In today’s market, every company has at least a few competitors fighting for their customers’ business. And that means consumers can afford to be picky.
Studies show that 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs. And one of the best ways tech companies can do that is by carrying out continuous user research.
But how do you make the best use of your investment?
To find out, I caught up with Nikki Anderson, Founder of User Research Academy, for our latest episode of Airtime. Together, we talked about some of the traps people fall into when they get started with continuous user research. And, most importantly, how to avoid them.
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One of the easiest traps to fall into is research for research’s sake. You’re talking to customers regularly, but your conversations aren’t driven by a clear goal.
“I’ve seen continuous research fall into a trap when it’s like, let’s have three calls a week with customers,” says Anderson. “And unfortunately, sometimes what that can lead to is 30 minute calls with no goals, no note taking, no synthesis, no tying back to any particular objectives or outcomes or anything like that.”
“We are just going out and just chatting with people without much intention behind it. And I think that can be actually rather detrimental, both to an organization and making decisions, as well as to user research.”
The key to avoiding this trap is obvious. Before jumping on any calls with your customers, set some clear goals to define what you hope to learn.
Anderson says, “If you have this goal which is more about understanding how people think about a problem, and then seeing if your solution fits into that problem space, then you’re more likely to ask open-ended and less biased questions.”
We’ll talk more about how to avoid bias questions in trap three. But first …
When it comes to user research projects, product managers often make the mistake of thinking they know best. (Sorry, but it’s true!)
As Anderson explains, “I worked at a travel organization and we didn’t have that much of an understanding about our users. So constantly, we had this gap in knowledge about who our users are. What are they doing on our platform? How are they navigating? What are their pain points? And at first my PMs came to me and they were like, hey, we need personas.”
At this point, many people would dive straight into the project, only to discover later that personas were the last thing the team really needed.
Thankfully, Anderson knows better than that.
Next time your product manager comes to you saying they need a survey, or focus group, or persona, ask them what they’re looking for as an outcome.
Anderson says that, when she quizzed her product manager on their goals for the persona project, they said things like:
By asking this one question, Anderson realized that what was really needed was a walk-the-store interview. This would allow customers to walk them through the last time they used the platform, shining a light on all the things the team wanted to know.
So, if you really want to make your research valuable, start with your desired outcomes and then choose your methodology.
If you ever find yourself asking customers questions and hoping for a certain answer, then you’ve fallen for trap number three.
“I’ve seen people go into these casual conversations with customers,” says Anderson, “and they’re like, ooh, I have an idea for a feature!”
This quickly snowballs into a string of leading questions:
“[These are] really leading kinds of questions that are a little bit more steeped in that confirmation bias world where we’re hoping that our baby of an idea is loved by everybody,” says Anderson. “So, when we don’t actually put the rigor behind the research, it can kind of fall apart.”
If you want to stop asking leading questions and make your research more valuable, you need to start using the TEDW framework.
Here’s what it stands for:
“What these kinds of phrases do is they tell your participant how you want them to respond,” says Anderson. This, in turn, makes your questions less biased and your customers’ answers more meaningful.
Let’s take a basic example: “How do you feel about our new feature?” It’s an OK question, but the answer is likely to be short and, in terms of providing value to your team, pretty shallow.
Now, if you apply the TEDW framework to that, you could say this instead: “Walk me through your first experience with our new feature.” Suddenly, you’re giving your customer license to take you on a journey and dive into the details.
Try it yourself. You won’t be disappointed.
Continuous user research is essential for keeping your product ahead of the competition. But there are plenty of traps that can catch you out if you’re not careful.
But if you set clear goals, focus on outcomes before methodologies, and use the TEDW framework to avoid leading questions, then you’re sure to get a lot of value out of your work.
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