What is user research and why it is so important

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The following is a guest post by Niraj Rajput, cofounder and Head of Engineering at Chisel Labs

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you read the word ‘user research’?

In simple terms, it’s the research you conduct to deduce user behavior, needs, demands, choices, and motivations.

It’s a vast and extensive topic, and there are many definitions available on this subject.

We will give you a quick overview. User research can be used for any company that wants to produce the best user experience possible.

If we look at it from an organizational point of view, user researchers study people’s behavior. They work closely with designers and developers to create user-tested designs and products.

The usefulness of user research isn’t limited to product design or development teams only. Almost every organization utilizes it, big or small. It can be applied to virtually any field including marketing, healthcare, and customer service. Some argue that user research has been around for centuries.

Customer satisfaction determines the place of the organization in the modern-day competitive market. It is palpable now, more than ever, that the knowledge about your target audience is key.

Gathering user research data through user interviews, focus groups, and surveys is the first step in understanding what makes your customers happy.

Once user research is conducted, there are plenty of ways to use that data to improve user experience. To start, user feedback can be used to prioritize product features and changes.

In this article, we will shed some light on:

What is user experience?

The importance of user experience?

What is user research?

Why is user research so important?

Points to keep in mind while conducting user research

The final take

What is user experience?

User experience as the name suggests is basically, what the person experiences while using your product.

It includes all aspects of user interaction with the product, including the user interface, design, features, functionality, and overall user satisfaction.

User experience is the user’s reaction to a product, a service, or user interface. It also refers to the user’s emotions and attitudes about using the product, through the user interface.

The user experience is subjective and can’t be directly measured.

The importance of user experience?

User experience is important because it can make or break a product. If users don’t like using your product, they won’t buy it or use it again. Bad user experience can also lead to negative word-of-mouth publicity and lower customer retention rates.

We have enlisted 10 key ways in which user experience serves as a vital part of user research:

1. User experience provides information about how the customer feels: User experience is the only way in which you can understand how your user feels about using your product. This gives very useful user insights and helps you improve user satisfaction and customer retention rates.
2. It brings user research to life: If user testing is done correctly, it brings user research to life, giving real-time insights into what users think and feel about the product. User testing also enables you to test assumptions about user behavior and make predictions that might otherwise be difficult to see from historical data alone.
3. It helps prioritize features for improvement: User experience provides statistical feedback on features by measuring their effectiveness over time while considering each step of the user journey taken by every user while a feature or completing a task.
4. It aids in cultivating trust in the users, which can promote brand loyalty: Happy user equals more installs, active users, and conversions. Good user experience design cultivates trust in your product and brand. When users trust a product, they are more likely to stick around, recommend it to friends, and come back for more.
5. It’s cost-effective: Good user experience design does not have to be expensive. Often the most expensive part of the user experience is making changes after the product has been released. Focusing on user experience from the beginning will help you avoid costly redesigns and improve user satisfaction from the start.
6. It allows your company to integrate user-friendly data into the design process: This enables companies to make informed decisions about future modifications, product development, and possible business directions based on user needs.
7. It in turn helps in bringing innovation and creativity to the product: Since user experience is not restricted by any preconceptions, it allows for more creativity and out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to product development. This helps in bringing innovation and a better user experience to the market.
8. It allows you to test concepts before they are built: The ability of iterative prototyping techniques to present user-friendly products quickly allows companies to test many different ideas before implementing a final product. This provides insight into what works and what does not work, allowing companies to make changes upfront based on user needs.
9. It will help you avoid making an app that nobody wants or needs: This is the main reason user experience is important from day one, as it helps designers create user-friendly apps that people want to use. For a new product idea to be successful it must solve a problem in some way as well as be enjoyable for users.
10. Good user experience leads to word-of-mouth marketing: Happy users will tell their friends about the great experience they had using your app, which can lead to some organic word-of-mouth marketing. This is one of the most effective forms of marketing, as people are more likely to believe their friends than advertising.

What is user research?

Generally, user research is defined as the “use of observations and/or user data to understand user behavior, attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and desires.”

This discipline focuses on understanding how people think about certain topics or use products to improve user experience.

By applying user research companies can measure user satisfaction by documenting user demographics, attitudes, and behaviors.

User research is the discipline of understanding user behavior, needs, and motivations through research.

It allows us to understand how people interact with technology and design solutions that meet their needs.

User research is essential to create a great user experience. Without user research, it would be difficult (if not impossible) to understand user needs and behavior, and design solutions that meet those needs.

Why is user research so important?

User research is important from day one, as it helps designers create user-friendly apps that people want to use.

For a new product idea to be successful, it must solve a problem in some way as well as be enjoyable for users. Focusing on user needs is the key to achieving both of these goals.

Designers can get feedback from users early and often through user research, which will help them to design a product that people want to use.

User research helps designers to focus on what the user wants, not on their assumptions about user needs.

It is important for any design process, but especially for products that are new and have not been tried before.

User research also helps to build trust with users. By understanding user behavior and needs, we can design solutions that meet their needs, resulting in a better experience for users.

