Experiments provide the structure necessary to design and run great tests. They focus on testing live user behavior and have a clearly-articulated hypothesis that can be disproven. The team articulates this during the Plan phase, along with criteria to evaluate success. Then, in the Run phase, they get out of the building and gather data. Lastly, in the Analyze phase, they evaluate the results and update the project.

First, decide what it is you're trying to learn. A useful Experiment will always have a goal in mind, and Plan phase allows you to enter a detailed plan with measurable outcomes.

Choose a short Experiment Name that will be easy for your team to recognize and reference.

Define your Hypothesis Statement. What are you trying learn or achieve with this Experiment? Describe a goal with any necessary context. This should be related directly to the Ideas that you are planning to test.

Add Details about how you will test this: describe the Experiment you will run.

Next, define your Success Criteria. Click the + icon to add criteria.

Enter measurable metrics as well as the expected result of your Experiment, and click Add. The metric is what you are measuring, and how you define success is the target value that this metric must meet for your experiment to be a success.

If your Experiment was designed with specific Ideas in mind, click Connect Ideas (this step is optional). Select all ideas to test with this experiment (or click New to create and publish a new idea), and click X to close.

When finished, click Run Experiment to move to the Run phase.

Looking for information on how to plan Research? Find out how here.