Fake door tests or sometimes referred to as painted-door testing is a research technique used by product managers or entrepreneurs seeking to test the desirability of a certain feature or product with a very low investment both in terms of time & money.
Fake door testing can be very beneficial if done right but can also be harmful if not done correctly.
What is meant by fake door?
The technique consists of building the most minimal user interface without any functionality behind it. Let’s take an example: let’s say you want to build a new functionality that allows your users to set up automated reports sent to their mailboxes on a regular basis. They will be able to create the reports, save them, and schedule them. Fully building this functionality in your platform can be very costly as you will need to build the user interface that will allow your users to custom-create their reports, you will need the API behind it to save the custom-created reports and you will need to build the scheduler that will send the emails on a regular basis.
Example of fake door tests
So the idea of fake door testing is the following: Instead of fully building the feature and waiting for your users to use it you can think about a minimal user interface that will help you measure the desirability of your feature. Here is a way you can do it:
A simple way to do it is to create a button on your reporting page that will say “Create New Scheduled Report” (ok, maybe the name of the button can be shorter and more effective). Clicking on this button will simply show a message saying “This feature is not available yet, we will notify you as soon as it is available for you. thank you for showing interest in scheduling custom-created reports.”
Using an analytics tool such as Google Analytics, you are now able to measure the number of users that have seen this button as well as the number of users that have actually clicked on it. This will give you a high-level idea of what your conversion rate will be and you will able to decide if building this feature is actually worth it.
On the other hand, if you go further and build an interface that will fake the creation of a custom report without the capability behind it, you can fall into the trap of making your users spend too much time trying out something that doesn’t work. Doing this could result in user frustration and maybe even customer churn. So be aware of how far you want your fake door test to go and what will your user feel. Also doing too much fake door testing could harm your reputation and could make your audience lose trust in your product.
