Arta Labs

I am freelance UI designer working as part of a small team who are trialing out as many business ideas as we can until something works (can read more about our methodology here).

To be as time efficient as possible, we decided that validating first would probably be wise. This lets us test ahead of time which one of our many ideas would actually be worth spending the time and effort building, rather than build first only to realise no one wants it.

Whilst we aren't completely against building first (indeed, for many projects that is probably more wise), for our specific situation we felt validate first works better for us personally since it lets us figure where best to spend our time and energy.

So how exactly are we doing it? Largely the simple wait list method. Since we have the web design skills, we produce a simple but compelling landing page website explaining our idea/solution. As part of this we include the Call-To-Action to sign up to an email wait list. Whilst this gives us some indication, we know that not all who sign up are actually committed enough to translate into users. However, to help us gather deeper feedback, we offer the option to fill in a survey too. Additionally, we reach out and ask for one on one interviews with potential users to try and squeeze out as much insight as we can.