The Trouble with User Research and How to Simplify It

Michelle Hausen at UXDX Community: UX Research - Facts & Feelings. Video: https://youtu.be/h5E_fMGd6tw

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Why user research gets ignored

[00:00:00] Thank you for the introduction, and hi everybody. I'm Michelle, and I've been a freelance user experience designer for a few years. As already mentioned, I'll talk about some user research methods, or better, I'd better say alternative user research methods today. In particular we're going to talk about why you might need them, what they are, what they're good for, and how to use them.

[00:00:32] I'll jump right in. Most of the time people already know, clients, stakeholders, the team already know that there is an importance to understanding your users, to know what they want, what their pain points are. But still there are a lot of times where it just gets ignored, for multiple reasons.

[00:00:57] Some of those reasons, and I'm sure a lot of us have heard at least a few of them before, are that clients think they know their users. They say they will do it at a later stage, or that they already do competitor research, which as we know is not really user research. They don't have access to their users. They think they don't need it. They don't have the budget. They use Google Analytics only. The process doesn't allow it. They don't think it's important, or they don't have time.

[00:01:33] Some of those reasons are usually because of a lack of knowledge. Someone saying "we know our users" most of the time really does believe that they know their users, without conducting any research. With those kinds of reasons or sayings, it's best if you try to educate the people you're talking to. Try to show and explain different methods, show and explain examples of companies that have used research and what kind of insights they've gained. And also talk about the different kinds of methods for the different process steps, the time and the budget needed for those.

[00:02:18] Another thing is, start small. If they're hesitant to give you the go-ahead on doing user research, start with small, tiny studies, or as I mentioned before, use alternative methods.

[00:02:33] And then we also have the other reasons, which often are actual problems. A new product that is either not online yet or doesn't have a large user base might not have access to the users. Another big reason is they don't have the budget or the time. With those, of course, you can point out negative consequences, do a little bit of research yourself, or point out missing information. But if there's not enough budget, it's not going to change anything.

Using data that is already out there: reviews

[00:03:05] So the question is, how can we simplify user research? How can we get around those restrictions we get from clients and stakeholders, and still gain valuable insights about our users or potential users? And the answer to that is, we use the data that is already out there. We all know that there's a bunch of information on the web, so why not use that?

[00:03:35] The first method I'm going to show you is reviews. Of course, if you already have a product and a larger user base, it's super easy for you. Use all the feedback you can get, or that you already got from past users, and make sure you look at both the good and the bad reviews, because that will give you an idea of what people already like about your product and what they don't like.

[00:04:05] As mentioned, with an existing product you could find reviews on app stores, websites, or company reviews. Another one would be to look for product reviews on Google, or even comparisons. I'm sure we've all been in the place where we had to decide between two different products or two different services. In the design sphere that could have been Sketch versus Figma. There's a bunch of different reviews and even comparisons of products on Google, or out there, that you could use to get some insights about what people are already saying about your product, or even about the competitors' products. Maybe there's something they don't like about a certain product that you could make better for your product.

[00:04:55] And with this, as already mentioned, it's great for existing products, but by looking at competitors you can also use it for new products or small user bases. You can do the same by looking at possible competitors and just reviewing their reviews on the app store, or company or website reviews.

[00:05:21] With this example, Juul, we had an e-cigarette client in the US, and even though we did have the time and budget, we were still curious to see what people say about the competitors, so we looked at their reviews. Another one was, we had a housing client which offered a paid service for people to find new places to live. It wasn't the general way, like Zillow is, but more to actually swap places. You want to move somewhere, and someone else wants to move somewhere else too, maybe you're a match, and you can just swap your places.

[00:06:03] Since it was a fairly new product, there weren't that many users we could ask, so we looked at general topics. What are the issues of the current rental situation? Which gave us insights into what the problems of the possible users could be. And in general, which I'll get to in a little bit too, you could also search groups and forums for that.

Keyword research

[00:06:38] The next thing is keyword research, which for me is one of the most important topics. It's not just good for SEO. Like I said before, there's all that information out there, trend statistics, market specifics, and we can make use of that by just thinking a little bit, what are our keywords?

[00:07:04] We did that for a medical client that researches and produces medication and treatments, and we looked for keywords for their different topics and areas. For example here, clinical trial. We used keyword tools to come up with other keywords that we might not have thought about before. We then used those keywords to feed them into Google, and also websites like AnswerThePublic, to see what kind of questions are often asked. And with all that information we could use the Google advanced search to just get those websites that include one or all of the keywords we found.

[00:07:57] As mentioned previously, if you just feed your keywords or phrases into Google you'll also already get a bunch of results. But what you can also have a look at is the question section, because that's also a good way to get some more insights about what people are usually asking. And you'd be surprised at what kind of questions sometimes pop up there that you haven't even thought about.

