7 Expert-Backed Rules to Follow to Understand Customer Needs User research is a complex, tedious process. Follow these seven helpful rules to set up your research for success, backed by 10 years of practical research experience.
By Lisa Dziuba Edited by Kara McIntyre
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User research is an essential foundation for understanding customers' needs. Its insights should inform every decision made about the product and the business, as well as fuel new business ideas. Research can be conducted at any stage of product development, from early concept to post-launch.
However, research is a complex process where it's easy to get lost, go over budget and not achieve expected outcomes. This is especially true for startups that operate in a rapid growth environment. To set up user research for success, entrepreneurs can follow these seven practical rules.
Related: User Research: How to Get More Leads From Your Content
Rule 1: Align on the research objectives
Every research should help solve some business or product challenges. Explicitly telling the team what the company wants to learn from user research is a good starting point. However, this question can often lead to answers that are too vague, like "we want to understand what users like about our product."
These types of answers are not specific enough to guide the research. To get specific, it's important to dive deeper into measurable outcomes research could drive. I've been working with user research for the last 10 years, and below, you can see the real research objectives I worked on:
- Create an ideal customer profile for power users to guide marketing and sales.
- Define software developer kit (SDK) use cases for enterprise customers to help them build those use cases easier.
- Improve "website visitor to lead" conversion by identifying issues users face on the landing page and registration form.
Research goals should be specified in the research plan and shared with design, marketing, product, sales and leadership teams, then improved and re-iterated based on the feedback.
Related: Why Every High-Growth Startup Should Invest in This Key Process
Rule 2: Follow the research methodology
User research has specific steps you need to follow, usually referred to as research methodology. It consists of setting up objectives, forming a research plan (brief), defining the hypothesis, choosing research methods and starting to collect data via research methods. Then the research team synthesizes and analyzes data, forms conclusions and presents insights.
When running the research, don't try to reinvent the wheel. It's better to follow the methodology and avoid the temptation to add extra work to the plate. Timewise, research can take from one to three months (or even longer). So if the research team jumps into running unplanned activities, they're risking delaying research outcomes.
Rule 3: Always have research documentation
Good user research should have a plan, a responsible person who leads the process, a dedicated timeline and budget, as well as research documentation. This documentation aims to structure the whole process and make it visible to everyone in the company. Examples of it could be:
- Research repository with docs related to the research projects.
- Research plan (brief) with the detailed flow, tasks and research hypothesis.
- Interview guide with questions to ask at the interviews, as well as rules to follow when talking to customers.
- Notes from research studies with findings, questions raised and other small details that matter.
- Insights presentation with structural insights and research outcomes.
The format of the documentation will depend on the startup's preferred toolset. Whatever tooling a company uses, always have documentation to keep research organized.
Related: This Is the Framework to Make Your Product a Smash Success
Rule 4: Get visibility among the team
Startups are hectic. Many initiatives are run at the same time, so research projects can be lost and left unnoticed, which naturally leads to decreasing value of the research. If no one knows about user research, no one will care about the research outcomes. To avoid such a situation, it's critical to evangelize research among the startup. How do you do it right?
Inform the team that research is starting and what problems it aims to solve. Share the research brief and all documentation early on, inviting all involved people to be present at the kickoff meeting. Don't forget to mention the value of user research at the company All Hands meeting, if you have one, and update the team on the research progress. Constant communication, enthusiasm and engagement from the research team usually help a lot.
A pro tip is to invite observers, people who will be watching the research and learning about users on the way. This is a great way to battle skepticism among team members who don't believe that research is useful. Welcome those people to listen to user interviews or read insights. This can turn skeptics into the best supporters.
Related: The Best Leaders Follow These 13 Rules of Cross-Functional Collaboration
Rule 5: Use all available internal data and research methods
User research methods are much more than user interviews or usability studies. Some popular research methods include surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, data analysis and A/B testing.
When I was running user research for Abstract SDK, my product marketing team used 11 sources of getting research data. It included Zendesk tickets from the support team, all Google Analytics data, insights from our design advocates and sales team, as well as data from the analytics team. When working on power user research with Lemon.io, my team found an unbelievable amount of useful information in the Hubspot records, sales calls, internal dashboards and notes from a customer success team.
It's quite possible that someone in the company has already run some research or knows where to find insights about customers. Using all that data will optimize research effort and speed up the process.
Rule 6: Be open to negative news
Startup management should set up a safe space for user research, which comes from a user-obsessed culture and atmosphere of trust. It allows anyone in the team to bring "bad news" and unpolished insights from user research.
Otherwise, data from qualified research methods can be presented in a softer way, polluting the real insights. The same works with quantitative research, where numeric data can be misinterpreted. User research is about collecting accurate data and finding answers to critical business questions, rather than making someone feel good.
Also, double-check research questions to be sure they are not leading customers to tell what you want to hear.
Related: How to Increase User Empathy and Build Better Products
Rule 7: Present insights with the empathy
Present user research findings in a way that is accessible and understandable for the team. Try to share both qualitative and quantitative data to back up research insights. Some people prefer visuals, some like long reports, and others would love to see more graphs and charts. Be aware of your team's preferences and invest time into wrapping research outcomes in the appropriate format. There are many formats that can be used to grab people's attention toward research results:
- Well-designed presentations shared at the company meetings
- Pre-recorded videos with research findings and snapshots from user interviews
- Detailed reports with evidence, data and customers quotes
Presenting insights is an important moment when research starts impacting business metrics and product direction. Tell the story in a digestible format, sparking curiosity from everyone on the team to learn more about research findings and the next steps.
Well-run user research leads to actionable outcomes, boosts user empathy and influences the startup's success. If you adopt all the rules we've learned today, your research has all the chances to deliver maximum value.
