Day 7: User Research – Understanding Users for Better Product Design

You have to do survey method. Also sometimes you have to do online research. Also sometimes you have to target market or a group to do this testing or the research. And then you do usability testing to go wide and deep the moment. If you are using these techniques, you will be able to each of these things will be covered separately. But for now get the clarity. Okay, so conduct a user interview with feedback. In fact, since due to this lack of time, this is a very short video which I am going to record. So some of the things you can take from the ChatGPT as well. Because that is a AI tool which is available, you can able to cross check and take more lot of inputs. But ideally speaking this pod in this video you're going to see very deeply how to do it.

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And you're going to see some AI tools, how you can able to fast track your analysis method and how you can bring very good insights in a shorter span of time to deliver the better product. Okay, let's see that. When you take the day one we saw about sketching, day two is about rapid ideation Day day three is about wireframe sketching, Seeing the unseen designer's way of presentation, choosing the right problem statement. In fact, we've been going very deep into all of these topics. But it is very sad that sometimes we forget the user. That is the most most important thing. Okay, so understanding the user comes with lot of things. I'm going to make a very nutshell presentation for you so that you can get it. Okay, first of all, it is a key step to start any project. You may be very good in choosing problem statement. You may be very good in doing rendering, you may be excellent in doing all these things in design process. But when you're not empathizing with your user, you may get into a big trouble. Okay, so why it is important? First of all, it meets the product expectation. What are the exact intent, what are the usability, what are the features, what are the functionality required? Second, it reduces the design failures. Lot of times industries put a lot of money into refining the Product into version 1, version 2, or fixing the bugs and everything. But if it is done properly before this, all cost could be avoided. Timelines could be saved. Also it helps you in informed decision making and guides throughout the process. And it enhances the product success as well. In fact, this is the ultimate strategy. Guys, if you precast all these things in your product development life cycle itself, while you're doing the research and capturing this, you will have lot of time and effort and money saved. During the launch of this product. A lot of industries don't do that. That is why they're losing out industries who are following this. They are making 30 to 40x more revenues than the conventional. Sorry, 30 to 40% more revenues than the competitors. Whoever is not following that, okay? That's a very important strategy. And also there are some misconceptions, okay? Only this user research is followed by big, big companies. My client doesn't allow me to do user research. How many of you are like that? Type out of the chat. I know you're watching this video later, but type out of the chat. Yes Jagdish. So don't use this as an excuse, guys. Nobody will give you time to go do and research. Everybody wants a solution. Everybody wants a product to sell in the market and make revenues. That is the kind of industry everybody is in right now. But you should not use that as an excuse. You should be able to tell the client clearly this is the value, what we will get when we do the research. It's your responsibility as a designer to do it. If you are not going to talk like an advocate there, who else is going to talk? That is a big problem. Problem lies with us. Problem doesn't lie with the client. Do you think the client will be like a user centric designer who, who did all of this design degrees or whatever the so called super, super YouTube videos. And he has learned all of these courses in design. No, he wants the final solution. He wants customer to like it. He wants business to grow. Very simple, right? Anybody who has a business will have this fair expectation. It's your responsibility to advocate that.

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And you need a formal lab, remote tools, misconception. You just need a paper, pen and a mind to listen to do a user research, guys, very simple ends after initial phases and continuous feedback is essential. See guys, lot of people think research is only at the starting phase. Big problem research happens throughout the development of the cycle of the product as well as it's launched in the market. Very important, okay? This is a misconception. Also there are key techniques to do it.

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See each of these things is a very deep skills.

Guys.

I'll teach you, don't worry in each of these days. But let me give you an oversight. First of all, a very good way to start doing user research is to understand user in a face to face interview. You could have a live interview, you could have a face to face, you could get a lot of qualitative data. The questions like okay, did you like the product application? People will Say yes. No. If you ask what is a good about our product? Can you tell me? People will talk a lot of things. There is a difference between the closed end question and the open end question. The moment when you ask this, you get a lot of qualitative answers. I think we have covered in the last skill as well.

