Ep 202| 7 Alternative Research Methods When Clients Keep Users Behind Closed Doors

If your client doesn't allow you to talk with your stakeholders or your users in a in a structured way in your project, how do you really deal with that? Particularly when it comes to a confidential project or when it comes to project which doesn't have so much of clarity with the customer itself. First of all, how do you do a research alternative if you are stuck in that zone? This podcast is exactly for you. I'm going to reveal you seven different methods, how you can use alternate approaches in order to get more insights and data to create beautiful products. Okay, so take a lot of notes. Let's jump in. Welcome to Design for Change. Thank you for staying tuning in with me. We are on a mission to help 1 million designers to achieve the freedom lifestyle they wanted to really achieve. Whether they have a design degree or not, whether they have experience or not, through this program, they are going to get empowered and they are going to reach a creative potential. Okay? And this particular podcast is been heard over 31 plus countries and thousands of listeners are engaging in the content and a lot of value is being created. If you are the one who is getting value so far with this podcast, please subscribe me for further episodes and get notified. Also give me a best star rating in Apple and Spotify so that it reaches maximum people. This is how the Spotify algorithm works. Okay? That's a small support you would say. And also you can encourage your other friends also to listen to it because in this podcast we are making five to ten minutes of content. So. And we are giving a lot of value so that people can get to the point very clearly not having to read hundreds and hundreds of hours of content and engage in 20, 30 minutes of videos. Okay? So definitely take a lot of notes. Today we are going to have a very important topic. If your customer is not allowing you to do a research properly, how do you really deal? First let me give you some statistics. According to Forresters research, every dollar what you invest in a UX research. Okay, which brings you how in returns. That's like a 100x ROI. So what does it really mean? Research is very important, we all know that. But in this case your customer is not allowing you. Okay, 70% of the businesses that deliver the best in class customer experience comes from the user customer feedback and the testing methods what they use. 88% of the online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad user experience. McKinsey states that 60 percentage of the higher profits increase by understanding and prioritizing the customer experience. In order to make A priority decision making in your product and service. 52% of the users said bad mobile user inter user interface and user experience made them less likely to engage with the company. So these are all some of the statistics which is available. Definitely. We all know that research is important and some people might not have the clarity but for them I'm just telling this information. Okay, but in spite of having this kind of understanding in research, sometimes your client is not allowing you. Sometimes your user is not available. Like let's say there is an imaginary user. Sometimes you have only limited access to them. How do you really approach in an alternative way? The very first thing you can do is use existing data sources, guys, because you will not get the point. You will not get the data and everything with the primary sources. But you can use the existing similar project data and ask your customer and client to give that. You can pull it through online sources, you can pull it through customer, you can pull it through your company database. So understand this, this is very important. So you can do some kind of a sentimental analysis using there's a tool called Google sentimental analysis. You can use power bi. You can understand the common pain points and what you can improve. So you can quantify the frequency of this issues, how it's raised by the users with the different users you don't have. And you're not allowed to talk to the real users, but you're talking to a different user, right? Second is understand the analytics. See use some kind of a heat maps and session recordings and the interviews which has already happened in order to deep dive into the data what you got because you are not going to get the primary data. All you have to understand is the cross patterns, how it is emerging now, now only you'll be able to find out certain patterns. So identify the key areas where the drop off ratio is happening or where is the key crucial problem is happening. Where is the user getting really frustrated? Okay, this is first method using alternate existing data sources. Second is use your competitor analysis. This is a brilliant way to do. In fact, if you identify the key features and highly resonate with your competitors, you will end up understanding the real need of it. You don't need a real time user, guys. This is a beautiful way and an alternative way find the right competitor. Sometimes your direct competitor is not available. Go and find out the indirect competitor who might be indirectly supporting and contributing you. Okay, so if you understand this particular direct competitor and indirect competitor. Direct competitor is something who is making a similar product like you. Indirect competitor is maybe a supplier of your Competitor or maybe they have a partial resemblance of what your product or service is. So go and understand them in a proper way. That's called a benchmark study they call third is you can use expert interview. See, when you gather a lot of insights from the people who are in that field or in your case, you can understand from your product manager, from your mentors, from your seniors, from the market, from the customer support or anything which is representing this data, interact with these people. Because you're not allowed to directly talk with your customers or other stakeholders, right? So it's good to talk with the experts who are in that field. Now you will gain a lot of understanding. You will understand the real need problems, the preferences, the goals, the aspiration of the user after this. Now you find out user Personas and empathy mapping. See, you can develop a Persona based, what you call Persona based user mapping. User Personas based on some data which is available with you in a demographic way. You can go to secondary online sources. You can do a market research, you can do a general market research and target certain users and try to create an ideal user Persona. Then you can able to build your empathy mapping. See, I'll tell you if you're not getting this exact customers, you can do it with your internal stakeholders like let's say sales, marketing. Sometimes they'll get more clarity, sometimes they will have a better understanding because they would have did some earlier projects with your client or your similar project