07 Aug 2008 1216H

Research driving UX projects

We’re in the production stream of a project now, and I’m looking back on an affinity diagram I put together after we’d had a group of about four or five users tell us their loves and hates (such strong words, I know) about a particular online service we offer. Hadn’t looked at it in a while, but the curious thing about this research document is, looking back on everything, how much work we’re putting in place apart from this particular project that accommodates the users’ needs stated in the interviews themselves. Problem is that a lot of firms don’t really do this type of research, but, regardless, I always find something new when we do it and apparently so did our entire team. The speed of turning around things in our environment isn’t terribly quick, but still, the fact that we have been able to turn around ideas quickly into production has been remarkable, I think. For a firm that doesn’t do this stuff, I would recommend that maybe once or twice a year that you start with just a handful of users, maybe you start with some questions you have about things you would like to know, and then go on to observe them trying different actions, not like usability research exactly, but since the process is often new to a firm, it’s helpful for management to get some reactions from real users, who themselves have nothing at stake (not employed by firm, not related to firm employees), to see for themselves what real people are going through on their sites. One or two day’s worth of research yields enough data to propel you forward a long time. The strategic advantage far outweighs the relatively miniscule cost such research would incur, if any, since users tend to offer opinions extremely freely.

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