User Research: The Key To Outstanding Product Design
Posted by Jessica DuVerneay, RS21 Director of UX/UI
At RS21 we aim to make tools that provide valuable data-driven insights and that are intuitive and inspiring to the people who use them. In our perpetual quest to make our work better and in the spirit of our company values Evolve & Learn and Be Humble, I sat down with our CEO and CTO to identify the top design work we’ve produced. We reviewed and discussed the things we are incredibly proud of, and the things we know we can improve.
There were several factors that were common in our design team’s Greatest Hits. Without fail, the projects identified as the cream of our digital crop are the ones that have included the voice of the user through intentional user research — a key activity in any human centered design.
So, why does RS21 do user research and design? Here it goes… some insights into how our design methodologies, combined with collaboration with end users, has resulted in some of our most successful products.
DEFINITION & HISTORY
As recently as a decade ago, User Research was a major tech buzzword. Now it is common best practice in any user focused industry. Today’s digital user research borrows heavily from decades of success in industrial engineering and human factors research. If you are a human-computer history buff, or if you just like a good read, I highly recommend you check out the History section of O’Reilly’s UX Research by Farkas and Nunnally.
Here’s a succinct definition of user research provided by interaction-design.org.
“UX (user experience) research is the systematic study of target users and their requirements, to add realistic contexts and insights to design processes. UX researchers adopt various methods to uncover problems and design opportunities. Doing so, they reveal valuable information which can be fed into the design process.”
The takeaway? Don’t leave the people you are trying to serve beating their heads against the proverbial wall. Instead, put people at the center of design by involving them in the conversation early and often.
MISCONCEPTIONS
There are a few misconceptions about user research. So let’s cut through some of the confusion before we talk about benefits and return on investment (ROI).
- “I already know what my user wants.” While many key stakeholders and business leaders absolutely have a sense of what end users need and expect, they cannot ever truly be in their end users’ day-to-day shoes. Representing the voice of the user at every step — directly or by proxy — is important. Having a true understanding of users takes us from meeting a portion of user needs to finding a complete and impactful solution that gets used and adopted.
- “User research happens up front, only in discovery, when designers ask questions and generate personas.” While user interviews are incredibly helpful early on, user research doesn’t stop there and should have a role in each state of product development. It’s never a bad time to include the users in the product design cycle. A user-centric focus keeps the spotlight where it should be so we can truly address pain points throughout the entire development process and refine design decisions with user feedback, not personal opinions or conjecture.
- “It takes too much time and access to too many people.” We can right size it. User research can be successful with access to only a small group of people or can be done asynchronously through surveys. User research is not an impediment but instead a crucial piece of product development.
BENEFITS AND RETURN ON INVESTMENT
RS21 advocates for user research on most projects, and for good reason. User research returns a number of benefits that support product design goals and increase overall project quality and efficiency. It saves time and money, leverages expert insights, reduces bias, and can build early buy-in.
Save Time & Money
Working iteratively with users allows product teams to deliver the most impactful value from the start. Requirements gathered in discovery often need to be prioritized, and delivering high-utility, perceived value and solving real user needs up-front can gain buy-in and create traction for new tools and systems.
Furthermore, user research allows teams to identify issues early on in design, rather than finding failures after a tool or feature is already built. This “fail fast” paradigm saves time and money in the end, because rework, revisions, and miscommunications invariably add to the timeline and cost of any project.
As Dr. Clare-Marie Karat, a principal UX consultant, renowned IBM researcher, and noted scholar stated: “A rule of thumb is for every $1 invested in User Experience research you save $10 in development and $100 in post-release maintenance.” [source]
Leverage Client’s SME Expertise
We frequently design complex tools for experts. Putting users at the center of our design process allows us to map exact workflows that support existing mental models and processes. We fancy ourselves as a clever bunch at RS21, but there is no way we can assimilate a careers’ worth of highly technical expertise, and therefore, we need to rely on users as subject matter experts (SMEs).
Collaborating with users during design cycles gives us the ability to fine tune interface issues, flows, and information architecture to map to user expectations. This is especially important when we work with clients seeking analytics tools for complex, domain-specific insights.
Leveraging a client’s subject matter expertise also ensures the final product is intuitive. While we bring design expertise and experience to each project, there is nothing that can replace the depth of knowledge of complex workflows and domains that SMEs provide. We often know what user flows and interface design generally make sense, but speaking directly with end users, we can more deeply understand how to improve their user experience, reduce confusion, and simplify workflows.
Avoid Bias
Bringing users into the design process also helps us avoid bias. Sometimes, a very strong voice, a stakeholder or opinionated team member, can drive product requirements or design decisions. Speaking with multiple end users can help democratize design so the tool meets the needs of many, not one.
Furthermore, complexity bias describes people’s flawed tendency to view situations as being complex even when more simple, straightforward solutions exist. We often work through complexity bias with subject matter experts and domain-specific clients to overcome complexity bias and identify essential from non-essential information, leading to better, more intuitive, and easier to use products.
Build Early Buy-in
User involvement may have a less obvious impact as well — user buy-in. Don’t overlook the importance of buy-in to ensure adoption and retained use of a new tool. User research gives people the chance to be part of the design process, share their opinions, and feel heard. Seeing progress and requested changes built into a new product also increases excitement and a sense of ownership among users so they want to use it. Intrinsic motivation and emotional investment can lead to increased adoption and retention rates for new software.
DEEP DIVE INTO METHODOLOGIES
User research is an essential part of successful product design and development. It moves us past basic functionality and allows us to really dive into defining the problem, identifying the solution, perfecting the user experience, and providing the most value and impact.
We covered some of the more strategic aspects of user research (the “Why”), and there is a mountain of technical information to consider as well (the “How”). There are many different methodologies and approaches to user research. It can be evaluative or generative, qualitative or quantitative, synchronous or asynchronous, rigorous or informal. Knowing which approach to use and when to use it is one of the many skills UX Researchers and Designers bring to the table. Research design is often a key part in getting started on the right path to including your end users at all stages of your product design and development process.
User Research is an investment, but as mentioned before, it also results in a measurable ROI. A commitment to user experience design reduces product development cycles by 33 to 50 percent.
Download our User Research Guide to take a deeper dive into the methodologies and approaches that support outstanding product design. Learn about the objectives, processes, deliverables, outcomes, and benefits for our top 10 User Research methodologies.
Jessica DuVerneay is the Director of UX/UI at RS21 and leads user experience research, strategy, information architecture, user experience design, and user interface design.
RS21 is a global data science company that uses artificial intelligence, design, and modern software development methods to empower organizations to make data-driven decisions that positively impact the world. Our team of data scientists, data engineers, developers, and designers builds innovative technology that is insightful, intuitive, inspiring, and intellectually honest.
