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September 3, 2024
When working with new clients we’ve heard a few times over the years “I know my site sucks, but I don’t know where to start” 😖 Don’t worry – we do: start with USERS. But some fear that user research is daunting, expensive and time-consuming. However, it's MORE costly not doing user experience (UX) research and designing, building, and deploying something that at best users don't care about and at worse is confusing, frustrating, or down-right bad.
In this blog post we'll discuss some common myths and misconceptions on UX research and provide some helpful tips on how and where to get started:
Sure, there are some flavors of UXR that are very involved in both money and time – like longitudinal research like dairy studies – but there are plenty of versions that are cheap if not free.
TIP: Mine your reviews using AI. 🤖 You likely already have Voice of Customer (VoC) data and there are plenty of tools out there to help you analyze user sentiment.
Conducting primary UXR does take skill and usually should be left to a UX professional to ensure sound, reliable results. That said, there are tons of secondary research resources available like Nielsen Norman Group and Baymard Institute that can be useful and instructive. These resources can get you started on UX best practices and heuristics to abide by.
TIP: A fundamental part of most (every?) UXR practitioner’s library should be “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. 📕 The insights are timeless, with even a “revisited” version that updates some of the examples and resources.
You’re not totally wrong in that it will take time, but if you DON’T do UXR and go down a completely wrong path or build something that users don’t care about, it will be far more costly than the up-front time it would have taken to ensure you move in a customer-informed direction.
TIP: Integrate UXR into your regular workflow. 📊 We have a number of clients doing UXR each quarter with CXperts – sometimes it's in-depth interviews for generative UXR, other times it’s usability studies for iterative UXR, and some might be doing a survey or other tactics based on current business priorities.
This can be true, but not all UXR studies need highly-specialized participants. There are an abundance of tools that have built-in user panels to recruit from. By using simple screening questions, qualified users who match the demographics of your target audience can easily be recruited. For the instances where more niche users of your product are needed, turn to your internal databases of customers, loyalty members, email subscribers, and the like.
TIP: Lyssna is one of our go-to UX Research tools for cheap and quick usability studies. 💬 You can build a test, buy participant credits, and have your results back within an hour. Or if you want CXperts to handle the entire process we can help you with that too.
Alright, this myth isn’t a myth exactly. UX researchers need stakeholder buy-in, but here’s how to get it: UX researchers, designers, and product managers need to advocate for the value of UX research and communicate the necessity of getting real user feedback before, during, and after each major project. This can be done by highlighting the core business goals the research will address, presenting the process in which research will be integrated into the design workflow, and illustrating how UX research can be essential to multiple departments - product, sales, marketing, etc. in making decisions moving forward.
TIP: Case studies are a great way for stakeholders to understand the value of UXR, especially when tied to key business metrics. ⭐️ Using storytelling, statistics, and anecdotal accounts of UX research success can help stakeholders see the actual impact of investing in UXR. Check out this UX Research Case Study with Graco Baby for yourselves!
Hopefully this myth busting exercise is the push you need to consider UXR for your organization. Reach out to CXperts to start connecting with your users and reaping the benefits of UXR.
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