Scott Belsky proposes that, in the first 15 seconds of every new experience, people are lazy, vain, and selfish
And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
In fact, it's a pretty good "gut check" test (it may itself take only about 15 seconds to run) to run against any experience you are in the process of creating - it's another way of putting the needs and desires of your users first - because if you don't, you have probably lost them.
"In the first 15 seconds, your visitors are lazy in the sense that they have no extra time to invest in something they don’t know. They are vain in that they want to look good quickly using your product. And they’re selfish in that, despite the big picture potential and purpose of what your service stands for, they want to know what will immediately benefit them."
https://medium.com/design-startups/9590d7dabc
I'll put this technique in the same camp as the squint test for usability -- a quick check you can run against what you're working on to try and ensure you're on the right track.
The squint test is one technique you can use to quickly test the layout, design and how your experiences priorities are expressed through layout and design.
When you squint at a screen (or screen-in-progress), it helps you view the "layout and the major elements – hero shot, call-to-action, buttons – without being distracted by the details to see if your new page is laid out well and has a clear eye path."
I took that definition from Daniel Burstein and the Marketing Experiments blog:
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/research-topics/landing-page-optimization-research-topics/web-usability-peer-insights.html
Which is also where this image comes from:
