Eric Ries , who is one of the driving forces behind the Lean startup movement has a great definition for a startup:

"A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a product or service in conditions of extreme uncertainty."

Note that it has nothing to do with the size of the company, the sector of the economy or the industry the business is involved in.  However, a key term in here: 'uncertainty'.  The implication: you need to be extremely nimble in how you go about creating and delivering your products and services. 

One of the great things about software, compared with, say building construction, is that the costs are relatively low to: build a part of your product, let people try it out and then decide if you want to change it/tear it down later.  Good luck doing that with a building or a bridge!

One of the most common areas that these build-test-learn cycles occur at Balihoo is with the user interface of our Local Marketing Automation software.  Our goal is to make software that is intuitive and pleasing to use so that our customers feel awesome about what it allows them to do.  However, doing this in the space of local advertising and local marketing automation is no easy task.    

Furthermore, usability is also much more of an art than science and like art, its quality is often subjective.  This means that we are continually trying to hone and improve our user experience using as many objective means as possible.  At Balihoo we use a number of different techniques to better understand our customers, refine our user experience (some of these we have profiled here, here and here), and we are constantly looking for new creative options to test these. 

One option we are currently trying out is called FiveSecondTest.  FiveSecondTest allows you to upload design mocks for new screens and have users execute a quick visual test of two primary types:

• Memory test:  where the user looks at the screen for 5 seconds and then types in as many of the things that stood out to them
• Click test: user can view the screen for 5 seconds and is asked to click on the areas of the screen that stand out to them.  Once completed they have the option to type in descriptions for what they think these different things are/do

After playing with both options so far my favorite is the Click test.  This is likely because our goals are primarily about user conversion - creating an experience to help the user take the appropriate action when looking at a screen.  (However, I could see though if your goal was perhaps branding - the memory test might actually be preferable.)

Here is an example of an initial test we ran on a new home page for a franchise marketing client. 
You can see from this test where the users clicked and what comments they left.  The red dots indicate something a user clicked on in the five seconds made available.  Each dot also corresponds to a comment, (which can also be viewed in a consolidated list under the results tab).

This can be amazingly helpful to refine and tweak designs with real feedback all before a developer even has to touch the code.  It becomes a really fast way to execute simple usability tests and A/B tests on new designs we are considering within our marketing software tools.  Its amazing how things as simple as color can create different reactions in users.  Our initial tests are positive, so now we have yet another tool in our belt to help us stay nimble under conditions of uncertainty!