Expert insights. Personalized for you.
As the industry gets rocked with viral and economic disruption, consumers want more for their money. Meanwhile, the audience leveraging technology is broader than ever before — meaning the demand for seamless and delightful product experiences is the highest it’s ever been. MORE
Feeling the distance? We feel it, too. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, we Centercoders have packed up our desks and taken shelter at home as we, like the rest of the world, ride out these bizarre times. While we are and have always been fully equipped to take our show “on the road,” the transition from a lively and bustling open office to our homes has taken some getting used to. But the Centercode Team is nothing if not adaptable. MORE
On November 12, the Walt Disney Company launched their long-awaited video streaming platform, Disney+ …surprising no one. Disney is, after all, just one name on a long list of media production outlets to jump into the stream of on-demand media. CBS All Access, Apple TV, and Comcast’s Peacock (set to launch next year with 15,000 hours of programming) are signs of an industrial shift. By 2020, 1 in 5 Americans will have “cut the cord” on cable. MORE
Technology is developed to serve people, but those people – customers – haven’t always had their own seat at the product development table. That’s what makes the work of people like Dona Sarkar so compelling. As the leader of the Windows Insider Program – Microsoft’s 17 million user beta program – Dona’s focus on co-creation is empowering Microsoft’s customers to build the new generation of technology. MORE
Your feedback forms , surveys , and project workspace are more than just boxes you tick off of your test prep checklist — they’re an essential element of your Customer Validation project’s success. Like recruiting a willing and able tester team and keeping the lines of communication open , ensuring your tools are helping (not hindering) your testers’ efforts is critical to maintaining engagement and securing ample, high-quality feedback. MORE
Wearables have quickly become an easy way to enhance health, personal care, and fitness routines and deliver notifications from paired mobile devices. In 2019, the number of wearable shipments jumped over 80% with a new high of 118.9 million units. By 2024, that number is expected to reach 526.8 MORE
In May 2020, Twitter defied the uncertainty of the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic with a decisive announcement: they were making work-from-home permanent. It was a plan two years in the making, but one that foreshadowed a global trend. MORE
This week marks Centercode’s 19th birthday! While we’re celebrating much the same way we all have these past two months — virtual happy hours, slack chats, and other new-normal gatherings — we’re still coming up with fun and creative ways to stay engaged with our coworkers. This week’s Hometasking challenge asked us to create quarantine-specific postcards we could send from the safety of home. Mike repurposes his ski gear for a different kind of slope. MORE
Strong tester participation is at the heart of every successful Customer Validation test. When you’ve recruited enthusiastic, target market testers to use your product, complete surveys, and submit feedback, you have everything you need to deliver those highly sought after recommendations for improvement. But while everyone agrees that engagement is critical, only half of customer testing professionals say that they’re regularly tracking project participation. MORE
Today’s homes may still be a far cry from the Jetson’s — but rapid advances in technology mean they’re smarter than ever. MORE
With hundreds, sometimes thousands of products to choose from, Amazon star ratings and reviews are one of the most common and reliable ways for consumers to make buying decisions and feel confident in their choices. In a 2016 study , 71% of consumers reported feeling more comfortable purchasing a product based on its reviews. As shopping digitally becomes increasingly common and convenient, that number will only go up. High star ratings = good. Low star ratings = bad. MORE
We’re one month into our shelter orders — it’s a bittersweet anniversary. Luckily, the passion, adaptability, and collaborative spirit that are hallmarks of Centercode’s company culture make it easy for us to find ways to stay productive and occupy our free time. How have we been spending our time? Last week’s Hometasking challenge asked Centercoders to step onto the silver screen by recreating iconic movie scenes. Matt and Myles reenact the opening of the Lion King. MORE
Even the most robust and well-resourced QA labs have limits. There’s simply no way to keep up with the growing combinations of technology devices your customers are using in their lives. MORE
Our latest case study looks at how the Centercode Platform helped Tableau Software, the world-class data analytics company, increase their beta team’s productivity by 100%. Tableau enables people to easily visualize, analyze, and make sense of data across disparate sources. By enhancing data visualization and business intelligence, they empower people to make better decisions. MORE
If you’re like 75% of professionals charged with securing real-world insights from beta testing, your time is short. When it comes to beta testing, Centercode is synonymous with saving time. MORE
A report from the Centercode Research Team found more evidence linking to challenges we as Customer Validation (CV) professionals already know — it takes too much time to get useful feedback. Whether it’s the quality, the lack of coverage, low volume, or simply the effort it demands, more than half of CV professionals reported issues with managing feedback. The reason? There isn’t always a single cause, but what it mostly comes down to are time sinks. MORE
If the Customer Validation platform is the skeleton, Betabound is the beating heart of Centercode. Every day, members of our 200,000+ tester network are putting their time and energy towards helping our customers build spectacular products. Leading the collaboration between our tester community and our customers is the Betabound Team. MORE
