Product design is the process of creating a new product that a business sells to its customer. This definition sounds simple, right? But the procedures under product design require attention to detail, especially in understanding the potential users and consumers of the product.
That’s where user research comes into play. Even though the product needs to achieve business goals, product design should center on specific problems experienced by the consumers. Thus, user research should start the product design process.
Most UX design agencies in London that venture into the product-making industry can find product designers since these designers have the expertise to conduct user research. But how to make effective user research, you ask? Continue to read this article to find out.
What is User Research and Why is It Important
Based on its name alone, you can derive the meaning of user research. It is the task of understanding the users’ behaviors, preferences, motivations, experiences, and frustrations through qualitative and quantitative methods and knowing what factors affect them.
Basically, the goal of user research is to derive a problem experienced by the consumers and solve that problem in the product design process. Listed below are the reasons why businesses need to invest in user research:
- Businesses can identify their potential users at the early stage of design.
- It builds a solid foundation on the product design backed up by data from the potential users.
- As a user-centered approach, the product design can meet the demands of the users and expect lesser mistakes or adjustments.
- It results in a more user-friendly product.
Also read: What is UX (User Experience) – A Beginner Guide
How to Ensure Effective User Research
According to a Harvard School of Business professor, there are about 30,000 new products launched each year – and many of them fail. User research is an integral part of the product design process to understand the needs and demands of consumers.
Whether you are a business owner, project manager, or product designer, you must ensure that the user research is effective to generate a well-designed product that solves users’ problems. So here are some methods to use for effective user research:
Conduct Interviews
Conducting interviews is one way to know and understand consumers’ behaviors, preferences, and needs. Product designers perform interviews with user groups or also known as focus groups. This activity reveals what users want for a product based on their problems or experiences.
For the interview of user groups, it is vital to ask specific, clear, and relevant questions. Moreover, it is best to limit the focus groups to small groups, such as 5-6 people, so all have the chance to speak up.
Lastly, it is highly recommended to perform the interviews face-to-face to observe verbal and non-verbal cues, such as body language, tone, and emotion.
Perform Online Surveys
Online surveys are another form of understanding consumers’ needs and demands. According to Statista, around 64.4% of the world’s population are internet users. Thus, conducting online surveys is vital to reach more diverse groups of people.
In doing online surveys, it is best to keep them short, simple, and engaging as much as possible. Moreover, the questions should be as neutral as possible. Lastly, incentivizing surveys is one way to increase the response rate.
Create a User Persona
A user persona represents the ideal customer. It is created based on user research, which includes the target audience’s needs, preferences, and observed behaviors. To create an effective user persona, you can do the following:
- 1. Create a header. It includes the persona’s name, image, and a summary quote that states the most important thing about the persona relating to the product.
- 2. Add demographic profile. This should be based on real and actual user research. It may include personal background, professional background, user environment, and psychographics.
- 3. Generate end goal. It should answer the question, what do users want in using your proposed product?
- 4. Perform a scenario. By adding a scenario, it can understand how the persona will interact with the product to achieve the end goal.
The created user persona should be well-defined, brief, specific, and realistic as much as possible. To know more about how to make an effective persona, you can visit this article guide from Entrepreneur.
Final Thoughts
User research is an integral stage in product design. It aims to understand the needs, demands, behaviors, and all things related to the potential audience through qualitative or quantitative research.
As presented in this article, there are three ways to ensure effective user research – through interviews, online surveys, and user persona. Product designers perform these strategies to make a user-centered product that solves an actual user problem.
