Reading a concept testing report

Read the alerts first

Up to four callouts can appear near the top of What Matters Most, just under the headline card. Each one is telling you that a result further down needs reading differently.

• Concepts personas misread. They didn’t understand what the concept was. Any verdict on a misread concept is a verdict on a misunderstanding, so fix the description before you conclude anything about the idea.
• Names that oversold. The name set an expectation the concept didn’t meet. Personas were disappointed by the gap, not by the product.
• Options that weren’t believed, or didn’t come across. On a value proposition or messaging test, personas either didn’t buy the claim an option made or couldn’t say what it meant. The fix is to substantiate the statement or rewrite it.
• An audience-fit problem. The concept was understood, but it didn’t land with the audience you tested while a different group showed real pull. This one is framed as an opportunity rather than a warning, and it seeds the first next step. Treat it as a lead to validate, not a conclusion.

The first three link straight to the concept card they refer to. The audience-fit one doesn’t, because it points at a group rather than a concept. If any of them is present, resolve it before you act on a Drop.

The decision table

Also in What Matters Most: one row per concept, ordered best to worst, each with its verdict, a one-line reason, and the next step it implies. If you read nothing else, read this. It is the whole study compressed into a table you can take into a roadmap conversation.

The five verdicts

• Pursue. It landed. Green.
• Iterate. The core works, something around it doesn’t. Amber.
• Drop. It didn’t land. Red, and the cheapest result in the report.
• Inconclusive. Not enough consistent signal to call it. Grey.
• Rewrite-and-retest. Blue, because it isn’t a judgement on the concept at all. The description got in the way, so the test is unfinished.

Objection severity reads backwards

This is the single most misread thing in any Candor report, so it’s worth stating plainly. Severity describes how hard an objection is to answer, not how strongly personas voiced it.

• Low severity, green. The concept has a strong answer to this objection. It’s addressable.
• High severity, red. The concept has no good answer. The objection is structural.

So a wall of Low-severity objections is a healthy concept with a messaging job to do. A couple of High-severity ones is a concept that needs rethinking, however enthusiastic the rest of the report sounds.

What’s in Findings

The concepts one by one, sorted best to worst by verdict rather than by the order you entered them. Each card carries the description, a summary, a one-sentence read on early adopters, and a collapsed detail with the evidence.

Alongside them sit direct answers to the learning goals you set, and a section naming needs that none of your tested concepts covered. That last one is the closest a concept test gets to discovery, and it’s where the next idea usually comes from.

The action for each concept appears once, in Next Steps, rather than being repeated on every card.

What only appears with multiple concepts

Three things render only when the run used comparative mode, which means you tested two to four concepts: the head-to-head read on how personas chose, What would have to be true to adopt, and, for B2B audiences, Approval requirements covering who else has to sign off.

The middle one is the most practical section in the report, because it converts objections into conditions you could go and satisfy. Note the ceiling as well as the floor: a single concept is below comparative mode, and five or more switches the guide to a card sort, which does not produce these sections either. Two to four is the band that gets you the comparison.

Follow-on tests are labelled

If you ran a name, value proposition, or messaging test rather than a standard one, the report says so in full, for example Concept testing - Name. Version numbers count within a sub-type, so your first name test is v1 even if standard concept tests already ran in that study. The report structure is the same; what changes is that the concepts being compared are options for one anchor concept rather than peer ideas.

Where to go next

• Reading a synthesis report for the shared sections and confidence levels
• Choosing an interview type for the four kinds of concept test
• Reading a price testing report for what to run once a concept lands