The only certainty in these unpredictable times is that your customers know what they want — and they’re eager to talk about it. That’s what makes securing customer feedback more crucial than ever. But with your team — and your customers — scattered to the winds and hunkered down for the long haul, it can be difficult to keep the ball rolling smoothly in the right direction. MORE
The Delta ’20: Virtual Customer Validation Conference saw over 400 Customer Validation professionals from companies like Bose, Roku, Autodesk, TechSmith, and countless others. Over the course of three days, attendees picked up new tips and techniques, workshopped their programs, networked across industries, and brought their experiences to the table in the largest gathering of customer testing professionals yet. MORE
When you’re looking to shave costs anywhere you can, quality is the one thing you can’t afford to cut. It’s the number one objective driving your product’s success. But ensuring high quality is expensive. MORE
The world is in a constant state of change — and it’s never been more apparent than during this period of global COVID disruption. Tech companies, in particular, are adapting in several ways. Some are scaling down the number of product launches to focus their resources on a select few. MORE
With 18 speakers and over 400 attendees, Delta ’20: the Virtual Customer Validation Conference made one thing clear: even in uncertain times such as these, the CV industry is enthusiastically pushing forward. Over the course of three half-days in April, customer testing professionals from all over the world gathered together virtually to exchange ideas, ask questions, network, learn from industry leaders, and brainstorm solutions for increasing the performance of their programs. MORE
Low tester participation is a source of frustration for many Customer Validation professionals. You’ve invested hours into crafting creative test topics , and you’re following best practices for a comprehensive and approachable communication strategy. But somehow, only a fraction of your testers are submitting feedback. Where did it go wrong? What could you do differently? Sometimes, it’s not you — it’s your testers. MORE
The obvious: your revenue depends on your ability to launch a quality product. The not-so-obvious: figuring out how to drive up that quality efficiently when your production schedule has been disrupted, your processes are changing, and you’re grappling with both internal and external factors that are beyond your control. Even as we cautiously hope the worst of the pandemic is behind us, working remotely has changed the way organizations operate from the top down. MORE
Everyone’s under a lot of stress — and unsurprisingly, the companies producing new products are experiencing parallel challenges to the customers they’re serving. The full economic toll of COVID-19 in the foreseeable future is a magnet for uncertainty around new product launches and releases. Many workers are still remote, which means they’re still learning how to minimize friction between new communication protocols and expectations. MORE
It’s our mission here at Centercode to make technology easier to use and more accessible for everyday people. We’re passionate about it — that’s why ‘passionate’ is one of the six core values we live by. MORE
In early June of 2020, tech giant IBM announced they will stop offering facial recognition software until further anti-bias testing has been conducted. “IBM firmly opposes and will not condone the uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, [or] violations of basic human rights and freedoms,” wrote IBM chief executive Arvid Krishna in a letter to Congress. MORE
Here’s the universal truth about insurance: you buy it, but you hope you never actually have to use it. We treat insurance as a necessary evil for this reason. Nobody ever looks forward to purchasing or using it. MORE
In October 2020, YouTube quietly changed the way it beta tests which allows only premium subscribers to opt-in to test new features. It’s a departure from the way things have always been when they just selected beta testers at random. MORE
Begging for feedback from unenthusiastic or inexperienced testers is a frustratingly common occurrence for many beta and delta testing teams. But tester engagement — and the resulting feedback — are both vital to test success. MORE
Picture this: you’re in a meeting about an upcoming product release that will launch in a couple of months. The product is almost feature-complete, which means it’s just about ready for beta testing. Someone — maybe it’s your boss or someone from a different department — starts talking about recruitment. “This product has a lot of features,” they say. “Let’s get 200 people to test this and give feedback.” ” 200? MORE
In the home environment, communication is king. But it isn’t limited to people; it’s also mandatory for connected devices. The ability of newly adopted tech to “talk” to the existing devices in a given environment is a baseline expectation. MORE
Securing high-quality feedback from your project is like taking a roadtrip — with the right travel companions, a thorough plan, and a map of how to get where you’re going, you have all the building blocks for success. We’ve already dug into diagnosing potential challenges — communication breakdown , recruiting the wrong testers , friction caused by tools , and a product that isn’t ready for customer-testers — and how to start addressing them. MORE
It’s been three weeks since Centercoders left HQ and started working remote — but who knows what time means anymore, right? We’re slowly adapting to the circumstances of this global experience, both as a company and as individual team members. But as unreal as these weeks have been, circumstances like this really put the adaptability, creativity, and enthusiasm of the Centercode Team on full display. MORE
57 Centercode
OCTOBER 14, 2020
In May 2020, Twitter defied the uncertainty of the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic with a decisive announcement: they were making work-from-home permanent. It was a plan two years in the making, but one that foreshadowed a global trend.