Okay.

This you get quantitative. You can ask 100 people also whether you like our product or not. But qualitative you can connect with only few people.

Okay.

You can use survey questionnaires and methods to do it. Sometimes the people are remote, sometimes larger group is there. You can able to use this. Now AI tools is there. You can able to do it.

Okay.

Third observation going into the field. Understanding what is the pain point and the need of the people. Fourth, Persona creation. Fifth, usability testing. In fact constant Persona creation is one of the major, major element. Like let's say focusing on this user group. Just a second whom to talk with. It's ultimate waste of time. If you're going and talking with the wrong person and doing a one day research. It's equivalent to doing nothing. You need to choose the person or ask them to do perform a certain amount of tasks. Task 1. Task 2. Task 3. Ask them some questions, evaluate certain parameters. Ask them to rate it in a form of Lichter scale.

Okay.

Like very good. Good. Not okay. Okay. Something like people can able to guess and write your answers of the product. If you do all these things, you get to understand how the product is going to be used by the user in real time. If you're not getting this information, you will not understand the user better. There is no one way which is really really good. Guys. You have to do interview, face to face, virtual, whatever. You have to talk to the user and ask some question. Like let's say you being the user.

Okay.

I am the guy who is asking question. Can I say hi, I'm going to role play the two of the people because there is nobody available here. Okay, fine. So. Hi, how are you doing?

Great.

So did you try to use our product sometime yesterday? No problem. Fine. Can you just try to open your application and try to install my app? Okay. What difficulties did you find there? Okay, good. So how you. How are you feeling? The first screen could be. Are you okay with that? Are you happy? Good. What do you think can be accomplished apart from this? Hey, tell me honestly, do you really like this? Because people will not tell you good, bad in front of you. Maybe they'll to tell most of the times good. But when you ask them honestly Give a feedback for our product. People will tell something real. You have to be very patient enough to listen to that. Because the moment if you listen, you will have the real feedback coming. Nobody tells your product is shit. That's true, right? You have to ask them honestly tell me is this feature really useful? Not it don't. It's not useful. Why not it down Ask question the moment. If you ask question and patiently listen, you'll be able to get a lot of insights. That is the most most important thing. Conduct a user interview with feedback. Ask lot of open ended question. I told you about what is open ended. Please make sure you have a clear goal. A lot of times what happens is in fact majority of the time you don't know what is the intention of this research what you're doing. You just randomly ask question and 1 hour 2 hour conversation goes and user doesn't feel. When you don't feel like you got the answers what you're looking for. Okay, so you should have some kind of a format, you should have some kind of a questions, you should have some kind of a plan, you should have some kind of a time, should have some kind of environment. So these are all the things to be planned very well while you go forward to ask question.

Okay.

Use some non verbal methods and verbal methods like let's say you can use verbal also you can use non verbal methods like one. Hey, do you think this is good? Do you think my hand is really superb? So like this you can able to use your nonverbal body language also to communicate what you're trying to ask. People will get a better understanding of the question when you use both of these techniques. These are all subtle nuances when you do user research. But going forward you can do lot of things. Let it be the just start in another video. I'll also teach you how you can conduct field research in my Spotify channel Design for change link is given below. You can go and listen to a podcast. How to do a field research. Being a product designer and a UI UX designer. One of the great great pain points I've covered. Please implement that and lot of ideas will come to you.

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And then finally analyze your pain point. This is most most important. Okay, so first of all I'll give you an activity guys. Conduct research for your product improvement. Take any of your project or a case study from your existing projects. And if you interview two users just ask them any other questions. Whatever you feel like asking, please ask them second. Now based on this answers you write some questions. Now Okay, I have asked this question. This person has randomly answered this. Now let's moderate this test. Now let's prepare one question. Okay, so take one project. Do a random study first with any user and then take a questionnaire method properly writing. Hi, what's your name? This is the intention of this test.

