User Research in Product Management: Importance, Pitfalls and The Biases

User research is one of the key driving force behind user experience and user-centric design. This is what enables product managers (and product designers) to make fully informed, data-driven product decisions based on real-world customer feedback. Rather than depending exclusively on the beliefs and intuitions of subject matter experts, or on ambiguous numbers.

Some of the quotes which will give you better perspective on the importance of User Research:

• "The feeling a product gives you when you use it for important tasks"
• "The experience a product creates for people who use it in the real world"
• "The way we use products to be more efficient in our daily lives"
• "The sensory enjoyment a product provides in terms of aesthetic appeal and function"

In the age of big data, where more analysis doesn’t always equate to more clarity, User Research tells a consistent story and helps you justify the analysis and the numbers. User research at different stages of Product Lifecycle helps you avoid costly mistakes. In this era of fast changing consumer preferences and the rate at which technology is evolving, it is imperative to know your user better and keep them at the center of "Product Development".

How to conduct user research for your product?

This research of a user helps us learn more about what a user expects, their understanding of the product (or problem statement that the product intends to solve), and what inspires them about the product with the help of our process methodologies. Here are some tips on how to conduct user research:

Include the user in the design process:

User research is a fantastic way to bring the user into the design process. You practice user-centric design by collaborating with users, which is essential in creating a successful product for your users.

Empathy is at the heart of user-centered design:

Therefore, it’s no surprise that research focused on empathy is essential. Empathy is setting aside your own assumptions in order to see things from someone else’s perspective. In other words, empathy is the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and experiences from their perspective.

How important is this in terms of user research?

By focusing on the user, you can approach the problem from the perspective of what the user needs to make their life easier or better. This has the advantage of creating an emotional connection between the customer and the product. You can use the Golden Circle model to verify that you are conducting research in a user-centric manner by asking three key questions:

• Why are we working towards a specific goal?

• How are we going to get there?

• What will be the result of achieving this goal?

What are the pitfalls you should avoid?

The pitfalls clearly reflect the mistakes made by various teams over the years. This makes a business very important to investigate issues to improve performance. There are four phases in user research and its associated pitfalls, they are:

Phase 1: Planning:

It includes non-recruiting activities such as collecting data, understanding the scope of the project, scheduling meetings, and preparing for tests.

Pitfall 1: Not gathering the basic information needed to conduct a research project.

Pitfall 2: Don’t use mixed-method research to gain clarity and confidence in research results.

Phase 2: Recruitment:

This involves locating, selecting, and organizing study participants to ensure that the research is of high quality.

Pitfall 3: Settle for poor quality samples, which can almost reduce the speed and quality of the results.

Pitfall 4: Relying on a small sample size to conduct user research, which can have a critical impact on results.

Phase 3: Data collection:

It is the act of acquiring information, usually by observing user behavior and/or soliciting their views.

Pitfall 5: Using inadequate moderators, as a skilled researcher can make the difference between a poor study and a huge success. The skill of the moderator will determine the scope and depth of your ideas.

Pitfall 6: Multiple note-takers are unaffected in most user research projects, which can sometimes prove inaccurate because the diversity of viewpoints provides important information.

Phase 4: Make a report:

Before being reported in any form of a deliverable, the data collected in Phase 3 is reviewed for trends and information of interest in the reporting. (Examples include a detailed summary, written report, and customer workshop).

Pitfall 7: Faking definitive directional data. In user research, there is no absolute proof in business, science, or design. All we can do is reduce the doubt to the point that it’s convincing enough to be considered realistic, and then continue with the process.

What can go wrong while doing user research for your product — any biases you should avoid?

Knowing about the user’s point of view, his experiences, and knowledge about the product user research help us reduce the bias. It identifies any false assumptions and verifies them. Correct user research is the foundation of various designs and choices based on what the user needs. Often many teams and organizations skip the user research process saying they do not have enough time and funds to conduct the research.

So, what is the cost of not conducting thorough user research?

The product may have some great features, but it may not solve the user’s problem. The product may not be user-friendly as false assumptions are infused into the creation and operation of the product. Ultimately, the product confuses the user. Having your team and business aware of the consequences of not doing good user research will save you time, costs, and energy in the long run, allowing you to design a product that meets consumer demands.

In User Research, there are ten cognitive biases to avoid:

Over the last 10 years, cognitive biases have come to the mainstream part of society along with the approaches that are human-centric in business designs. As we depend more on data collection and analysis to make smart conclusions on the business, we should also make sure that the collection of data and its analysis are free of any cognitive biases to deliver significant values to our end customers.

• The way questions are framed or worded can have an impact on how people react.

• Humans tend to seek out or confirm the evidence that supports their point of view.

• Humans are always looking for hindsight reasons for their past behavior.

• Humans tend to speak in a way that is socially desirable and it helps them appear attractive.

• Humans tend to hold on or sink costs to their errors or losses for a longer time than they should.

• Humans place more importance on serial positioning of things near to the end/start of lists.

• Humans tend to over express or provide an illusion of being transparent to such an extent that others become aware of their thoughts.

• Humans tend to look for patterns or clusters of evidence in the middle of chaos when there are not any.

• People have implicit unconscious biases about specific groups and their actions.

• Humans tend to make errors to inherent characteristics, even when they are situational or they are motivated by outside influences.

Finally, reacting to the customer's behavior in what they do or say is like doing them an injustice. Instead, we should try to understand them and that is why user research becomes so important to early stage product managers and product designers in order to dig deeper to understand the real needs of the customer so that they can get better results.

Note: In another article, we will be covering "how to conduct user research".

PG Tip: At the outset, user research might appear tedious task but then with the rise of nocode platforms, its easy to build prototypes or surveys and conduct user research.

PG Tip 2: User Research will also help you define "product market fit" and pivot / improve in early stages of product building 

PG Tip 3: In a B2B context, user survey's can help you modularize the product and unlock complex features in form of add-ons and keep the core offering simple

PG Tip 4: If you dont believe, check out how seriously Google takes User Experience research