User Research and its relevance in devising a firm Product Roadmap

User Research is the effort of gaining an in-depth understanding of the user’s requirements, thoughts, and processes by studying how user is performing tasks and what challenges she is facing around that action. The research might also extend to broadly understanding the aspirations, expectations or just the life as usual of a user, to identify explore broader possibilities of innovation beyond what might be an explicit problem today. However, User Research encompasses a broad range of methodologies – some of which are quantitative while others are qualitative. The goal of conducting User Research is to enable the organization to create products that offer the right solutions to its target users.?

Qualitative methods include:

• User interviews – Asking users about their experience with a product and any other information a researcher might want to seek directly from the user.
• Usability testing – Moderated or unmoderated testing of a product by people who represent the target audience
• Contextual inquiry – A type of ethnographic study that aims to observe how users interact with a product in their environment
• Guerrilla testing – Gathering user feedback by taking a prototype into a public place like a café and asking people for their thoughts
• Focus groups – Inviting a small group of people who represent the target audience to discuss their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product.

Quantitative methods include:

• Surveys – Questionnaires often gather a large volume of responses which open opportunities for more detailed user analysis.
• Behavior understanding – Various methodologies to understand real product usage and interaction including eye-tracking, click heat maps, and scroll tracking.
• Product analytics – Usage data from real users of the product can yield some of the best insights into product development.

Design product solutions that are relevant to users

The best way to understand your target audience’s user persona is to gain practical and real-life insights. With the proper types of user research such as surveys that require users to rank features by priority or interviews – a product team can discover the right mechanisms to focus on the actual benefit of the product. The more close-knit a solution’s design, layout, and functionality are – the more likely are users able to become more comfortable and loyal to the product. ????

The choice of a particular approach out of many to conduct User Research might depend upon the industry, company, type of product or particular stage of lifecycle the product is in.

For successful product development, user research is a must. We can no longer afford to create products in isolation, users have become highly sophisticated in conducting their own research into products. ?

This brings me to the next aspect which is why SaaS start-ups must invest in User Research.??

Proven to be crucial to product and brand building

Apart from gaining insight into the product roadmap, User Research is pivotal to brand positioning. It fills in the gaps that we have not thought about – and this can give product teams the confidence to take bolder design and branding decisions. Even though branding is the marketing team’s responsibility – user research can be the backbone of how the brand and product are positioned, and this helps build the user experience. ??

A catalyst in building robust design and product systems

A product-centric business is in a constant state of change where there is a need to improve the offering. The strategy here revolves around achieving product superiority. Even if for instance, your product strategy is unclear and is based on the market – User Research can provide clarity in terms of roadmap and action. This means that there will be a set direction and vision for the company. ?

User Research is beneficial in all stages of the product design process–from early ideation to the market launch. One just needs to be cautious in not being over-reliant on user research, more importantly using user research results in the right way, otherwise you may just be creating for "what should be", not "what can be".