Why Many Companies Don't Conduct User Research

1. Why Is User Research Important?

Awareness of user research is growing and there are many people involved in creating software, digital products or websites who are still largely unaware.
 
User research is the key activity that informs UX design. Understanding how your end user interacts with your design, their behaviour, needs and motivations can ensure a superior, user focussed design.   

But often Companies don’t prioritise user research as an important part of their design process. Why? 

2.“We Already Know Our Users!”

It’s true, many Companies have important knowledge gleaned from experience in their market. But often it is not specific to the user journey or collected by direct observation and is just assumed.
   
This results in poor information that doesn’t guide the design process for what the user experiences. 

3.“The Value Of User Research Seems Indistinct”

User Research offers intangible results, and its value lies in how well the researcher or team can interpret the insights into clear actionable outcomes. User research is therefore extremely valuable to guide UX designers, but may seem somewhat vague to others. UX research approaches to research in two ways: gathering data and synthesizing that data to improve usability.   

The result, which improves the design greatly, delivering more value to the end user and ultimately your product. 

4.“It Doesn’t Fit Our Development Process”

User research is time-consuming, so, understandably, people might wonder how it fits into rapid development processes.

The solution to this one is simple:

Conduct user research before the project begins as part of the requirements definition. Or implement user research as a separate and regular activity that occurs outside project schedules.

Conclusion

Simply put, conducting user research results in the development of a true consumer centric design process. Otherwise, you are just designing for yourself and your ideal of the consumer. The smarter choice today seems to spend the time to ask and discover the true needs of your audience before investing and damaging your brand.

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