The importance of user research in product development.

“People ignore design that ignores people.” -? Frank Chimero

That does make sense. The reason behind that is really simple. For a product to be successful, it is essential to keep in mind the target audience throughout the design and development process.

Whatever the offer is, if the target audience hasn't been considered and consulted throughout the design and development process, someone’s in for a rough ride.

Let’s have a look at how user research is important when it comes to product development.

“I did market and user research before launching my company. Isn’t that enough to go off of?”

That was for validating your idea. This is different. This is when you’re developing your offer. Your product. What you’re going to be selling.

For that, you need to do research. User research goes beyond identifying pain points, benefits, and successes. From various qualitative and quantitative research methods to help you launch an MVP with minimal technical debt to iterating quickly without risking losing a lot of your customers, user research can save you a lot of time and money.?

So, this is what you should do.

First, understand why.

So, you might want to build your offer first, release it, then make changes based on the response and feedback you get.

However, try something different. Do thorough user research, from asking about what they like about your competitor’s offers, what’s missing,? and more, so that you know what you’re getting into. That way, before you even spend time on the product development process, you’ll be able to judge if what you’re setting out to do is even worth it.

Done? Now, let’s focus on the research.

Quantitative research is when you measure things and come up with numbers.

You could run a survey, asking people to choose between several features. The results would reflect how many people preferred which feature.

You could also analyze what types of products came and went, and what were the common things among those that stayed the longest and dominated the market.

At this stage, this is the extent of the quantitative research you can do.

Then you’ve got qualitative research.

Here, you’ve got some space to experiment and try various things. You can go and interview various people from your target audience, whether it’s online or in person. Asking open-ended questions and getting various insights will be the biggest wins here, as you’ll be able to, in their own words, understand everything from the problems that they face to the things that they want.

You can also do contextual inquiries, where you see how they use the product in their relevant environment. That way, you don’t only get to see how it delivers on what it was developed to do, but how it fulfills the needs of your customer.

” Seems like kinda basic stuff Matt. Seriously, I know what I’m doing.”

The problem is, you’re not the customer that’s going to be paying to buy this. It’s someone else. That’s why you need to make sure you ask them things, collect data, and see how they use it. There’s also no harm in doing extensive competitor research as well as going over the research material and articles out there that already exist.

If you think you don’t have the time and money for it, and you already understand how to make sure that the result will turn out to have an empathetic design that users will love…

You probably don’t. That’s because you’re not the target audience. It’s someone else. They’re the ones that get to say what looks good and what doesn’t. They’re the ones whose opinion matters. Why? Because they’re the ones that’ll be paying.

However, simply doing user research won’t ensure you end up with an amazing product.

Sure, It’ll give you a few insights and some useful info, as well as help inform the design process. However, the real goal here is to make sure you’re asking the right questions to get the answers you want.

Simply doing quantitative research won’t get you far. If people could easily come up with solutions to their problems, why’d they buy products for them in the first place? That’s why observing them is important. Sure, we’re good at expressing what problems we’re having. How do we solve that? Well, that’s the thing.

Also, despite doing all of this, everything won’t turn out perfectly in the first go.

Sure, it’ll help inform the process, but good things will be a result of repeated iterations and innovation AS WELL AS proper research.

And, after you’ve done all that…

After you’ve

• Gone through various product iterations and design stages.
• Done a variety of user research, using different methods and angles.
• Made sure you’ve understood the problem you’re trying to solve.
• Tested the various prototypes that you think were most promising…

Only then should you consider releasing something to your audience.

All you’ve done before leads up to this. The research. Understanding the pain points. Observing various people use prototypes of your product in a variety of settings. All of this will help you come up with an informed, potentially relevant, and useful product.

One that’s been developed after consulting those that’ll be most likely to use it.

And the benefits of that are numerous.

You won’t have to deal with major rejection, because you’ve already done testing before rolling something out. You won’t have to spend a lot reworking, redesigning, and redeploying it because it most likely won’t need major changes. You won’t have to deal with losing a lot of customers.

Sure, your launch might not be anywhere close to perfect, but at least you’ll be able to nail the core features. And, from a customer point of view, that’s what’s important. The basic purpose of the product.

Then, you can focus on coming up with better and more improved versions, as you get feedback and suggestions. However, this way you’ll have a hectic pre-launch process and a relatively smooth post-launch period, rather than things being the other way around.

Doing things this way is cheaper, better, sustainable, and more efficient as well.

That’s it.

The only difference between major success and potentially catastrophic failure is researching BEFORE you roll out the product.

And, just like other processes, that’ll take some time to get right. However, don’t get overwhelmed by how complicated this seems, or how lengthy it is. It is lengthy, that's for sure. However, it’s all so that you can get things right from the get-go and improve over time.

Asking the right questions. Doing numerous tests and interviews. It all adds up.

Anyway, we wrap up here.

I’ll just leave you with this:

Every $1 spent designing a solution saves $5 fixing the problem during development and $30 fixing the problem after launch

Source: Forrester Research (https://txidigital.com/insights/why-do-user-research )

If there’s any way I can help, feel free to reach out and let me know.

Until next time, keep building,

Matt