This helps to establish empathy with users and builds trust between them and the company or product.

There are multiple different ways in which well-conducted user research determines the success of your design. We have pinned down 9 ways in which User research is super important:

1. It provides deeper empathy and understanding of the user: This is the most fundamental way user research helps in design. Through user research, we get a deep understanding of user behavior, needs, and motivations. This understanding forms the bedrock on which all further user-centered design decisions are made.

The insights gleaned from user research help us to create designs that resonate with users and make them feel understood. It also allows us to identify areas where we may have gone wrong with our assumptions about users, and correct them.

2. It helps in prioritizing features: User research can help you determine which features are most important to users, and which ones they are least interested in. This information can help you focus your efforts on developing features that users will use, and can help you ensure that time isn’t wasted on building things users won’t care about.
3. Collaboration with users throughout the process: User research helps your team to communicate more clearly with each other, as well as with development teams working on related projects. By having a better understanding of who the user is, how they behave, what their goals are, and where they’re coming from, it’s much easier to coordinate efforts across multiple user-centered teams. This way you can ensure that user research results are being taken into consideration across different parts of the organization./li>
4. It aids in creating designs that truly matter: The user research process is most beneficial when it’s taken seriously by the team. By investing in user research at every step along the way, you are more likely to end up with designs that solve user problems completely, rather than just good enough.
5. It helps create great user onboarding experiences: User research can also help your designers and product managers discover opportunities for better user onboarding. For example, if user testing reveals users are experiencing confusion or difficulty with a specific part of your product, user researchers can design methods to track down the source of the issue. This kind of insight not only helps create better products but also gives user researchers new datasets they can use to improve future user testing.
6. It promotes creativity and innovation in designs: User research is also an important tool for promoting creativity and innovation in your design team. By constantly testing new user interface designs, user researchers can help identify which designs are working well and which ones need more work. This allows designers to experiment with new ideas while still being able to quickly test the effectiveness of those ideas.
7. It builds user trust: Finally, user research helps build user trust by showing users that you are serious about understanding their needs and wants. When users see that you are taking the time to listen to them and learn about their experiences, they will be more likely to trust your product and recommendations. This increased trust can lead to better long-term relationships with your users and a more successful product.
8. It helps to gauge the return of investment (ROI): Having user research also allows you to see if an idea is right for your users and whether it will work in the marketplace. It gives insight into how much time to spend developing the product and how many resources are needed to get the user’s feedback.
9. It enables you to know about the competitors: The user research enables us to find out about the competitors, their products, and their user base. Unlike any other marketing strategy, this one gives you a competitive advantage by knowing exactly what works in the user’s mind better than anyone else.

Points to keep in mind while conducting user research

1. Do a thorough practice of lean User experience from the very beginning: This is the user research that helps to get user data even before user interface design. So do not ignore this thing while starting your project, it will be more helpful than you can imagine.
2. Align with product owner: It is highly recommended that you should start user research work along with the product owner. Sharing research findings with him will help to deliver better results in user experience and usability of your final product.
3. Be prepared by keeping some best practices in mind: Before getting started on user research you must keep some best practices in mind so that no scope of missing or overlooking anything happens when the user’s opinion or idea comes on the table for discussion.
4. Validate your assumptions and hypothesis: User research must be evidence-based. You must know the relevant user behavior and user mindset before conducting user research.
5. Conduct uses research continuously, record findings, and incorporate the changes: Conduct user research continuously so that you have a steady stream of data to work with. Record your findings and make changes to your design accordingly.
6. Keep consistency in user experience: Good user experience is not possible without user-tested design elements. So, make sure you maintain consistency in user experience by user researched designed elements.
7. Work in Synergy with all the teams and assimilate their ideas too: User research is not limited to the user interface or user experience, it should work in synergy with all the teams and assimilate their ideas too for a holistic user experience.
8. Iterate user research: The final goal of user research is not to find a “correct” answer, but to improve your design by uncovering user needs and requirements. So, iterate user research as many times as required to get the best results.
9. Always be open to feedback: Make sure you are always open to feedback from users, stakeholders, and other team members. The aim should be continuous improvement of user experience through user research.

The final take

Skipping user research due to paucity of time or death of resources can have an impending effect on the success of your product. User research is the key to success for user experience.

Use dedicated user research tools like interviews, surveys, focus groups, and so on, or cheap and simple ones like Observation, diary studies, and card sorting. Whichever method you choose, make sure it’s tailored to your specific needs.

As we now know the importance of user research it is essential to undertake it properly and effectively. User research is essential but several user research mistakes can be made which will hurt the user experience.

In conclusion, user research is a valuable tool that can help you understand your users better and create a more successful product.

By incorporating user research into your design process, you can ensure that your product meets the needs of your users and exceeds their expectations.

A detailed guide on how to create a user research framework

Niraj is co-founder and Head of Engineering at Chisel Labs, a premiere agile product management software company that brings together roadmapping, team alignment, and customer connection. Niraj is passionate about building scalable infrastructure and systems and he also happens to be a huge fan of Cricket!