User research is not an option!

Supposing is good, but finding out is better.
- Samuel Clemens

Information has no meaning if the receiver does not understand it.
In other words, if someone asked me “who are you”, I must reply by the information that has some sort of meaning to him. I can give him information about my job, family, hobbies, general experiences etc…
Actually, my answer may vary depending on the person asking this question.
If you asked me this question at work, my answer will consist of my name and job title. If you asked me this question at a family wedding, my answer will consist of how I relate to the bride or the groom and it will not contain my job title, that’s for sure!

It doesn’t matter if the information you are saying has meaning to you, it must have meaning to your audience.

In my “who are you” case it is a one-to-one situation, one person is asking another person. What if it is a many-to-many situation, like in a website, many people are searching within piles of information. All the information included in a website must be organized in a way to make our users understand it. All users do not have the same approach in using our system or website, they come from different backgrounds, and every one of them will use our system in a different way.

A very important question pops up in the beginning of every project, who are the users I’m designing for?
Answering this question before you proceed in building your project will help you better serve the users’ needs, which is giving them the meaningful information they need and fulfilling their tasks easily without feeling frustrated while doing it.

There are three common ways to conduct user research: Interviews, observation and usability testing.
You can use one of them or combine any two or use them all, whatever serves your needs and fits your budget.

1.      Interviews
Interviews are a very effective research method if you do not know what people really want or will use on your website application. This interview does not require any previous preparations; you can have a quick chat with your colleagues in your lunch break.

When interviewing people do not ask them what they want to see on the front page. Because they will tell you a lot of things they want to see there, they will start getting excited and they will tell you “yes, we need blogs, forums and newsletter registration”. The right thing to do is to ask them whether they will use that certain feature today for example or not. They will definitely say “no” about a lot of features you suggest. This way you will know what people will really use. When interviewing, the most important thing is to ask the right questions to help you gather the right information that leads to better decisions. 

2.      Observation
Observation is about watching people do what they normally do every day in their life i.e. their day to day tasks.  Suppose a tourism agency calls you asking for a web solution to accept reservations 24/7 without having to hire more employees to work over night. You should go there and sit inside the tourism agency to watch employees while serving customers. One conversation between a customer and an employee goes like this:

Employee: Sir, you are eligible to upgrade your reservation at the hotel from a regular room to a suite provided you extend your stay 2 extra nights.

Customer: oh, that’s very nice, but I have to check my schedule and consult with my wife then get back to you tomorrow.

From this very small conversation, the researcher (you) knew that the website must have a feature that enables customers who cannot take instant decisions to stop and then resume later without having to redo all steps from the beginning. Observation pays off!

 

3.      Usability tests
Usability tests are done throughout and after you finish the website.  You invite a sample from your expected audience, if possible, and you give each of them a couple of tasks to finish using the site. Those tasks could be for example booking an air flight trip or doing a hotel reservation etc…

You then watch them as they execute the tasks and take notes.  You notice how easy or difficult it is for them to figure out what they should do.  How many clicks they had to do to find what they are looking for.  

There are many ways to do usability tests, but this one is the very common one. The results of the usability tests are always interesting and could reveal a lot of unseen problems.

If you do not do user research and launch your site directly then you are risking losing a lot of customers.  This is because they might not be able to figure out how to use your site, or the site contains unnecessary features that they will not use.

User research is a critical step in the information architecture cycle.  The customer wants to build a website that is usable, that attracts audience and in the end the most important point for him is to make money out of it.

If you know your audience and make them happy, then it is guaranteed that the site will reap its fruits.