Social media, groups and forums

[00:08:25] With those keywords that you gathered, you can use them in different scenarios. One of them is social media and groups. If you already have an existing product, and given that you also use social media for your product or company, the first thing to do is check your comment sections and see what people are saying. With this example there was a beauty brand and someone asked about the difference between two of the products, so the company could go ahead and include that information on their website, to tailor it more to the questions and needs users have.

[00:09:08] Another example is Nomad List, a website that gives information to digital nomads: what are the best places to live, how much does it cost there, how's the housing market there. With this example, the people behind Nomad List could go ahead into groups like Facebook, Slack, Discord, LinkedIn, and type in their keywords and see what kind of groups there are. In this case there's an expats group in Mexico, and someone asked about living in a particular place in Mexico. With that kind of information Nomad List could go ahead and think about including those topics on their website as well, if they haven't done that yet.

[00:10:04] Another great thing with those communities and groups is that if you found a fitting group that at least resembles your own target group, you could check if you're allowed to post polls or surveys to get some more information about potential users of your product. As you can see, all of those methods of gathering research from social media and groups are great for both new and existing products.

[00:10:41] The same goes for forums. Forums are a great way to see the interaction between users, to see what they're asking, what they're excited about, or what they don't like at all. One of the most famous question or help forums of course is Quora, and we also used that with our keywords for the medical client, to see what kind of questions are shown there. Another one of course is Reddit. Great forum, a lot of topics there, always worth checking it out.

[00:11:15] One example here is, we had the automotive client Bugatti and they were trying to introduce more services, features, content to their fans. Not to their paying clients, because the cars are extremely expensive, but to the fans that just follow Bugatti because they're a fan of the brand and the cars. Using all the forums we found, we actually found out that there's a Bugatti configurator out there that people were super excited about, and it wasn't even clear if it was from Bugatti themselves. So that was an opportunity that opened up, where Bugatti could think about introducing that kind of configurator to tailor their service more to their fans.

[00:12:09] And another thing for Bugatti was also that we found that there are different games out there, like Gran Turismo, that feature Bugatti cars, even though they're not labeled as Bugatti cars. But fans recognized those cars, that they were able to choose a specific Bugatti model, and they loved that kind of feature. And since it wasn't a collaboration with Bugatti themselves, there is another opportunity for them to actually have more of these collaborations and actually tailor their services to what their users, or their fans, especially like.

Representatives when you have no users

[00:12:54] The next one. If you don't have users yet, or you don't have the budget or time to actually conduct in-depth research studies, a good way is to use representatives. And that could be anything from your work colleagues, your family, your friends, anyone you could think of that has some kind of similarity with your target group.

[00:13:26] For example, for the housing client, since we didn't have many users yet, we also looked at where the people are that do the holiday home exchange, and asked questions there to get access to those users. Another one was for the e-cigarette client. We were looking to show the flavors for the e-cigarettes in a different way, to set them into the context of a particular moment.

[00:14:01] So what we did was, we just asked our work colleagues that weren't involved in the project, and the ones that were smokers, in what kind of moments they usually enjoy their cigarette. And since e-cigarette smokers and regular smokers are fairly similar, we were able to use that information to create moments that are related to the specific flavors, and to just include more of a storytelling type, rather than just showing the different flavors.

[00:14:36] Another good way to use representatives for research studies is for testing naming conventions, for example using card sorting. With this particular example we had an automotive client and we were talking about if "design" is the right term for the interior and exterior style of a car, if people would understand what they find behind that. In this case we didn't look for car enthusiasts or people similar to our target group, but we just asked our family and friends what they think, what kind of information they would find if they clicked on the tab "design". And that gave us enough information to make adjustments on the naming conventions.

Surveys, interviews and easy access to users

[00:15:27] We just talked about what we can do if we don't have our users, don't have access to them, or don't have enough money. But if we do have access to our users, we can use surveys and interviews. With interviews of course it can be very time consuming and costly, but sometimes overlooked is that we might actually have easy access to our users.

[00:15:57] One of them could be that the product we're trying to improve or create is for internal employees or stakeholders. So for an automotive client, they published an app and the app was for the dealers of the car client, so it was easy to just jump on a few calls with them and ask them a few questions. And that is oftentimes really overlooked. If there are people there that we can access, do it.

[00:16:37] Another way, if it's not internal, is to use pop-up or widget surveys, that I'm sure some of you have already experienced. When you go on a website and you're about to exit the page, something pops up asking you why you're leaving, or what they could do better, and some other questions. That is a good way to get a few responses. Of course not everyone is going to respond to that if they're about to exit it out, but there are different ways and different actions where you can include those kinds of surveys.

[00:17:14] Another one is, for example, including questionnaires when someone signs up, like how did you find out about us, or on a contact form. And if there is a little bit of budget, or the client can spare a little bit less of their margin, then you could also use small incentives for your surveys. But in general, always make sure that you tell your users that you're doing it for them and that you value them and their opinion, and they're going to be much more likely to actually help you with your surveys. And of course, as mentioned before, you can also post surveys on those social media groups and communities.

