Random Thoughts
March 15, 2023
I was at a seminar last week and many asked what I do for a living, but when I answered “end-user research”, I get a sense that not many know exactly what that is. And it dawns on me that “end-user research” is just not a familiar term. So this week, I want to go backward and cover the basics of it.
First off, let’s make clear that “end-user research” is a term I used to differentiate our services from what is more commonly known as “consumer research” or “marketing research”. To me, the term “end-users” enlarges our service scope to cover also UX/UI research, whereas “consumer/marketing research” is more associative with marketing and branding related topics.
Now, there are two main types of end-user research—quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative approach, as the name suggests, is about quantifying data of a market and/or topic that you already have a pretty good understanding of. It takes on the form of a questionnaire-based survey (with a fixed set of answer choices for each question) conducted over a large sample size (at least 100 end-users to have statistically significant results).
On the other hand, for a market or topic that you know very little about, qualitative approach is usually the better choice. It takes on the form of in-depth and less structured discussions with target end-users and requires professional moderators who are fluent with probing techniques to do the job.
It must be reminded that quantitative and qualitative approaches are not mutually exclusive, in fact, they are often used in combination. Imagine a scenario where you want to find out whether there are any unmet need(s) for a specific market sector amongst a specific set of target end-users, and whether the unmet need(s) yields a significant market size worthwhile to develop products for. In this case, qualitative focus groups or in-depth interviews would be utilized first to uncover any unmet needs, and then quantitative survey would be conducted after to estimate the potential market size of any unmet need(s).
And there you have it, that is “end-user research” in a nutshell. As always, please feel free to comment, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. And remember to follow us on our socials for more. Enjoy!
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