Here is a great question I´ve received about Lean Inception, User Research and AB tests
Question: Should I use User Research or AB test for deciding upon new features? How does this relate to Lean Inception?
Answer: This is a great question, in fact one that often shows up during the Lean Inceptions workshops.
If the product does not exist, not even a MVP, your only option is User Research. You should interview your potential users before building a solution, before building the features you believe they really want to use. I wrote User Research, but this have different names for different people: discovery, User Research, UX Research, ideation, inception, etc. The only name I don´t use is Lean Inception as it has a different purpose.
But if you are in the process of either evolving an existing product, or starting a new one, then you should decide which feature to build and which to AB test. and this decision should be very clear to everyone. This answer is on your MVP plan, which you can show in the MVP canvas.
The MVP canvas is one fo the results of the Lean Inception. On it, you can tell (1) which feature should be in that MVP (this is the very minimum necessary to get started), and (2) which features require more learning, we should explore the options (because you want to gather data to make better informed decisions). For (2) AB test is very appropriate. But make sure you have a good user base to get the amount of traffic to make the learning results useful.
The main difficulty, many people do not get together to align and decide the MVP, they do not stop a few days to participate in a Lean Inceptions. The workshop purpose is to align people about the MVP. The main goal is to align on the product strategy and the MVP considering the business, the UX and the technical perspectives. Therefore, avoiding to start something without a good alignment and understanding from all parts.
So, answering your question – “Should I use User Research or AB test for deciding upon new features?”:
You should schedule a Lean Inception to align people about the MVP. And the team will have answered this question on the MVP canvas.
Read more about AB test onTeresa Torres blog post: How to Run an A/B Test.
