Have you ever wondered how giant companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google are so successful?
"Customer Satisfaction"
Yes, but have you wondered what drives customer satisfaction?
"It's an amazing user experience backed by wonderful user research."
USER RESEARCH!
In a business focused on the people who use your products or services, user research is vital. However, there are various misconceptions/ myths about user research:
Myth 1: UX research is a time-consuming process & expensive.
Myth 2: User research is not essential/ optional.
Myth 3: User research provides accurate and specific guidance on how to design
Myth 4: UX research is just carried out to gather users' general information.
If you are also one of them who believes these are true, let me tell you one of the pitfalls in UX design is when end users are excluded from the design process, which hampers business sooner or later.
To avoid this, let's first understand:
What User (UX) Research & why is it important?
User Research is a process that helps businesses know about their targeted user's needs, preferences, behavior, goals, problems and help them in designing appropriate design solutions.
In simple words,
"User Research, also known as design research, is a user investigation process conducted to discover or study user insights that guide in creating a successful design."- Ungrammary
Here are some of the UX Research benefits:
User research serves many purposes across the design process:
It helps to prove or eliminate unwarranted assumptions in design.
Understand how users navigate your site/ app and identify design loopholes that hamper their navigation journey.
Helps in building brand loyalty among users.
Speed up product development.
Eliminate/ reduce time & cost that incurs in UX fixation or redesigning of site/app at a later stage.
Track return on investment (ROI) on UX.
When to conduct User Research?
User experience (UX) research needs to be done at all stages of the design process like defining, ideating, prototyping, testing. Why?
The answer is simple. Design is subjective by nature, and research helps you gain more information every time you conduct it, which will lead to a more profound and user-centered design.
When not to do user research?
- When key stakeholders of the company are not ready to participate in the UX research.
- When you are not clear about who should be the appropriate person to ask questions to.
- When you are unsure what you want to know & how you would implement the solutions derived from UX research findings.
- When you conduct user research to validate your idea.
So far, you must have got answers to what, why, and when of user research. Now let's dive in to understand:
How to conduct User (UX) Research?
Step 1: Recruitment
Recruitment is the crucial step in the user research process; it helps locate the right people who provide valuable design insights. It's important to have participants criteria ready before recruiting.
However, there are different ways of recruitment:
a) Internal Recruitment:
Employees are people who are more familiar with the product/service, and hence it's good to have them in user research to gain important insights. However, it's advisable to choose them wisely as being a part of a company; their insights can be biased & chances are they only speak affirmatively about the product/ service under question. In such cases, the research will not deliver the result & can fail.
Pros:- It saves time & money- Familiarity- Increase employee engagement
Cons:- Biased- Limited participants- Resentment among team members
b) External/Virtual Recruitment:
External recruitment is the obvious next step in recruitment. You can find relevant participants yourself by posting on social media, creating a screener survey, giving away some incentive to attract participants, etc.
Pros:- Diverse range- Flexible recruiting
Cons:- Time-consuming- Mixed qualities people
