It is far better to adapt the technology to the user than to force the user to adapt to the technology.
Unless you measure the work you’re doing, it’s very difficult to improve the experience for your users without shooting in the dark. User research is all about communicating and building consensus between your stakeholders, developers, and designers. We use several methodologies to facilitate discussion between you and your users.
User research is an excellent way to define and make recommendations for new requirements. We conduct research through user and stakeholder interviews, where different users are selected to speak freely about their opinion of website, whether it suites their needs, and what can be done to make necessary improvements. This can also be done in focus groups or workshops. Contextual Inquiry is another method, where we follow a typical user through their normal daily workflow and pay attention to details of frustration. Personas and Scenarios can be developed to document our findings.
In user centered design, research is essential to creating a good user experience. Contrary to popular believe, you cannot improve usability without users to base it off of. Qualitative testing is the best way to uncover significant design flaws that cause major pain-points (which negatively effect your product). Most companies do not do user research, but those that do are often more successful because they understand their customer holistically and can make better design decisions and target their marketing more precisely.
The most effective method is to conduct user interviews, allowing us to gain insight into their hopes, dreams, thoughts, and ideas. From there, we can form personas to help your team understand who you’re working for.
Surveys are another excellent way to get in touch with your market and understand what they need and—most importantly—what they don’t need.
We can also analyze your website traffic to measure how most users behave when performing certain tasks.
