How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love User Research
The weekend is almost here, and I have decided to open up, be vulnerable, and share some personal thoughts with you.
User research is really great, I really do believe it. The thing is, it hasn’t always been that way for me.
When I have just started doing user research, it was so challenging, geez…
I feel comfortable enough to share this now, but it still gives me the shivers when I think of the stress I was in when I decided to add user research to my process of product development.
The first project was sooo demanding, it was a really big client, and I wanted to be perfect!
The client wanted me to perform the UX,UI and Development. We agreed on a specific deadline, which seemed super cool.
I was sure I will have enough time to squeeze in the user research…
But then… life happened. I was trying to find users, I posted posts on my personal Facebook page, asked family members if they know anyone who could help me, I even hang paper ads on trees around the neighborhood… I was so lost, I didn’t know what to do. and nothing happened.
The phone was silent, no emails, no messages, NOTHING, ZERO, ZILCH, NADA!
I couldn’t find users and my stress levels went higher and higher.
The client was asking if we’ll meet our deadlines and for the first time, I wasn’t that sure we will. The client also didn’t believe in user research, they kept asking me to remove the user research phase and dive right into the design and development.
The days went by and I finally got some relevant participants, but it was so exhausting. I was emailing them back and forth on dates and times.
I even had to bear last-minute cancellations. Yet, I finally was able to have five users to interview!
The first interview went so bad, I was stressed, I was reading from my script without even listening to what the participant is telling me, it was awkward, really.
I was very nervous, a lot was at stake, the client was emailing me and calling me wanting to know when they should expect to see deliverables…
I’m not proud of this, but in a moment of weakness, I have decided I’m not going through with it, I have cancelled all other interviews and informed the client we’re diving into the UX and UI without user research (they were thrilled, I wasn’t).
We designed and executed the product, we met our deadlines everything was supposed to be super exciting and positive.
A long story short- people didn’t use the product, it had so many bad things that could have been avoided if we would only LISTEN to what people had to say about it before all of the hard work and time spent… No doubt — I learned my lesson the hard way :)
Today, there’s not a chance in the world, I’ll execute a product without actually testing it with users.
How about you?
Do you sometimes think of not doing user testing just because it’s such a big hustle?
- Getting the users, managing the process, following up are all, as I know, a real pain.
If one of these sentences rings a bell:
- “OMG! we don’t have enough participants for the user testing session!”
- “OK, I’m done with the interviews, what the ^%&%^ should I do now?”
- “I have so much information, from the user interviews sessions, how should I communicate this to the client?”
Then you may want to check our latest video (see below)…
