Define and plan your experiment

An experiment can be trying out a new idea, a new way of working, or a new technology.

Experiments are useful for gathering data on new approaches with minimal costs and resources. If successful, you can consider scaling it up and offering it more widely.

This resource will help you with the planning of your experiment to ensure it runs smoothly and gets you helpful results.

It will guide you through:

• planning when it will happen
• how you’ll conduct it
• what data you’ll collect
• who to test with
• how you’ll share your findings

It also helps you decide who to involve from your team and what their responsibilities are.

By answering the questions in this resource, you’ll have all you need to put your plan into action.

Remember, experimentation will give you more quantitative data. If you are looking to do qualitative testing, other ways include:

• recording insights from listening to calls
• recording insights from in person observation
• conducting other research activities

When to do an experiment

Experiments could be done to improve how your council runs, such as trialling a new governance process; or could be aimed at the community such as trialling a new way to improve how residents recycle rubbish.

If you’re running a new experiment, it might be a good idea to use one of our other tools:

• understand the root cause of a problem
• understand your riskiest assumptions
• make the hypotheses you want to test

They will help you think about what you want to learn from the experiment and why.

How to define and plan your experiment

It’s best to use this resource in a group environment, such as a team workshop. This way you can have a range of insights and agree on what to do next.

This resource has five parts.

1. Design your experiment structure – questions to help you think about the methods and the resources you’ll use.
2. Get the right data from your experiment – questions for you to think about what types of quantitative data you want to collect.
3. Schedule your experiment – questions for you to think about when and where the experiment will happen.
4. Choose the right people for your experiment – questions to help you think about who you want to test your experiment with.
5. Share your experiment findings – so you know how you’ll communicate your findings to stakeholders to help build interest and buy-in for your project.

Go through the sections with your team and answer each of the questions. Use the questions to prompt conversation and to make actionable decisions.

At the end of the workshop, everyone should be clear on how the experiment will happen.

Make sure somebody does each action

As you go through the sections, ensure that team members are assigned to specific actions to prepare for the experiment.

Agree together on everyone’s individual responsibilities. By doing this, you can be confident that there will be no gaps in your plan.

Think about the people in your experiment

Remember that the people who will be testing your experiment will not know as much about your project as you do.

Use simple language, give explanations where needed, and make it easy for participants to take part in. This will help them feel more engaged and willing to give feedback.

Keep accessibility needs in mind. Making your experiment accessible to everyone from the start will avoid having to make changes later on or getting less reliable data from your experiment.

What you can do next

Once you have answered the questions in each section and decided who will action the tasks, you’ll be ready to start running your experiment.

Check if you need to get approval from decision makers before starting the experiment. This resource will show them the plan and will help to discuss the value of the experiment for the council.