Random Thoughts
July 25, 2023
I have written much about why you, as brands/businesses, should make UXR (User eXperience Research) a vital part of the process for forming business strategies on a continual basis. But what I have not written much about is what kinds of UX research you should be allocating your budget on. So let us cover that this week.
Target customer motivational segmentation and immersion: This is not exactly UX research, but it is vital to perform an immersion research on your target customers to gain a comprehensive picture on their needs and expectations when it comes to your products/services, thereby allowing you to devise an effective UX/UI strategy. It is important to realize also that your target customers do not act homogeneously and there are different subgroups each with different needs and expectations. It is therefore critical to have this customer immersion research produce a segmentation of your target customers, particularly using “usage motivation” as the core differentiator (as I have written before in previous “Random Thoughts” post). Gaining a clear understanding of how many motivational subgroups there are and what each of their expectations and needs are would go a long way to help you to create an inclusive UX/UI strategy.
UX/UI prototype testing and optimization: Once you have the UX/UI prototypes produced (and hopefully based on the customer immersion research I suggested earlier), it is important to test them in front of your target customers and get their reactions to them. This will serve as a powerful guide to the UX/UI design process, ensuring that you are on the right track each step of the way, and helping you achieve cost-effectiveness at the end. Imagine if your UX/UI design does not meet your target customers’ needs, then you will need to spend a fortune redesigning it and not to mention potentially ruining your business in the end. It is important to note that the earlier in the design process you test the prototypes (even at the wireframe or mockup stages), the better and more cost-effectiveness you will achieve at the end. And ideally, this type of target customer testing should be performed multiple times during the design process—at least twice (once at the mockup stage focused more on the design direction; and another with the working prototype more focused on usability issues).
Ongoing UX/UI performance tracking and monitoring: It is important to realize that UXR (or end-user research in general) is not a one-time process but should be performed on an ongoing basis, especially with the ever-changing technology scene and the emergence of generative AI. From my experience, end-users' expectations and needs are often reshaped by the environment (in this case, the introduction of new technologies). Needless to say, maintaining an ongoing feedback loop with your target customers is imperative to stay ahead of any potential shifts in their preferences and behavior. This can be easily done with periodic (every quarter) qualitative interviews with a small sample of both your existing customers and non-users. For this, I would even suggest tracking the same set of existing customers and non-users throughout the year to see how their preferences and behaviors change over time, yielding even more game-changing insights.
Now that I have highlighted the three critical business areas to perform UXR on, I am sure you are wondering how much all these costs if you were to outsource the UXR (which I will always recommend doing so as I have written in previous posts). Don’t worry, it is not as much as you think it in your mind, there are ways to creatively do this that will achieve results at minimum costs.
So let me give you a sense of the costs of all this research I mentioned above. Let’s assume they are all conducted in a year, and only in two or three key markets (defined as revenue-leading and trend-setting), and more weighted across the key customer segments (obviously the largest segment, and maybe even those key growth segments). The highest range would likely only be around USD 140K. It is well worth it considering the impact the resulting data would have on your business performance.
Well, that’s my two cents for now. Hopefully, as always, it’s been helpful to you. Do feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts. As importantly, remember to follow us on our LinkedIn page for more! Until next time!
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