Experiment Planner

When to use it

Every new idea has built in assumptions, and it is best to find and test them early! Use this tool to identify the most critical assumptions that are critical to your idea's success, and design simple low cost experiments to test those assumptions.

What’s the purpose

This template guides you through the process of improving the products and ideas you are creating, based on real user feedback and data. It’s a powerful way to ensure we make decisions based on evidence, rather than assumptions, and minimise wasted time, resources, and effort.

How to do it

Start by writing your hypothesis, which is a statement that clearly states what you predict to find.
Next, identify the key assumptions that need to be true in order for your idea to be successful. Consider how you’re asking people to change their behavior and what that might make them feel or do.
Select one of your top most critical assumptions and place it in step three.
Now, design your experiment by outlining how you will test your idea, what you will measure, who you will test it with and what criteria you will use to determine if your hypothesis is correct.
In step four, capture the results of your experiment, comparing your findings to your original hypothesis, and what this has taught you.
Now, you have two options: you can persevere (keep going with you original hypothesis and create a new test to build on your learning); or pivot (create a new hypothesis and repeat by completing another test).
Repeat the process for all your key assumptions.

Helpful tips

You don’t want to spend a lot of time and money at this stage, so try to plan a low-investment experiment activity to test your hypothesis.
Make sure that everyone involved is aligned on the experiment metrics before conducting any tests.
Focus first on the most critical assumption - think of your assumptions like an inverted pyramid - which single assumption would mean all the others collapse?

Using this method in your day-to-day work

Whenever you’re working on a new idea or simply trying something new, it’s helpful to run an experiment that tests your assumptions to refine your idea and launch the best solution. For example, something as simple as your company wants to ensure they provide their employees with the best beverages during meetings, so they buy multiple different types of coffee for people to try out, which can be tested through an experiment. Using this template will help you test the assumptions that have been made, like that everyone drinks coffee or that people will be willing to try multiple cups of coffee in one sitting.