How.

How did you like your product? Write as much as question as possible because you already had one person randomly answering, right? So now you know what mistake is happening and then you make the question and then do a proper research with the second person. Enough guys. The reason why I asked you to do first is you will have to make mistake then and only you will know how to do it correctly. Don't think you will do it correct in the first go. Design cannot be learned in that go. You have to make mistakes. You will realize and then you will learn. There is no one way to do user research. It's all coming from the context of the problem statement and the user whom you interact and the environment, the time, the plan, the usability testing, evaluation criteria and all these things. Matters a lot when you do a real time work for it.

Okay?

You need to be very careful about it. Second, key pain points. Understand what are the real pain points and understand what are the real prioritization they are telling and then create an actionable point for that. This is most most interesting and important ways. Okay, so I'll tell you the neuroscience background of it. First of all, when you are doing a user centric design, you are tapping into the empathy of the user. You are anticipating their frustration. You are improving your research skill also and listening skill also and practice lot of active listening. There is something called passive listening and active listening. Again, I've recorded a podcast in listening skill for a designer. It's a golden podcast. In fact I. I really put a lot of efforts in recording that. Because listening is the most, most important skill. Lot of designers take it very very granted.

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How to improve your active and active listening and empathy skills is what you are majorly going to get. Okay, so now I'll tell you some stat also. Success rate 200% higher. Success rate with research. I told you, right? The success rate is very high. Revenue growth 30 to 40% high. And reduces needs of the change by 50 percentage. Look at this guys. How much cost to save? This is a massive strategy. 50 percentage. Let's say if you're spending 10 lakh for a product to be developed, you will end up making in 5 lakhs. Amazing, right? Competitive edge. 87% of the companies outperform their competitors. 87% of the companies already are outperforming their competitors when they do user research properly. Don't take it granted when your client says next time don't do research, build me only website. Ask them, educate them. It's your responsibility to do that.

Okay?

Yes. So what are the tools? I'm going to give you a tool called dowtail Guide. This is one of the amazing tool I would say. Okay, so right now you can able to see my screen, right? See I've just taken one, I've just taken one information from the chat GPT. Okay, so you can able to go to this chat GPT like let's say you want, you can able to go here. Okay, you can find. If I'm doing a research with the people and getting some 20 insight points, can you just give me from your assumption, I'm doing a mobile app usability testing with the user and getting some insights and feedbacks. This is a use case purpose. I'm just using this.

Okay.

Trial purpose. Okay, so you, you got some feedbacks. Now I'm just taking it randomly. But ideally speaking you should put your use cases, you should put your insights, you should put your answers what your user is giving you. Okay, I'll take the first 15, no problem. Okay, so now I'll go to this dovetail tool. Look at this. In fact, this is one of the good tools guys. Recently I found it out. Okay, look, I'm just putting a new project. So this dovetail tool, what it does is first I'll explain you what is this tool. See, this organizes and analyzes your research insights and provide you a very, very powerful way to take a decision. Like let's say it's a powerful tool for organizing and analyzing and sharing your user research insights with the people. Okay, so use Doubtel AI tagging feature to quickly categorize your user feedback into themes. What happens if you create a themes that becomes automatically card sorted, that becomes automatically information clustered, that becomes automatically aligned to one direction of the feedback for the insight, whatever has been received. Imagine if you're conducting research with 50 people, you'll get complex data, right? I'm just showing you small example. But imagine that once you have that kind of data then you can use this. There is another tool also called Perplexity. You can able to do it, but ideally this is a good tool. Okay, so use AI tagging to speed analysis. You can do a very, very speed analysis using that.

Okay.

Look at this. I'm just going to create a new note.

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Look what's happening. This is a new note. Okay, so you can create a free account in Dottel and you can just put a heading like this. Okay, look at this. I'm just asking this tool to just summarize. What happens is it will exactly get these points, read this, analyze it and it'll exactly summarize. You look at this. Got it Right. And then what you can do is you can go to this tool which is called Insight Automation.

