6 Books on User Research for Product Managers
How to go about gathering feedback from your users and understanding what it’s telling you
As Product Managers, one of our main goals is to ultimately give users what they want. How do we do that without actually knowing what they want?
The answer is of course, user research.
We use a variety of data collection methods to find out who our target users are, what they expect from the product, and what is going to deliver for them the most value.
Easy when you say it like that, but there’s an art to user research.
User Research: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Products and Services
Many businesses are based on creating desirable experiences, products and services for users. However in spite of this, companies often fail to consider the end user — the customer — in their planning and development processes.
User Research is a practical guide that shows readers how to use the vast array of user research methods available. Covering all the key research methods including face-to-face user testing, card sorting, surveys, A/B testing and many more
How to buy:
Getting Started in Product (supporting independent bookstores)
Think Like a UX Researcher: How to Observe Users, Influence Design, and Shape Business Strategy
This isn’t a cheap book, so definitely one you should put on work expenses, but when you do you will be encouraged to think beyond the obvious. You’ll discover how to plan and conduct UX research, analyze data, persuade teams to take action on the results.
This book allows you to open it at any point and offers you practical advice and topical examples, thought triggers, exercises and scenarios to test your knowledge of user research.
How to buy:
Getting Started in Product (supporting independent bookstores)
Qualitative Consumer and Marketing Research
Russell W. Belk, Eileen Fischer & Robert Kozinets
Written for students, scholars, and research practitioners, this book takes readers through the basics to an advanced understanding of the latest developments in qualitative marketing and consumer research. The book offers readers a practical guide to planning, conducting, analyzing, and presenting research using both time-tested and new methods, skills and technologies.
How to buy:
Getting Started in Product (supporting independent bookstores)
You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters
At work, we’re taught to lead the conversation. On social media, we shape our personal narratives. At parties, we talk over one another. So do our politicians. We’re not listening. And no one is listening to us.
Listening has the potential to transform how we approach product management, as well as improve our self-knowledge, and increase our creativity and happiness. While it may take some effort, it’s a skill that can be learnt and perfected.
How to buy:
Getting Started in Product (supporting independent bookstores)
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect
Judea Pearl and science journalist Dana Mackenzie explain causal thinking to general readers for the first time, showing how it allows us to explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It is the essence of human and artificial intelligence. And just as Pearl’s discoveries have enabled machines to think better, The Book of Why explains how we too can think better.
How to buy:
Getting Started in Product (supporting independent bookstores)
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know
The acclaimed Malcolm Gladwell brings us a fascinating and, at times, alarming analysis of how we read the behaviours and motives of those people we don’t know.
Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings — from history, psychology and infamous legal cases — Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences.
How to buy:
Getting Started in Product (supporting independent bookstores)
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