** Your One Survey Isn’t Really Research
Hello Human
In the last letter, we talked about what UX Research is and why it’s important. Today we’re going to be talking about what it is not and why you shouldn’t do it the wrong way.
So what does research actually involve?
As we said in the last newsletter, that one hastily written survey you shared in your group chat that got 12 responses is not really user research. It may be a start, but it barely scratches the surface of what UX Research really is about and how powerful it can be in the product development process.
Research in product development isn’t just about asking people what they want. It is about understanding people and problems so that you can identify gaps in their experiences and use that knowledge to identify opportunities and innovate and ideate and test various solutions.
Research happens in two ways: 1. Observing 2. Asking
Ideally, you should do both. Being observant is an important skill for anybody who wants to create products or be involved in that process. Asking is also as important because sometimes, observation shows you an action but does not show you the reason for an action. A simple example would be me not liking chocolate (chocolate is for peasants, argue with yourself). You can infer the possible reasons why I don’t like chocolate but you can’t know the exact reason if you don’t ask. It is not enough to know what people do, you need to know why they do what they do & you won’t know if you don’t ask.
When I ask people if they did any research in their product development process, I more often than not hear things like: “oh, I showed the prototype to my friends” or “I did a survey”. And more often than not, when they show me the survey, there are a lot of bad questions. Leading questions, questions with limited options, unbalanced rating scales, poorly worded questions, confusing questions, double-barrelled questions, and the worst of them all: “will you use a product that allows you do X?” Stop it. Just stop it.
Research transcends surveys & usability tests even. There are so many other methodologies out there. There is interviews, desirability tests, first impression tests, task analysis, conceptual inquiry, tree jack tests, card sorting, a/b tests, and so much more.
These tests aren’t all that hard to set up & provide you with so much insight, so let one of your goals be to diversify your research methods.
Stop sharing your surveys with your designer friends. Another problem is that these surveys and usability tests are often shared with other designers and developers and those people aren’t representative of your actual audience. Even if they share demographics with your target audience, they shouldn’t be the primary focus of your “research”.
The average youth is not as tech savvy as we like to think. Imagine if Cowrywise or AirBnB built a product that could only be understood and used by developers & designers; they would have lost so much money. Likewise, you’re losing a lot of money (opportunities & potential customers) when you do not do good research & use inclusive practices. Remember, bad research can be worse than no research.
We’ve said a lot of English today but all we’re trying to say is that there’s more to research than doing one survey or one usability test. Research is not a one time thing. It’s not something you check off a list.
Research is needed before, during & after a product is built–that is how successful products are created & maintained. We are not unreasonable research dictators though (At least Dumss isn’t, I don’t know about Lade oh). We understand that research can be challenging, it stresses even we trained Researchers sometimes.
We also understand that a lot of people don’t have the resources or the buy-in at their organization to do “full-scale research”, so what can be done given this scenario? The short answer is guerrilla research, the long answer will be discussed in the next newsletter.
In the meantime, check out this article (https://medium.com/design-ibm/the-vital-role-of-user-research-8c2f51a9cead) by Arin Bhowmick (IBM’s Design Lead) about the importance of user research in product design & development.
Till next week, kids.
With Love & Yam, Dumss and Lade