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How to use guerrilla research to guide your project discovery phase

How to validate your value proposition with your users

Kai Wong
UX Collective

Several people sitting at a coffee shop. One guy in the center is gesturing with his hand, perhaps as a facilitator. The two people on the left are taking notes through journals or computers, and the woman on the right may be explaining something as a participant.
Photo by fauxels from Pexels

One of the most important lessons I learned about user research was rejection by an experienced IBM job interviewer.

He asked me a simple question: “How would you go about doing user research in a hospital setting if they rejected your plan for user testing?” I then began to plan how I’d approach my stakeholders, try and provide them with reassurances to their fears, and win them over.

I probably failed the interview right then and there.

“Let me tell you a better way.” He said after listening to my response. “Go to a hospital cafeteria, buy a cup of coffee, and ask people if they have time to answer a few questions.”

That was my introduction to guerrilla research. But I never realized how useful it was until I found myself in a position to deploy it during Customer Discovery of a redesign. I understood and persuaded our team to modify our project goals to support our users better by doing guerrilla research. And I did this by understanding the value proposition we were offering to our users.

Guerrilla Research and the Value proposition

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Responses (1)

What are your thoughts?

What if the project is at the inception phase, not a redesign?

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