Ideas are the heart of every pairLab experiment -- they’re what participants evaluate and compare. But there's a catch: the quality of your results depends on how you manage those ideas. Are they clear? Do they make sense together? Do they reflect what participants care about?
Let's walk through managing two types of ideas:
- Active Ideas to Test – the ones participants see and vote on.
- Suggestions Waiting in Queue – the ideas participants suggest but haven’t been approved yet.
Active Ideas to Test: Turning Good Ideas Into Great Results
Imagine you’re testing features for a college mobile app. You’re excited about your ideas -- things like Search a map of campus or Check course schedules. But then you add Campus map and Interactive map. Something's not right; you've introduced redundancy.
Redundancy happens when a survey has one or more similar or even subsidiary ideas. Redundancy confuses participants and makes results less useful. Here's how to avoid redundancy:
Write specific, distinct ideas. Each idea should stand on its own. Avoid overlap or vague descriptions, and use the language your survey participants understand.
Here's an example. Search a map of campus (specific and clear) and A map of campus (redundant). The second is redundant because it assumes the first. Imagine seeing these two ideas in a pair challenge. How do you make a choice? You can't search a campus map without having a campus map. This is not a choice, and may indicate you need a second study to prioritize features just for the campus map feature.
Avoid over-editing ideas. Your participants -- not you -- decide what ideas are valuable. Edit for clarity, not bias. Even if you think Find pet-friendly study rooms is silly, let participants have a say.
Use “In-Queue” to stay organized. Stash draft ideas in the Approval Queue until they’re ready to go live. This keeps your Active Ideas list focused and participant-ready.
Suggestions Queue: Mine Gold From Participant Ideas
Participants are sending you suggestions. You open your Suggestions Queue and see things like:
- Add class roll call
- Make attendance check-ins easier
- Who’s in class today?
At first glance, it’s a mess. But look closer: They’re all saying the same thing in different ways. This isn’t clutter, it’s a clue.
Look for patterns. Similar suggestions can reveal what matters to participants, and where your labels might not match their language. For example, if you tested “Track class attendance” and participants suggest “Class roll call”, the wording may need adjustment. Consider combining these ideas into one: Track class attendance with a roll call.
Combine and clarify suggestions. Suggestions can be rough around the edges. Your role is to polish them by combining overlapping ideas and editing for clarity. While it's true that not every idea is a good idea, editing suggestions that have potential can transform oddballs into insights.
Act on suggestions right away. When participants suggest ideas, they’re engaged. Keep the momentum going by adding the best of them into the survey as soon as you can. And look at each one critically. Bad suggestions might inspire new ideas or uncover gaps in your survey.
Final Thoughts
Managing ideas is like curating a collection: Each one should be clear, distinct and worthy of attention.
- Start with strong Active Ideas; refine for clarity, avoid insider jargon, and remove redundancy.
- Use the Suggestions Queue to uncover hidden insights and improve your survey’s language.
- Trust your participants to show you what matters; don’t over-edit or overthink.
Managing ideas might seem like a small part of the process, but it makes all the difference. Clean, clear ideas lead to clean, clear results. And when your participants feel understood, they’ll give you insights you can actually use.