Centercode
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020
Wearables have quickly become an easy way to enhance health, personal care, and fitness routines and deliver notifications from paired mobile devices. In 2019, the number of wearable shipments jumped over 80% with a new high of 118.9 million units. By 2024, that number is expected to reach 526.8
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Centercode
OCTOBER 9, 2020
In October 2020, YouTube quietly changed the way it beta tests which allows only premium subscribers to opt-in to test new features. It’s a departure from the way things have always been when they just selected beta testers at random.
Centercode
SEPTEMBER 22, 2020
Today’s homes may still be a far cry from the Jetson’s — but rapid advances in technology mean they’re smarter than ever.
Centercode
AUGUST 27, 2020
Even the most robust and well-resourced QA labs have limits. There’s simply no way to keep up with the growing combinations of technology devices your customers are using in their lives.
|
Centercode
SEPTEMBER 1, 2020
In the home environment, communication is king. But it isn’t limited to people; it’s also mandatory for connected devices. The ability of newly adopted tech to “talk” to the existing devices in a given environment is a baseline expectation.
Centercode
AUGUST 20, 2020
As the industry gets rocked with viral and economic disruption, consumers want more for their money. Meanwhile, the audience leveraging technology is broader than ever before — meaning the demand for seamless and delightful product experiences is the highest it’s ever been.
Centercode
AUGUST 14, 2020
The world is in a constant state of change — and it’s never been more apparent than during this period of global COVID disruption. Tech companies, in particular, are adapting in several ways. Some are scaling down the number of product launches to focus their resources on a select few.
Centercode
JULY 29, 2020
Begging for feedback from unenthusiastic or inexperienced testers is a frustratingly common occurrence for many beta and delta testing teams. But tester engagement — and the resulting feedback — are both vital to test success.
Advertiser: Amplitude
As part of our goal to continue helping our community during these times, we wanted to share with you this critical data on the state of digital products across industries and provide context on how businesses are responding to the changing winds.
|
Centercode
AUGUST 7, 2020
When you’re looking to shave costs anywhere you can, quality is the one thing you can’t afford to cut. It’s the number one objective driving your product’s success. But ensuring high quality is expensive.
Centercode
JULY 24, 2020
If you’re like 75% of professionals charged with securing real-world insights from beta testing, your time is short. When it comes to beta testing, Centercode is synonymous with saving time.
Centercode
MAY 7, 2020
The only certainty in these unpredictable times is that your customers know what they want — and they’re eager to talk about it. That’s what makes securing customer feedback more crucial than ever. But with your team — and your customers — scattered to the winds and hunkered down for the long haul, it can be difficult to keep the ball rolling smoothly in the right direction.
Centercode
JULY 21, 2020
It’s our mission here at Centercode to make technology easier to use and more accessible for everyday people. We’re passionate about it — that’s why ‘passionate’ is one of the six core values we live by.
Advertisement
Embedding dashboards and reports aren’t enough. Futureproof your application by offering instant, actionable insights that will give you and your customers a competitive advantage.
