User research is a crucial part of designing, building and testing great services and products. By great I mean simple and intuitively to use, something that helps people meet a need – the reason why they are interacting with something in the first place.
Why do it?
It helps inform the whole development life cycle by telling us:
- Who your likely user are
- What they are trying to do
- How they are trying to do it now
- How the context affects them
- How they use and experience existing services
It is always best to make this process as inclusive as possible. Include as many different types of users or Personas and the project team as regularly. This provides a huge amount of insight which ultimately helps deliver a better outcome for users.
When to do it?
Each phase should of a project should involve users research: Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live.
- Discovery – at the start of a project research who the users are and what they are doing. Figure out how they do it and what challenges they face. Mapping out the user journey will help you understand and provide a wider context.
- Alpha – this is an opportunity to build a richer picture of users by testing ideas, designs and prototypes with users. Try and incorporate this feedback as quickly as possible by sharing the findings with the project team and iterate on to the next build which can then again be tested with users.
- Beta – now you can test on people who will probably use the service or product. You can resolve real world issues, view web analytics and analyse support tickets. This is another opportunity gain quick feedback and rapidly iterate through the build and test cycles.
- Live – by now the service should be fairly stable but there is still opportunity test new features, understand how the live service is used and gain insight into the evolving needs of users.