I remember when the participant sighed when going through their work steps – that was the moment I knew we had some work to do. “Why is this so hard?” It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it would be silly not to take it on board.
For our user research and testing we had about 15 participants and we were testing our application from the user point of view and their jobs to be done and most were unable to easily get their work done without multiple screens and monitors.
This is why we do user research! To find out what’s really happening. It’s one of the best ways to stop guessing and start knowing.
As we gathered the data this same theme was continuous – one job is taking multiple monitors and browser tabs to complete. The reliability and the validity of the results were consistent (we were able to see the same result multiple times, and the findings all pointed to a streamlining of user workflows).
We mapped their user roles to our understanding and made updates where needed so our personas could get updated. We were able to make short and long term plans based on the information and insights we gained.
Any business, small or large, can do user research and I believe they really should. It’s easy to assume because the customer has/has bought your product that it works well. Well, it’s not always the case! Users are quite capable of working around problems and unless there’s an open channel for feedback there’s not much they can do.
Stakeholders and managers sometimes question the value of user research, with good reason – without good reporting and validation a user research exercise is mostly pointless. However, it brings the odds of an actionable result up from 50% (a coin toss) to closer to 95% (your mileage may vary).
User research can happen before, during, and after a product is created so it can be continuously improved.