line. So what happens is you will get more understanding. Now see, this is, this is the fourth best way you can able to do it. The fifth way is you can use a quantitative analysis. You can conduct some surveys, you can send out some interview forms. You can have some open ended and closed questions so that to involve more detailed discussion. Again you can do it with your open market. Again, you can do it with your generic market. Or again you can do it with your ideal target market. What you really assuming you don't have to go to the real user, okay? Because you have been masked, you are not allowed to go with and talk to the user. So you can conduct that. And the sixth way I would say is you can find out some a B split testing method. See, take an existing product set up very controlled experiment and compare the different design variations what you're making, okay? See, measure that particular impact on the user behavior. Because if you do a real time metrics on some user who are not your real target market, but your ideal target market could be you will have two different variations of your concept, okay, A B split Testing is very simple, guys. You have two concepts and then you parallel test it, which comes better. You take a design decision based on this. You clearly metricate it out with the conversion ratio or how the task is done by the user, how easier the user is able to evaluate and take the decision. So we take concept one or concept two better. That's called AB split testing. Okay. You know, put together, put to it in a very simple terms is a way but detailing definitely. It's a deep subject to learn. But on a surface level this is understanding. And you can use another method called remote user testing. Because sometimes you can use participants and understand them from a very distance, like let's say through zoom call, through teams call, through phone call, you can able to engage with them and you can assign certain tasks and interact with your prototypes, what you're making. And you can have some verbal conversation and feedback with them. And with that you'll be able to gain more insights, guys. And the sixth way I would say which you can do with your user is you can have a social monitoring, understand how people are really behaving, how people are commenting, how people are talking about certain products and services among them. See, if you go to social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Insta, you can see the product reviews and other things in a very detailed way. If you're able to understand this, you will be able to get more clarity on what is your similar competitor or your product is even behaving in that. Okay, this is the sixth way and the seventh way is read the specific user review of a product. This is, see monitoring is different, Understanding user review is different. Monitoring is just watching the patterns and trying to get some data, insights and gathering the information. Okay? Through this you can make a lot of sense for your project research. You don't need to do the real time client project. You don't need to go and talk with your real time client to understand this. With social monitoring itself you can understand like let's say if your product is banking app, go to a website, go to a LinkedIn page, go to a Facebook and then just try to understand what people are trying to talk about that product. Okay? And then you go for the user reviews, which is the seventh point. Go and understand the review of a product in Amazon or any other platform which you find is suitable. Talk to their customer care service. Okay, now you will get the reality of where the product is lacking, how you can improve, what is the bridge that you can make in order to crack it up. Okay, let me quickly repeat. You Guys. First is understanding the existing data sources. Second is doing a competitor analysis. Third is expert interview. Fourth is creating an ideal user Persona and empathy mapping. Fifth is doing a quantitative method and qualitative method in order to find more clarity on your sample users or the ideal users whom you are imagining. Sixth is using a social monitoring and seventh is understanding the user reviews. These are all the alternatives ways which you can do in order to get more research data which is not possible in the regular way. Okay, so don't be in a excuse mode saying hey, my, my customer is not allowing me, My client is not allowing me. Hey, how do I show it in my interview? How do I show it in my portfolio? How do I present this project to others? No, you can still do with this method and you can tell your team also that this communication and they'll be also getting aware of this is also an approach to approach this project. Okay, and sometimes your client will be really blown by this method. Sometimes your client will really appreciate you for taking this extra efforts to close this podcast. Let me give you a thought, guys. Go and understand why your client is not allowing you to talk to your customer. Tell the client that UX research is very important. Product research is very important. If you're not paying close attention to that, you will not get the proper quality output. But anyway, as a team we deliver the research data output and then we design the product using this seven alternate methods. But ideally speaking, you should tell your customer, hey, you need to allow us to do a proper research. Okay, this project is fine, but next project you should definitely allow because we need to get the actual primary information in order to design the product more effectively. You know what? Then the customer will get more conviction. Then the customer will see the importance of your work. Instead. If you say this in the first, hey, give me data, then I'll start the research. Customer will get really irritated because he doesn't know the importance of the research. He doesn't know the importance of UX research, He doesn't know the importance of Persona mapping, empathy mapping, all these things, right? So if you show something and then if you demand, you will have a great relationship with your client. Guys. Okay, I hope this podcast would have given you great clarity in understanding this methods in a detailed way. Okay, so implement this and take action then and only you see the emerging patterns and the trends, what you are really finding it out and then you'll be able to get more clarity over the process. Listening to this podcast will not change anything. Taking action and doing mistakes and improving over the time really makes a difference. If you need my support in doing all these things you can write to that email whatever we have given and then there is a free gift which I'm giving you guys for the recent episodes of the podcast. I'm just giving this gift and I'm not going to keep it forever. It's only for the few days so please click that. Avail the free gift of option and you can have a very very surprised freak for you guys. 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