Idea Center Relies on the UserTesting Human Insight Platform to Help Mitigate the Risk Associated with Launching New Startups and Products

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – March 15, 2023 – UserTesting, a leader in video-based human insight, today announced that the Idea Center at the University of Notre Dame, is using the UserTesting® Human Insight Platform to help launch new products and companies. The Idea Center serves as the fundamental resource for all commercialization and entrepreneurial activities at the University of Notre Dame. The entrepreneurial organization turned to UserTesting to help bring new ideas and technologies–from concept to market–more quickly, efficiently, and with greater assurance. The university has ingrained UserTesting into its product validation process, to gain quick and actionable data based on direct customer feedback, prior to investing in costly development sprints. UserTesting enables the Idea Center to quickly gather the most up-to-date customer insights, to more confidently assess benefits and challenges of new products.

Launched in 2017, the Idea Center stands for Innovation, De-Risking, and Enterprise Acceleration, and is the University of Notre Dame’s collaborative innovation hub dedicated to expanding the technological and societal impact of the University’s innovations. In 2022, the Idea Center launched 28 new companies, and since its inception in 2017 the Center launched a total of 145 companies. Additionally, the University’s active startups reported a total amount of collective funding raised to more than $86 million, and total sales of more than $136 million in 2022. With UserTesting, the Idea Center staff reaches milestones more quickly, up to 60-70 percent faster, when validating and de-risking in the process of launching new companies and products.

“UserTesting is core to the transformation process we have established for validating new products and companies,” said MaryBeth Wegner, Derisking Manager from The Idea Center at the University of Notre Dame. “For quick and actionable data, we need to get to the customer, and UserTesting helps us know how customers feel about all of the companies and products we launch. We live for customer feedback, it’s a critical element of the risk mitigation process that we go through for bringing companies to market.”

For organizations looking to mitigate risk and empower development teams, UserTesting is the fastest way to incorporate direct customer feedback into the process–enabling digital product teams to design, develop, deliver, and optimize products and experiences with more confidence and less risk. The Idea Center is a great example of the value and power that human insights provide throughout the product development lifecycle–from research and validation, through launch.

To learn how UserTesting can help you remove the guesswork and build products with greater confidence, visit our “Mitigating risk in digital product development” resources here.