Why your design should always be backed by research
User research is an integral part of any Design. It helps get an insight into the mind of the end user, and what would be best for them, to help them fulfill their needs and goals. But a lot of times, it’s often left out because of it being “Time consuming”. This in turn leads to a flawed design, which is the designer’s best guess as to what the user wants, but isn’t exactly quite what the user himself wants.
For all the variety and flavors of User research, they can be broadly bucketed under two categories, Qualitative and Quantitative. While qualitative research gives you an insight into the more “Human” aspects usually with a smaller sample size, Quantitative deals with a larger sample size and gives you accurate statistics that can be replicated.
When should you be doing your research?
The moment you think you don’t know the solution to an important problem, user research can help you find that solution, whether the problem revolves around a product, it’s target audience, or it’s need in the market. Making assumptions and going ahead with development can be a costly mistake, and could undermine months of hard work just to cover up for that mistake.
User research can help you really get into the mindset of your target audience and how your solution will fit, rather than developing a solution and finding out the problem was never there to begin with.
Not all research is equal
Depending on the situation, the amount of time and money spent on research can vary. Regardless of that fact however, having talked to some people is still better than not having talked to any users at all. The more you are able to empathize with a user’s problems, the closer you are to finding a solution that fits in with their lives. The key is to ask the right questions in the right way, to find those crucial pain points and factors that can influence a user’s decision without imposing any of your own prejudices or biases onto the users. Short open ended questions tend to be better than longer more specific questions. The more the users talk, the better it is for the researcher, and by extension, the product.
Research, therefore, needs to be planned and structured so as to get the most out of it. Having hard data to back your design makes it easy to defend your design decisions with the major stakeholders of the product or service. Identifying the user’s goals/needs/problems and designing a solution around them leads to good experience for the user, which leads to more conversion and happy stakeholders. The rewards here are worth the time and effort required.User research, therefore, needs to be an integral cog in every UX designer’s machinery.
