-how.
Tip #1 Plan ahead to do just 1-2 days of interviews ‘in the wild’
First, plan at least 2 weeks ahead to be out of the office and in the ‘real world’ for 1-2 days gathering feedback from your users. You will need this prep time to make sure your minimum viable product, prototype, or concept is ready to share and representative of what you plan to ship. You will also need this time to find, recruit, schedule, and confirm your testers (this can be tricky, but don’t worry I’ll give you some ideas for how to do this part as well).
提示2仅招募六个潜在用户，专注于他们的行为
Recruiting the right users for testing is often the biggest obstacle to getting the user feedback you need. I admit – this is the thing that holds me up the most when I’m trying to do my own research. It’s really difficult to find people who are willing to lend you their time. And a potential tester pool becomes even smaller if your product is targeted toward people with specific interests, activities, family or household structures, locations, etc.
My advice to teams who are getting started with user research is to make it easy on yourself and start by recruiting among the people you have access to – your network of colleagues, friends, and family, using email and social media.
在研究领域，这称为“便利抽样”。这是一种真正的抽样方法，恰当地命名了。绝对不要让“偏见”参与者的想法将您赶回这里；有一种方法。
When you create a call for participants, make sure to screen potential testers based on their authentic personal behaviors, activities, and interests, not based on their the relationship to you, demographic details, availability, or level of interest in doing research. Doing so will enable you to get authentic and helpful feedback on their interaction with your product, remove the recruiting obstacle, and help minimize what is often referred to as ‘bias’ in tester feedback.
提示＃3的忠诚度低：想想您的产品的道具，屏幕截图和情节板
You don’t need to have a fully formed product or MVP (minimum viable product) to start testing with users. In fact, it’s better if you don’t! Remember, you want to gather user feedback as early as possible, while you are still flexible enough to make the form, the features and design experience the way users need it to be.
To prepare your hardware product for testing with users, create both a prop that acts as a representation of the physical form factor and a set of sketches, screen shots, images and/or storyboards that represent what your full product experience will eventually be and feel like.
为此，您可以使用3D打印的模型来用于物理道具和低成本原型工具，例如邮政注释，Invision，Sop-Motion Animation和/或其他各种其他免费的在线讲故事工具来创建任何UIS和上下文。
提示＃4要求用户向您展示，不要告诉您
Once you decide what prop, prototype, or storyboards you’ll show to users “in the wild,” you want to start nailing down the interview protocol, or exactly what you’ll ask testers. These interviews will act as your testing ‘data’ and company intellectual property.
Here is an example of a brief interview protocol that I often suggest to hardware teams:
- 在将使用产品的何处（家庭，公园，办公室等）的情况下与测试人员见面。
- start by giving users a quick 1-2 phrase introduction on what the product idea is and does.
- Gather initial impressions of the concept.
- Introduce the prop or hardware prototype.
- Have users imagine that the prop is fully functional and get their initial feedback on where they might place it and how they might interact with it.
- Ask users to show you how they might do 3-4 tasks or activities using the prop, introducing the screenshots and storyboards to fill in the gaps of the product experience where needed.
Throughout your interview, focus on one goal:don’t ask users what they think, have them show you what they would do. This approach is the secret to getting the data and insights you need for your hardware-specific product – and why you made that prop prototype and proof of concept to take out to the world in the first place!
Tip #5 Look for the biggest patterns (and standouts too)
Once all your interviews are complete, review all the feedback and look for the biggest patterns in perceived usefulness and usability. Pay close attention to where your product may currently fit in and not fit into users’ lives, giving you a window into possible patterns (and obstacles) for adoption.
This should be a relatively quick process, as研究表明that the most pervasive usability obstacles will present themselves within 5-8 user tests. If you don’t see a clear pattern you can add interviews in increments of 2 or 3, or re-focus, iterate, and re-test.
如果您碰巧收到一些出色的反馈，那也很棒。Information Theorytells us that random variables are packed with valuable information, so use any unique data and insights you gather towards novel product ideas & directions.
You Got This
现在您有了专业知识。您需要与用户一起测试产品并获得节省时间的反馈所需的内容，您需要第一次制作引起用户共鸣的产品。
我包括了一个2分钟的视频，该视频回顾了此过程，以帮助启动您的灵感并让您入门。
祝你好运，测试愉快！
