Validating Product Ideas

Better Question
1
How did you create your shopping list the last time you went to the grocery store?
Yes
Asks about repeated behavior and is open-ended enough for getting valuable responses.
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2
What is the reason you use your mobile phone while grocery shopping?
No
Phrased as if it is asked once, not repeatedly. Also, it does not meet a most likely situation where a phone is used multiple times for different purposes during grocery shopping.
The last time you went grocery shopping, what was the reason you used your phone to help you shop?
3
How often did you check the time when you recently went grocery shopping?
No
Asks for a number. Numbers will not

infamous question “What do people need?”
To sum it up, after you phrase your question, make sure that it:
• Asks about repeated behavior.
• Does not ask about opinions.
• Does not ask to “average” a behavior.
• Is not too general but very specific.
• Is not a yes/no question.
• Is not a quantitative question in which the answer is a number.

• What is email good for?
Yes/no questions: Experience sampling is a research method that integrates qualitative, rich data with quantitative, numerical data. Asking a yes/no question eliminates the qualitative aspect of the study to a point where you’ll have nothing actionable to do when you see the results. If you ask, “Did you update your website this morning?” and 78% of the answers are yes, then what are you going to do next? What did you learn about user needs? Which pain points did you uncover? Here are some more bad examples:
• Did you buy milk today?
• Was your bus late this morning?
• Do you like your boss?
Quantitative questions: Similar to yes/no questions, quantitative ones are also not going to be very helpful. A number, an average, or a percentage tells you nothing about unmet needs, missing features, painful problems, or joyful delights. It’s just a number. Here are some examples:
• How many emails did you receive in the past hour?
• What time did you wake up this morning?
• How many items did you purchase the last time you went grocery shopping