Hypothesis Statement
What is a Hypothesis Statement?
This tactic tests your assumptions, treating each of them as experiments by turning them into hypotheses.
Take the subjective and political conversation out of the decision-making process, and focus the team towards feedback from users and customers.
Before this tactic, collect and prioritise your assumptions with Assumption Collecting and Assumption Map. Afterwards, create a Prototype Persona to give you direction on who to test with.
How to write a Hypothesis Statement
1. As a group, put your riskiest and most unproven assumptions into this hypothesis template:
Because we saw [quantitative/qualitative insight] we believe [this assumption statement is true].
We will know we’re [right/wrong] when we see the following feedback: [qualitative feedback] and/or [quantitative feedback] and/or [key performance indicator change].
2. Your hypothesis may be too big to test with a single statement, so it can be helpful to use this format to break it down into smaller parts:
We believe that [doing this/building this feature/creating this experience] for [these people/personas] will achieve [this outcome].
We will know this is true when we see [this market feedback, quantitative measure, or qualitative insight].
3. Get the group to Blind Vote on the hypotheses they’d like to commit to.
Origin: Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden, 2016
