User Research for Insight
25/06/2018
In the search for meaning behind behaviour, there are two golden paths - observation and helping people tell their story. The most common approach is to use 1:1 qualitative interviews. We also recommend fly-on-the-wall research, and spending a day in your customers shoes. These are all fast and accessible techniques. We're not recommending that these should replace your current data collection and analysis. What we are bringing is insight to tighten your value proposition, and transform your service delivery.
At Cucumber, our team uses a research-first approach to help shape your strategy. With user research projects, we typically follow this process:
Define stakeholders, success, and how we will measure progress
Prioritise stakeholders, and create a user research plan
Recruit research participants and complete user research
Capture key learnings, define themes, and then create strategic insights
Once we’re at this point, we have a clear understanding of the challenges and opportunities.
Next, we move into solutioning to understand the best way to leverage these insights. This includes ideation, validation and prototyping.
As is the case with research, it’s important to gain a neutral opinion or a reliable way to counter bias. We agree that you know a lot about your product or service. The challenge is that it's difficult not to cloud your view by the people, processes, and policies that sit behind your product / service. What you uncover through user research may not always be what you want to hear. Understanding your customers is the key in tailoring your strategy for lasting success.
If you’d like to learn more about Cucumber’s User Research services or have a chat to someone in the team, get in touch.
Written by Peter McHannigan