Centercode
JUNE 24, 2020
Everyone’s under a lot of stress — and unsurprisingly, the companies producing new products are experiencing parallel challenges to the customers they’re serving. The full economic toll of COVID-19 in the foreseeable future is a magnet for uncertainty around new product launches and releases. Many workers are still remote, which means they’re still learning how to minimize friction between new communication protocols and expectations.
Centercode
APRIL 2, 2020
It’s been three weeks since Centercoders left HQ and started working remote — but who knows what time means anymore, right? We’re slowly adapting to the circumstances of this global experience, both as a company and as individual team members. But as unreal as these weeks have been, circumstances like this really put the adaptability, creativity, and enthusiasm of the Centercode Team on full display.
Centercode
JULY 9, 2020
Picture this: you’re in a meeting about an upcoming product release that will launch in a couple of months. The product is almost feature-complete, which means it’s just about ready for beta testing. Someone — maybe it’s your boss or someone from a different department — starts talking about recruitment. “This product has a lot of features,” they say. “Let’s get 200 people to test this and give feedback.” ” 200?
Centercode
JUNE 30, 2020
With hundreds, sometimes thousands of products to choose from, Amazon star ratings and reviews are one of the most common and reliable ways for consumers to make buying decisions and feel confident in their choices. In a 2016 study , 71% of consumers reported feeling more comfortable purchasing a product based on its reviews. As shopping digitally becomes increasingly common and convenient, that number will only go up. High star ratings = good. Low star ratings = bad.
Advertisement
No one designs bad dashboards and reports on purpose. So why do so many applications have terrible analytics experiences? Download this ebook for secrets to creating dashboards and reports your users will love.
Centercode
APRIL 21, 2020
We’re one month into our shelter orders — it’s a bittersweet anniversary. Luckily, the passion, adaptability, and collaborative spirit that are hallmarks of Centercode’s company culture make it easy for us to find ways to stay productive and occupy our free time. How have we been spending our time? Last week’s Hometasking challenge asked Centercoders to step onto the silver screen by recreating iconic movie scenes. Matt and Myles reenact the opening of the Lion King.
Centercode
JUNE 15, 2020
In early June of 2020, tech giant IBM announced they will stop offering facial recognition software until further anti-bias testing has been conducted. “IBM firmly opposes and will not condone the uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, [or] violations of basic human rights and freedoms,” wrote IBM chief executive Arvid Krishna in a letter to Congress.
Centercode
MAY 14, 2020
This week marks Centercode’s 19th birthday! While we’re celebrating much the same way we all have these past two months — virtual happy hours, slack chats, and other new-normal gatherings — we’re still coming up with fun and creative ways to stay engaged with our coworkers. This week’s Hometasking challenge asked us to create quarantine-specific postcards we could send from the safety of home. Mike repurposes his ski gear for a different kind of slope.
Centercode
MAY 20, 2020
Strong tester participation is at the heart of every successful Customer Validation test. When you’ve recruited enthusiastic, target market testers to use your product, complete surveys, and submit feedback, you have everything you need to deliver those highly sought after recommendations for improvement. But while everyone agrees that engagement is critical, only half of customer testing professionals say that they’re regularly tracking project participation.
Advertiser: Skilljar
Whether you’re looking to kickstart or expand your customer education program, you need access to a budget. Learn how you can demonstrate the positive ROI of customer training and make the case for securing a larger budget in our latest eBook!
Centercode
MARCH 24, 2020
Feeling the distance? We feel it, too. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, we Centercoders have packed up our desks and taken shelter at home as we, like the rest of the world, ride out these bizarre times. While we are and have always been fully equipped to take our show “on the road,” the transition from a lively and bustling open office to our homes has taken some getting used to. But the Centercode Team is nothing if not adaptable.
Centercode
APRIL 9, 2020
The Delta ’20: Virtual Customer Validation Conference saw over 400 Customer Validation professionals from companies like Bose, Roku, Autodesk, TechSmith, and countless others. Over the course of three days, attendees picked up new tips and techniques, workshopped their programs, networked across industries, and brought their experiences to the table in the largest gathering of customer testing professionals yet.
Centercode
MARCH 10, 2020
Your feedback forms , surveys , and project workspace are more than just boxes you tick off of your test prep checklist — they’re an essential element of your Customer Validation project’s success. Like recruiting a willing and able tester team and keeping the lines of communication open , ensuring your tools are helping (not hindering) your testers’ efforts is critical to maintaining engagement and securing ample, high-quality feedback.