Okay?

General sentiment. What it is really trying to say, maybe in an advanced feature, this particular tool offers a lot of benefits. But for the free version we can try to take whatever is beneficial. See, look at this. These are all the negative points, These are all the positive. Improving search filters and recommendation was highly suggested. Look at this. So it would take a lot of time for you to go and find out which is positive, negative and all these things, right? But when you have a tool like this, when you put a complex data, even you can put insert your Google file. Can you see the option import here? You can put your 20 pages document here. You can put your 50 pages document here. Look at how easily this AI tools is helping you the moment if you import it. This kind of insights you will get. And this is not the only thing. You can find lot more things here. If you want you can able to get a targeted sentiment. If you want to get an insight, you can tag it there. If you want to move it, if you want to copy paste it to a different project. Lot of options is there guys, please try it out.

Okay?

And then from here you can able to go and take your research forward. Let's say if you want to share with somebody, okay, your teammates. Let's say if you wanted to take this insights and put it into a categorization. So this is a very good AI tool which predominantly helps you guys. There is another tool also which you can try it out which is called Lookback IO. Okay. This is a very powerful remote usability testing platform for user testing and interviews, okay. It records your user sessions as well as AI power transcription to analyze your feedback more efficiently. In fact, dotail also does it pretty much. Okay, like let's say if you're clicking import. Okay, if you put your videos, like let's say if I'm taking any kind of a videos from here, okay, like let's say if I put some video, okay, this is a very huge video, whatever I'm putting. But anyway, if you want you can able to put your small videos and try it out initially.

Okay.

It's a huge video by the way. I don't take. I don't think it'll take weekly output, but it'll take a lot of time. So your user interviews, your survey records, your questionnaires, your PDF files, your documentaries, your research history file, everything you can able to import and tune this prompt instead of putting into ChatGPT, you can also try this parallelly to get some output. Okay, there is another tool called Perplexity. Can you see the symbol here? Perplexity. Okay, when you take a new thread, okay. When you copy paste this insight and then you switch on this pro feature, okay. And then you give a option called academic. So Perplexity does the user data analysis properly?

Okay.

It is even more specific than chat GPT in some of the times because it is more data analysis tool. Okay, the moment when you put your insights and then you switch on the mode called pro and then you put only focused on academic work. Whatever academic work is there related to this topic, it is coming see, can you see? Then you can able to even ask more for this research background with respect to U. S market search in real time and find out in U. S Market what are the scientific research journal available for this insight for your paper can you see survey based analysis for academic job market issued use US Patents review of the studies of risk factor and critical infrastructure. So a lot of feedback will come. See guys, I'm just telling you an example. But ideally speaking you could do anything sisterless loading. But same thing happens in your videos and other things as well. You can able to try it out because AI tools is nowadays very, very prominent. Okay, so now we are coming to the end, guys please reflect on this. Learning how to use, how to do user research, how you can able to create new insights, how you can apply the insights in your design later to develop the product. Okay, because most, most important thing is conduct user interviews, survey questions, observation, creation of Persona and then usability testing. The moment when you do all these things properly, guys, you will have much more clarity on what is your user needs. Once if you're having much more clarity on your user needs, then you can able to go and develop your product. Okay, so finally to wrap up, I'll tell you. User research is also a small part of the whole equation. If you wanted to understand how to research about the company, Research is not only for project guys, it's also for the doing companies. How to research your need of the company, how to research about yourself, how to match these things, how you can able to target the right industries and increase your salary 3x in less than 90 days. I'm going to teach you in the 11 o' clock webinar on the coming Sunday. The link is given below. Make sure you type your top three takeaways from this whole video and register for this free webinar and see you there live guys.

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So thank you. All the best. Take care. We'll see in the day eight for a different skill. Bye Bye.