User Research is Good for Everyone
One of the things I’ve been enjoying the most about our UX team at Salesforce is the focus on user research. Never have I had a chance to be as exposed to and as involved in user research as I am currently. I count that as a rare opportunity.
I have been lucky to have had the opportunity early on in my design career to work with other designers and product people doing user research. When I began I wasn’t sure of the value, but quickly saw that talking to, observing and learning from those people using the products I design can make a huge impact in the quality of my design decisions. It also helped quite a bit when defending those decisions. And prioritizing what to work on. And uncovering new problems and opportunities. And so on.
Since then I’ve always made the effort to connect in some way with people using the products I work on. It’s not always easy and can take significant effort. When I started a few years back at Desk.com (then Assistly) I reached out to people I knew using the product, luckily there were a few, and to our own support team and began to schedule sessions with our users. Each week I spent a bit of time sitting with folks and watching them struggle and/or succeed with the interfaces and features I was designing.
Even after doing this kind of ad-hoc research for years, it still continues to be an eye opening experience. It always is. Seriously, it’s one of the best ways to learn a new product and its customers. It’s also a great way to build empathy and become a better [insert your job title here.]
I consider myself very lucky. The UX team here at Salesforce has a great group of talented and dedicated researchers that are there to help. That’s something I’ve not had much of in the past, and it makes things much easier. In many ways. I feel that in working with them over the last few months I’ve been able to greatly accelerate my understanding of a very complicated suite of products and build some serious empathy for those that use them.
For those of you that have had the opportunity to work with dedicated researchers, or otherwise have made the time to have heavy involvement with your users/customers, this might be preaching to the choir. For many of you, I suspect, you have an idea of the value of user research in your product design practice, don’t have the resources to participate or think you can carve out time to do it yourself. My suggestion is to make time, it’s worth it.
The How-to Bit
Your first step should be to figure out how to get yourself in front of your users regardless of your workload, your access to resources or your role within your team. If you’re working on product—designer, engineer, PM or otherwise—participating in some kind of user research is probably one of the best possible things you can do to ensure quality, innovation and longevity of your product.
I suppose it might sound a bit lofty, but believe firmly that developing a relationship with your users/customers is probably more important than much of what you do as a designer.
There are many reasons why you can’t (as my mother always said, “Can’t never did do anything.”) be involved, but as I’ve already decided this is a must do, let’s talk about ways that you can get started.
Make the time. Carve out time for it. Even if it’s just a little bit. If you can set up a few hours every other week, that’s better than nothing. And, again, I feel this is one of the best things you can do for your product, regardless of your role.
Can’t find users to talk to? Talk to your sales and support teammates. I’ve found that if you want to get a direct line to your users, a good way to go about it is by talking to those people in your company that are talking to them every day. It’s good to get to know and collaborate with other disciplines within your team and those sales and support people might not be the first you’d think of as a product designer or engineer, but, believe me, they are an amazing resource. And a valuable part of any team.
DIY. I realize most folks won’t have access to dedicated research resources, but that doesn’t mean you can learn a little bit and do it on your own. Grab a copy of Just Enough Research by Erika Hall which has a lot of really good ideas on how to start.
Bottom line. I know how challenging it can be to get involved with research. Talking to users is time consuming and we’ve all got so much going on in our day-to-day work that it can seem a bit overwhelming. At the same time, I’d assert that the value you get out of talking to users is so great that making it part of that day-to-day very much warrants making time for.
Amazingly awesome illustrations courtesy of Cindy Chang
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