In today’s environment product development teams are charged with building products—websites, web-based applications, mobile apps, software and devices —that deliver the best customer experience to the market. These customer experiences increasingly occur on multiple devices, in a wide variety of environments, and with new models of interaction. Given this common scenario, how can a product team know if the customer experience is consistent across all platforms?
Not Mind Readers
Though development teams would love to read the mind of the customer when they are interacting with their product on multiple devices or in different environments, user research is their go-to tool to learn about the customer experience – it helps ensure market acceptance without guessing.
Strategy for Success
Our clients realize that improving customer experience utilizing research done with customers is an integral part of the entire product development life cycle, from the earliest conceptual designs through iterative testing and redesign, and many have shared their insights with us.
5 things product teams we have worked with say about user research:
- Real users are not you. Actual users will always surprise you by what they do, what they cannot do, and why they cannot do what comes so easily to you or to the colleague down the hall.
- User research uncovers evidence and new insights: Research provides quantifiable results—how many users successfully make that online purchase?—as well as rich qualitative data: “I couldn’t find the button that says Add to Cart because it was small and way off to the side. Plus, I wasn’t sure my transaction would be secure.”
- Drives business performance: With more choices and more pervasive experiences with technology, users are now less tolerant of convoluted or mystifying designs. The more users are satisfied, the greater brand strength and product success will be.
- Reduces risk: Early user research minimizes the risk of delivering a product that does not match users’ needs; incorporating the voice of the user into product design while there is still time to make design modifications before release minimizes risk. Stakeholders like that!
- Reduces development, marketing costs: Avoid the costly “launch and fix” cycle. Ignoring user expectations during the product development cycle can be costly if there is low market acceptance of a difficult to use product. User research takes the guesswork out of understanding what best serves your customers.
Depending on your product, its goal is to increase productivity, better inform site visitors, or entertain and delight users—sometimes all of these. Building user research into the product development cycle helps achieve these goals.
Get in touch with us to learn how incorporating user research into your development cycle can help you achieve specific product goals!
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