user research
Studying your customers
User research is the practice of studying how people actually use products, services, or systems—through interviews, observation, surveys, and testing.
The goal is to understand user needs, behaviors, and pain points before or during design: We conducted user research to find out why customers were abandoning their carts.
Common in software development and product design, where assumptions about users often prove wrong.
- interviewsFormal evaluative conversations
- think aloudExpress cognition verbally
- personasAssumed public identities
- surveysSystematic information gathering
- focus groupsGuided consumer feedback sessions
testing · insights · participants · empathy · feedback · ethnography · field studies · observations · prototypes · qualitative · quantitative · journey · pain points · discovery · synthesis · affinity · recruitment · moderation
user researchguesswork
Conclusions drawn without proof
gut feeling · speculation · conjecture · expert opinion · presumption
user, research, use, uses, used, using, usable, usability, usage