Back to the mission of the UXR in product research. UXR is here to help the team know the users and solve the right problems in the right way. Some of the factors to be considered for UXR:
Resources
How much time do we have for running the research?
Do we have a budget for running the research? e.g. for recruitment, engage agency, run research in other markets, etc
Methodologies
What would be the best way to answer the product question?
If the most suitable method isn’t applicable, what might be the alternatives?
Limitation
By making the compromises, what will be sacrificed?
Aligning the sacrifices with the team.
What can be answered from the research, and what can’t?
Product
It’s critical to understand the product to the level that the UXR can help the team identify the potential opportunities. There are commonly so many unknowns to be discovered in the product development process. But not all unknowns are equally important. Deep understanding of the problem space helps prioritize the unknowns, identify what are the crucial questions to be answered and find these answers to help the team make better decisions.
In product research, I ask following questions when planning the research or at least in parallel:
We may not have all the answers at once. By identifying what are the questions to be answered, what are the known facts, what is the goal to be achieved, how the path heading to the goal may look like, how do we measure success, and how our work may impact the business, together with the team, we are building something meaningful for the user, for the business, by the technology.
Learnings form 50+ mentorship practice in 2022
In the year of 2022 I took time talking to people who are interested in topics around Product, Design, Research, Career, Asia, etc. After 50+ conversations, I want to write down what I learned from these conversations.
