During a recent meeting, our design team had a lengthy conversation with a potential client to convince them of the benefits of doing user experience research (UXR). As strange as that sounds, it is quite common to meet teams and executives who profess to care for the customer or user but are still reluctant to dedicate time to research. All too often, the thinking is that the research phase is a waste of money and hours that could be spent developing products. However, this perception seems to discount the impacts of UXR on product strategy and success—from the ideation to the delivery. 

In addition to fierce competition, the lack of research is perhaps the most significant contributor to the failure of software products in today's marketplace. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of work to be done to change the mindset of small and mid-sized tech firms from cynics to UXR advocates. 

This scenario is perhaps familiar to those of you who have worked on software projects. Sometime last year, I was talking to a developer in Portland, Oregon who was working on a project with a fixed deadline to go live. The founder of the start-up felt there was no time or money to do any UXR, so his team had quickly gathered the product requirements, created a few user stories, and was ready to jump right into coding.

 I got a chance to discuss the project with the founder and tried to persuade him to convince the client to revise the quotation and project timeline to include UXR, but their client couldn’t hear any of that. Why should we do UX Research? I don’t think it is necessary, we have to go live in four months. 

Despite the lack of a clear understanding of the target audience or the scope of work, the team got the ball rolling, completed the software, and even did quality assurance tests on more than 20 screens just in time. It was a huge accomplishment for a company that was not more than two years old. The client was happy, and the web application was released to users. 

That same week, the start-up was flooded with support requests. And because they had developed for their buyer, not the user, several users ended up canceling their subscription citing difficulty navigating and understanding the jargon. The app was also missing critical features and had failed to capture their expectations. Looking back, the team admits that skipping UXR was a fatal error. 

Many other apps have failed due to user apathy and many organizations struggle to reach their audience due to poorly designed web platforms. Even with financial and time limitations, there are several UXR strategies you can customize to suit your project needs.

Typically, UXR can be both exploratory and evaluative and your choice of method depends on the nature of the project, time, and money. 

Exploratory UX

More often, exploratory research takes an in-depth approach to uncover user needs, behaviors, and motivations to inform product design and strategy.

1. Exploratory UXR and Design starts with a discovery phase consisting of interviews, surveys, focus groups, freelisting, and card sorting, etc. It is followed by a mapping phase to create personas, journey maps, and user stories, an ideation phase for sketching and wireframing, and lastly, a prototyping phase. Exploratory UXR and design require time and money and are suitable for large and complex projects. Instead of skipping UXR altogether, rapid methods can come in handy when time and money are limited. 

2. UXR and Design Sprints are an excellent choice for time-bound projects and teams using agile development methods. Using minimum viable UXR, and sometimes, hypothetical personas to represent the target audience, UX researchers can conduct time-boxed activities resulting in user stories, sketches, wireframes, and a prototype ready for testing within 5-20 days. 

Evaluative UX

Evaluative UX seeks to identify usability issues and includes the following.

..moderated remote testing sessions provide an opportunity to ask follow-up questions and learn more about the user.

3. Remote Usability Testing is a research method that allows product teams to understand how real users interact with their products. In traditional usability testing, you would need a lab setup to observe users. However, screen-sharing platforms such as Zoom, Google Meets, and Microsoft Teams have made it possible to observe how users interact and experience software in their natural environment. Remote usability testing has significantly cut down the cost of usability testing and allowed teams to get quicker feedback from more participants. Although some teams prefer automated usability testing tools, I highly recommend moderated remote testing sessions because they provide an opportunity to ask follow-up questions and learn more about the user. 

4. Usability Testing at User-Training: Quite often, organizations conduct staff training before implementing new software systems or upgrades. User training or knowledge transfer, as others call it, gives employees a chance to familiarize themselves with system processes, functions, and buttons. But what many seem to forget is that end-user training is a great opportunity to conduct UX research with real users. During the sessions, a design researcher can observe and talk directly with users as they interact with the software. Embedding UX researchers in user training can help uncover usability problems for new software or features and identify ideas for improvement. 

5. Heuristic Evaluation: Expert reviews can also provide quick and inexpensive feedback to your product team. Heuristic evaluation is the analysis of software using a set of usability best practices. Using these principles, also known as heuristics, UX researchers examine the digital experience of users and identify usability issues. At the end of the two to four-hour evaluation, the expert provides a report of all usability problems, their severity, and recommendations. 

What is the use of beautiful visual designs if users are struggling to complete their tasks?

In closing, each of these five methods can be used to complement one another and you will need to think about what phase of the product development you are in, and what you want to accomplish. Skipping UXR is a bad idea. What is the use of beautiful visual designs if users are struggling to complete their tasks?

The world is constantly evolving, and one thing is for sure, the needs and motivations of yesterday are not for today, nor tomorrow, or the day after. Therefore, I strongly believe that UXR should be iterative and embedded in all phases of product development. Even when money and time are tight, I would say some UXR is better than none at all. 

Even when money and time are tight, I would say some UXR is better than none at all.