Customer support as a research source

[00:18:02] The last one, which is also often overlooked, is customer support. If you have customer support already in place, which of course for existing products and larger user bases is particularly helpful, then make use of that, because your customer support staff are on the front line. They are the ones talking to your customers and users. You could ask them, what kind of feedback do they hear often from their users? That could be issues they have with the website or with the product, that you might point out in the product description so that it's easier for users to understand things. Or what users usually need help with.

[00:18:58] And as mentioned before, the housing client I was working for, they had this survey when people deleted their accounts, and they asked them why they are deleting the account. We had a bunch of responses for that, and a few of them stated that they just get too many emails every day, which of course should be an easy fix. Just do something about your email strategy and make sure you let your users know how many emails they're going to receive from you.

[00:19:36] Another one was that the service was too expensive. That might not be as easy to get around, but you can think about adjusting your pricing strategy, or introducing a trial phase. And the last one here was that the landlord doesn't accept the home exchange, so we thought about ways to help our users, and to also make landlords understand that they have no negative consequences by doing so.

[00:20:14] With all of those methods shown, besides gathering valuable insights, other benefits are that it's already based on available data, so you don't have to conduct any studies. It works for both new and existing products, at any time of your product process, whether that's for a new product or when you're trying to include new features. It doesn't cost as much and it isn't as time consuming. So there are a bunch of benefits for you to always make sure that there are some other methods out there that you can use.

[00:20:52] And that's the end of it. Remember, any research is better than just guessing, so make sure to always use some kind of research. I'm looking forward to your questions, and feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Q&A

[00:21:13] Host: Excellent, thank you very much, Michelle. That was really good, and it's always incredible how much information is available at people's fingertips that they're just not aware of right now. As Michelle said, please do ask any questions that you have, whether that's on the UXDX chat box, or on YouTube, whichever platform you're watching. If you ask any questions I'll put them through to Michelle.

[00:21:40] Host: To get started, one of the things that always jumps out to me as a big risk of looking at existing resources is you're not getting control over the audience segment that you're polling. One thing that really struck with me was an experience that I had where we thought, okay, this is repeatedly coming up, we're seeing complaints about something. But when we did the research we found that the vast majority of our users were actually happy with it, and had we gone ahead with the change we would have ended up annoying more of our customers than that. So how do you deal with that risk of, who is this audience segment that's being reviewed?

[00:22:26] Michelle: In general, of course, those alternative research methods do not replace other research, like the primary research, because that is still extremely important. I see those alternatives more for if you don't have another choice, to be able to conduct some kind of research, and as an addition to your primary research. Or as a starting point, to get your clients to wanting to conduct some kind of user research.

[00:22:59] Michelle: And with those issues you just mentioned, yeah, there's always that kind of danger that you do something. But for those kinds of features you could start with just A/B testing, so you get some more results on whether people like to have the feature or don't. I think those kinds of ways to make sure that you don't roll out a feature to everyone and just being like, hey, here it is, and whatever you do with it now, is way less harming to your users than if you wouldn't do A/B testing, for example.

[00:23:47] Host: Great. And can you give me an indication of how much time would you devote to this kind of upfront secondary research versus devoting to your primary research?

[00:24:01] Michelle: It depends on where in the product stage you are. If it's a new product I would definitely use some more time for that. But if it's for new features, it could just be a day of research, picking out the methods that fit best to what I'm looking for. And for a new product I would devote more time to it, but you could also justify that with the client. For example, the keyword research could also already help them with their SEO strategy, so you're doing two things at the same time. So there's a way around it, telling them like, hey, we need a little bit of time, but not as much as we would if we conducted the actual user research. For a new product, I've just been working on a few of those methods for one of my clients, and I devoted I think like one and a half days to it, to get some more insights about our users at the beginning of the stage.

[00:25:07] Host: Great. And with that information that you're collecting, how do you, because I know that there might be a bias with some people of, let's say a source like Reddit, and people might discount it because of assumptions about the types of people who use it. So how do you present the information that you gather, and how do you make sure that people recognize the value of it?

[00:25:32] Michelle: The clients or the users? In general, I always say that since there's no primary research done, all of those insights should be taken as they are. Don't bet on it. You always have to tell the clients that it might be opportunities that you should test maybe at a later stage. And that you always have to make sure if it also aligns with the strategy and the goals of the company, because not every feature that every user wants also makes sense to a company. So you always have to make sure that it's aligned, and just be open up front to the client, to say that's a trial and error process, especially if you don't have primary research.

[00:26:41] Host: Brilliant. Well, I think that's the end of my questions that I have, so thank you once again for sharing. I found it really useful, and I hope you enjoyed sharing with everybody.

[00:26:50] Michelle: Yeah, thank you so much.