The power of empathy through user research
Knowing how to conduct user research is good, but having empathy for users is even better.
With any project, you need to start from somewhere. As UXers, we build products for users that enrich their lives and are easy and enjoyable to use. We aim to solve users’ problems, while aligning with business goals at the same time. Our starting point is conducting user research.
This is an important aspect of the UX process, because it helps us understand and establish the user’s needs and frustrations — the pain points and empathise with them. The initial step is to define the end goals to discover what you’re trying to solve and learn. This is where user research comes in handy. It allows you to reflect on the notes and data to find solutions, answer questions and ultimately improve the product or service.
In this article, I will explain how the power of empathy through user research has changed the way I solve problems for users.
Diving a little deeper, user research is the means to understand the user needs when they are interacting with a product to complete an action. It helps UX designers discover where the interaction is enjoyable for the user and when it becomes problematic — perhaps even preventing them from completing the intended action. If the interaction is smooth and enjoyable throughout, and hence has high satisfaction and a good experience, it is much more likely the user will continue using the product or service.
Conducting user research should be an ongoing process that begins in the discovery phase and continues throughout the development stage. This helps ensure you are constantly meeting the user needs and aligning to the business goals.
Achieving this will:
- Produce a higher likelihood of products being used
- Help users reach their goal effortlessly
- Make it an enjoyable experience so that users feel good when completing a desired task
- Increase the number of users who recommend the product or service to others and ultimately grow the user base
- Result in a positive and memorable event
Asking the right questions
To conduct useful user research, you need to ask the right questions. What is it that you are trying to find out from users? What are the problems you are trying to solve? This depends on what your business goals are and on the product or service. Indeed you will have many questions that will need to be answered in order to understand user needs and to find problems they have when interacting with your product or service.
Overall, you need to ask questions surrounding the following:
- What are the user’s pain points, needs, and goals?
- What are the user’s actions when going through the end to end journey?
- How are users currently using the product or service?
- What do the users think the product offers them (to see if the basic concept of the site is clear)?
- What do users think about other competitors?
Conducting the research
There are many ways to conduct quantitative research and qualitative research, it just depends on what the project is and what you need to find out. To understand how both methods complement each other and play important roles, take a look here.
One of the popular uses of quantitative research is to test a hypothesis. It works by using larger samples and (often) statistical analysis to validate the hypothesis, and determine if something is true or not. The methods usually carried out in quantitative research are surveys, questionnaires or polls that gather numerical and objective data. On the other hand, qualitative research works with smaller samples, and often uses interviews, focus groups or case studies to look at how people behave, think and perceive something. The latter is more commonly used for discovery, where no current hypothesis and theory has been assumed. Qualitative research gives a bigger picture to identify the pain points and map out the requirements for the project. It also lets you see and understand the emotions and body language that adds more details to the research.
My experience in conducting many user research sessions in my career has taught me the importance of empathising with users and truly wanting to solve the problems they have when using a product or service. Empathising helps me and UX designers actually think about the actual emotions they go through when trying to complete tasks in their everyday lives. Just imagine how much smoother and satisfying it is when a user is delighted when using a product? You know the feeling right?
Back in early 2017, I hired a lab to conduct user interviews and usability testing for a product I was working on. The qualitative method was chosen because of what we wanted to find out, but preparing for the lab session required a lot of work. For user interviews, the preparation involved writing a list of questions to identify the pain points and frustrations users had when interacting with a product in general. They also helped me discover what they expected to happen and to understand their experiences. This reflects on the bullet points in the previous section (Asking the right questions), by conducting the research to gain insights into the user problems.
For the preparation of usability testing, I wrote scenarios for users to complete, with follow up questions on each scenario. I was able to examine the user’s behaviour when performing each scenario, revealing opportunities to explore and identifying the problems users are having with the product or service in particular situations.
During the usability testing lab session, everything went as planned when finding the problems and seeing how users performed each task. Gathering a lot of data immediately is good as it gives you quite a lot to work with. On the next usability testing session, the participant was very engaged. She was passionate with every word and I knew I was onto something special in that session. As she was going through the tasks and thinking out loud, she was getting frustrated and confused. I felt an immediate connection, able to feel and see the emotions she was expressing whilst going through each scenario. Each task was making her life more difficult as she was going through them, the ‘affordance’ wasn’t there to guide her and that resulted in an angry and confused user.
Although the other participants were on the same boat, this particular participant was showing her passion, her emotions and desire for the product to work. I empathised with her, and it was this strong empathy that made me determined to get this right, to solve the problems and make the user’s life better. Although that’s the nature of a UXer, empathy gave me that extra strength and superpower that changed the way I solve problems. Putting myself in the user’s shoes through empathy, and seeing how frustrated and upset the user was, helped massively towards solving the problems.
In the research analysis phase, empathy helps with writing up user stories and hypotheses ready for the action plans. It adds to the vital part of the process with the recommendations on behalf of users. It helps to categorise, classify and organise the data in a way that generates insights and action.
Summary
Having empathy for users has provided clarity in situations where there is a problem with a product or service. This has led me to explore further the best ways to improve products and services, and how to do things more efficiently and effectively. It has helped me to consider not only the needs of current users, but also communities in the near future. Empathy sharpens the ‘affordance’ of defining what sort of actions are available to the users without showing them what to do; it makes the process more natural and smooth for the user. For example, turning on a light in a room will require flicking the light switch, instructions shouldn’t be needed.
Communication is key to creating first class products or services, and this is where user research can really help UXers to create great user experiences. Communicating where the action should take place is vital and does not make the user think, hence creating a more naturalised and easy-to-navigate journey. This signifies that understanding good conceptual models will help you provide appropriate information to make the product understandable and enjoyable to use.
Getting feedback from the actions you have taken as a user is another crucial aspect of great user experience. The research identified that having poor feedback from an action is far worse than not giving any feedback at all. Good feedback is vital for reassurance of the actions taken and to guide users to the next destination. This must be done the right way and therefore, everytime a user performs an action, they should expect to receive feedback after so they know what to expect and what will happen after the action has been taken.
Having a good user experience is critical, as it creates a positive memory of a product. It is my belief that the empathy between UX designers and users developed in user research can help these positive memories. I will leave you with a quote by Don Norman and if you can take something away from this article, it would be this:
“Memories last far longer than immediate experience or the period of usage, which are the domains of the visceral and behavioral levels. It is reflection that drives us to recommend a product, to recommend that others use it-or perhaps to avoid it.”
Thank you for reading : )
If you enjoyed this, please share it and follow. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn Simon Hoang.
