Importance of User Research for Enterprise UX Design

User research allows you to learn how customers engage with your product and how the design affects their overall experience. Understanding how your consumers use and engage with your platform will help you develop a better product that will benefit a wide spectrum of customers.

And for enterprise UX projects, designs without user research lead to huge wastage of resources and a negative impact on productivity.

In this article, we will explore what is user research and why it is important for enterprise UX projects. Let’s get started.

What is User Research?

User research is employing qualitative and quantitative research methods to better understand your end needs, user's motivations, behaviours, and experiences.

This research can be done with a variety of tools, ranging from published lab studies to asking customers for input. There are two types of research methods: attitudinal and behavioural, as well as qualitative and quantitative.

Why is User Research Crucial for Business?

You've probably put a lot of time and effort into product design and development, but releasing it without completing comprehensive user research can lead to failure.

User research, as part of broader market research, reveals how customers use and profit from your goods, allowing you to continually enhance and expand them. It enables you to assess their requirements, allowing you to innovate to stay ahead of the competition while keeping your existing clients happy with a product that is tailored to their demands.

Three Steps to a Successful Enterprise UX Research

When performing enterprise UX research, large corporations will come up with some unique obstacles. The last thing you want is to acquire research approval just to wind up with useless data. In this comprehensive article, we'll walk you through a process for conducting successful enterprise UX research in the workplace.

1. Prioritise Users Who Work Closely With the Products

Control, configurability, compliance, and the number of features are all factors that company leaders consider when purchasing software. People that use the software daily, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with one thing: getting things done successfully and efficiently.

The best method to reach end-users is to find and build relationships with the people and teams in charge of putting the product into place once it's been purchased. Offer to wait with them while they install, or simply offer them your email address in case they have problems (and assist them if they do!). These are the folks closest to the ground, and they are usually very concerned about their users' success.

2. Prepare a Concise Enterprise UX Research Plan

A strong business case in the form of an enterprise UX research plan helps deal with expectations and monitor the essentials to communicate to your clients and stakeholders. A good user research plan includes:

Background: This contains any project or team-related background documents.

Schedule and Methodology: This is a table containing the schedule that fills up when people are scheduled, as well as a brief explanation of the technique (what kind of research, how many users, the target market, and the location). This allows stakeholders to return to the same location to check on the planning's progress.

Goals: This part provides a high-level summary of the study's topics and serves as an excellent outline for the research script when it's time to write it.

3. Always Show Your Work

In smaller startup environments, “reports” are rarely needed by the product team. To improve products, researchers simply collaborate with product managers and their teams. But it’s not that straightforward with businesses.

The most crucial piece of advice we can give is to display your work.

No matter how convinced an organization is of the necessity for study, doubt will persist—especially if the findings are unsatisfactory.

Always start your reports with some background information. Reiterate some of the reasons for the importance of research.

Show images of the participants, videos of their most moving words, and your affinity diagram method in action (before and after whiteboard shots work well).

Word Of Caution

It’s generally better not to use all the research methods to solve a problem. Too many data sources can be as perplexing as too few, and you don’t want your team members to become overwhelmed by the many data collection methods.

Why Should You Not Skip Enterprise UX Research?

One of the main reasons why you should not skip enterprise UX research is that it helps you gather important insights and feedback from your target users. User research allows you to speak directly with potential users of your product and get their feedback on how well your product meets their needs. This feedback helps inform every aspect of your product design, including its features, user experience, and marketing.

Another reason why skipping enterprise UX research is a bad idea is that it helps you avoid making assumptions about your users' needs or preferences. Many product teams make the mistake of assuming that they understand what their target users want without actually getting feedback from them. This often leads to products being built that don't really meet their users' true needs.

Furthermore, by skipping enterprise UX research, you miss out on learning more about how different groups of users perceive your product. While a feature might be well-received by one group of users, it could frustrate another group who have very different expectations and motivations for using it. Understanding these differences can help you design better products overall.

Takeaways

User research is a powerful technique for improving the user experience and business value of enterprise products. Unfortunately, many businesses have lost sight of this point, and research has developed a negative reputation as a result.

Your firm will become more open to a complete research-driven product development approach as you gain momentum with each incremental result. Entrust your enterprise UX research needs to Octet Design Studio. We help extract valuable insights by digging deep into users' needs, motivations, and pain points. Visit our website to know more!