Building a prototype and deciding you like it doesn't mean it's validated! Gathering feedback from users is the next critical step.

This can be intimidating, especially if you've not done it before. Figuring out where to find users and how to run tests with them forces you to go 'public' with your product idea and thinking. That's much harder than working away at your desk on a hypothetical idea.

But it doesn't need to be this way. Once you've run your first couple of tests you'll start to see how the testing process is not just a source of valuable insight, but is actually a lot of fun.

Ninja user testing methods

If you can find people around you to be your test subjects, this is a great starting point. Our visual impairment device and Flashnotes.com are two good examples of creative real-world testing.

Ideally, you'll look for users who are in your target audience--people who really are visually impaired. But at the very earliest stages of testing, you can also get useful feedback just by grabbing people around you and running simple tests. The UX purist might argue that these users might lead you in the wrong direction, but done carefully, this can be a very good way to ease into user testing.

Once you learn more from these ninja tests and potentially iterate your product, taking into account the feedback you gather, you can move on to more structured tests with your target audience.

Remote user tests

Even if you can't find the perfect users to test with from your local community, there are many great ways to test with users remotely.

As a remote design team ourselves, we test remotely very often and with great success. Here are a few of the best tools to help you run remote tests:

• testingtime.com: Helps you to find Skype users for remote testing. It's a little more time-consuming than some of the more automatic alternatives, but the opportunity to sit down with your test user and talk to them directly can be very valuable, especially at the early stages of the process.
• usertesting.com: This is the automated, 'unmoderated' alternative to interviewing users. You set up a test and define your requirements, then receive screen and voice recordings from users attempting to follow the instructions you've set. This technique isn't ideal if you're at the beginning stage of your product--it works better when you have higher-fidelity prototypes or a real product to test with.
• A small plug for our own tool, PingPong. Currently in beta, this is another tool for scheduling Skype interviews with remote users. We'll mention PingPong again in the next chapter as we've validated the product using the steps in this Playbook too!
• We've also found usabilityhub.com to be a useful tool in certain circumstances. It's a quick and fairly cheap way to get prototype insights and reactions from a number of users.

The goal of product validation, whether remote or in person, is to make sure that your product is solving the right problem in the most effective way. It's highly unlikely that you'll manage to do this perfectly the first time around--but that's perfectly fine! Iterations, tweaks and pivots are a natural part of the product validation process and are one of the reasons that prototyping is such a valuable technique.

Once you start gathering strong positive feedback from your target users when testing your prototype, it's time to move onto the final stage of the Lean Validation Process.