Centercode
JULY 17, 2019
Our latest case study looks at how the Centercode Platform helped Tableau Software, the world-class data analytics company, increase their beta team’s productivity by 100%. Tableau enables people to easily visualize, analyze, and make sense of data across disparate sources. By enhancing data visualization and business intelligence, they empower people to make better decisions.
Speaker: Esther Kieft, Delivery Manager (Group Technology) at Domino's Pizza Enterprises
It is well known that empathy is a key ingredient in creating lovable products, yet not all products offer the best customer experience. From meeting stringent deadlines to insufficient resources being available to carry out customer research, there is a range of reasons why customer empathy could be missing in product development. Join Esther Kieft, as she breaks down using empathy at a distance to evaluate the problems that customers are experiencing during this global health crisis.
Centercode
AUGUST 8, 2019
Technology is developed to serve people, but those people – customers – haven’t always had their own seat at the product development table. That’s what makes the work of people like Dona Sarkar so compelling. As the leader of the Windows Insider Program – Microsoft’s 17 million user beta program – Dona’s focus on co-creation is empowering Microsoft’s customers to build the new generation of technology.
Centercode
APRIL 15, 2020
With 18 speakers and over 400 attendees, Delta ’20: the Virtual Customer Validation Conference made one thing clear: even in uncertain times such as these, the CV industry is enthusiastically pushing forward. Over the course of three half-days in April, customer testing professionals from all over the world gathered together virtually to exchange ideas, ask questions, network, learn from industry leaders, and brainstorm solutions for increasing the performance of their programs.
Centercode
DECEMBER 17, 2019
A report from the Centercode Research Team found more evidence linking to challenges we as Customer Validation (CV) professionals already know — it takes too much time to get useful feedback. Whether it’s the quality, the lack of coverage, low volume, or simply the effort it demands, more than half of CV professionals reported issues with managing feedback. The reason? There isn’t always a single cause, but what it mostly comes down to are time sinks.
Centercode
JUNE 5, 2020
The obvious: your revenue depends on your ability to launch a quality product. The not-so-obvious: figuring out how to drive up that quality efficiently when your production schedule has been disrupted, your processes are changing, and you’re grappling with both internal and external factors that are beyond your control. Even as we cautiously hope the worst of the pandemic is behind us, working remotely has changed the way organizations operate from the top down.
Advertiser: UserTesting
Up to 80% of new products fail. The reality is harsh and the reasons why are endless. Perhaps the new product couldn’t oust a customer favorite. Maybe it looked great but was too hard to use. Or, despite being a superior product, the go-to-market strategy failed. There’s always a risk when building a new product, but you can hedge your bets by understanding exactly what your customers' expectations truly are at every step of the development process.
Centercode
MARCH 4, 2020
Low tester participation is a source of frustration for many Customer Validation professionals. You’ve invested hours into crafting creative test topics , and you’re following best practices for a comprehensive and approachable communication strategy. But somehow, only a fraction of your testers are submitting feedback. Where did it go wrong? What could you do differently? Sometimes, it’s not you — it’s your testers.
Centercode
APRIL 29, 2020
Securing high-quality feedback from your project is like taking a roadtrip — with the right travel companions, a thorough plan, and a map of how to get where you’re going, you have all the building blocks for success. We’ve already dug into diagnosing potential challenges — communication breakdown , recruiting the wrong testers , friction caused by tools , and a product that isn’t ready for customer-testers — and how to start addressing them.
Centercode
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
On November 12, the Walt Disney Company launched their long-awaited video streaming platform, Disney+ …surprising no one. Disney is, after all, just one name on a long list of media production outlets to jump into the stream of on-demand media. CBS All Access, Apple TV, and Comcast’s Peacock (set to launch next year with 15,000 hours of programming) are signs of an industrial shift. By 2020, 1 in 5 Americans will have “cut the cord” on cable.
Centercode
JUNE 11, 2019
If the Customer Validation platform is the skeleton, Betabound is the beating heart of Centercode. Every day, members of our 200,000+ tester network are putting their time and energy towards helping our customers build spectacular products. Leading the collaboration between our tester community and our customers is the Betabound Team.
Advertiser: Amplitude
Why do your users churn? In this guide you'll learn common product pitfalls and how to fix them.
Let's personalize your content