5 steps to starting research for new products
Recently, I got a chance to interview Summer Kim, Head of User Research at WhatsApp. She told me about establishing a sustainable user research process at tech companies.
Step 1: Understand your user’s needs and define success metric
From a user research perspective, the most important thing for a researcher is to try to figure out what a user is trying to do (goals), or what user problem they have. And with an established product, we have to make sure that the changes we make aren’t breaking anything. It has to be very well integrated and respected, all the things that people are currently doing. Get all the stakeholders in the room, and have discussions about user priorities.
It is also great to start thinking about the success metrics as early as possible. This could be a great opportunity to bring teams together and agree on the same goals. Note that metrics could be adjusted throughout the product development process, so don’t worry about getting the perfect metrics.
To measure the product success, at Google, we used a framework called HEART.
Step 2: Conduct baseline research
Baseline research gathers what we already know. Researchers and even product team members can do a literature review, interview sales teams, talk to other researchers, and learn more about the competitors. It’s important to collect all the research in one place and highlight overall research findings to provide guidance for the upcoming foundational studies.
Another great thing to do is to learn about all the channels that are collecting any user/customer feedback (e.g. emails, phone calls, app ratings, and reviews). Ideally, find a way to aggregate various different feedback to generate a collective view about the top product issues and user pain-points.
Step 3: Start generative research
Generative research is where the development team (e.g. engineers and designers) is able to generate ideas because we now know the user problems and what success looks like. Generative research requires a lot of collaboration between cross-functional teams. Researchers need to be proactive and facilitate those collaborations to collect research questions and additional user concerns. Document them well to plan for foundational research (e.g. 1:1 interview sessions, field research, diary studies) to answer research questions and more deeply understand unmet user needs.
In this phase, especially for new products and services, it is good to think creatively and create a lot of different ideas and concepts. Designers can go off and do their design exercises. Once designers have concepts or prototypes, researchers can work closely with them to collect feedback on the early directions. Usability studies are not a test — we need to understand the “whys” and thought process of users when they are providing feedback.
Step 4: Collaborate on product definition
Now we’ve generated some prototypes, learned more from the users, and gained feedback on the early directions. In this phase, we need to narrow things down to the top directions, and define them with details. Researchers should work very closely with the product managers and help to write documents like the product requirement documents (PRD). Ideally, PRDs should be co-authored between the product managers and researchers, so that user problems are aligned with the product. Iterative research will be key here to answer “how” and “why” questions.
Step 5: Continue with validation
It is important to find ways to conduct evaluative research (e.g. “did it succeed?”, “why/why not?”) and continue to improve the product and its experience. Continuous validation with key customers and users will benefit the next version of the products and future features. This phase could look different depending on the organization, product development cycles, etc. Hardware products may do a lot more validation early on due to ergonomics and human factor issues. It is valuable to see how people actually interact with the finished product and learn from their feedback.
To learn more about Summer’s approach to delivering excellent results, hiring researchers, and managing a remote team, check out this article.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +423,678 people.
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