TOP 5 CHALLENGES FACED BY UX DESIGNER / TEAMS AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM

1) Inclusion with the product development process

Involving research as early as possible is integral to the success of a product; it allows user insight to guide the process before any heavy investment is made into the development of certain products or features. This should avoid any costly mistakes and ultimately save the company money, time, and resources right from the discovery phase.

How to solve it-

By sharing early research, planning, and communicating with colleagues what you’re planning to explore right from the start is the best way to start including UX designers and teams in the product development process. If you plan your research activities in advance, it will be easier to figure out how to include research within the product development lifecycle.

2) Lack of time

Designers are often under pressure to deliver designs and always in catch-up mode because engineers are waiting for deliverables, and inevitably it's user research that’s compromised or sacrificed. This is the worst thing that can happen when you start delivering designs without necessarily knowing whether it’s the right thing you should be building for your customers.

How to solve it-

If you are working with Agile, you should figure out how to do research, even if it’s just on a small scale. Find a way to get rapid, interactive feedback from your customers. Whether working in an Agile or not, you could also run a research road-mapping workshop, which brings all the stakeholders together and you try to understand all their business problems and you create a roadmap to solve them. This will help you figure out how best to integrate research into the development process.

3) Working on a limited budget for user research

As per userzoom’s research, most of their respondents reported that budgets have remained the same (32%) of overall challenges, while only 13% are seeing a slight increase. However, 65% of their respondents say there has been an increase in demand for UX research. If budgets are staying static or only slightly increasing, but the demand is growing dramatically, then how can effectively UX research even hopes to scalable?

How to solve it-. If budgets are limited, you can still find small-scale ways to integrate user research. Even if it’s just a single round of un-moderated studies with only five participants, every insight counts and will ultimately help you deliver value.

Download a free 21 UX Research Method Guide Book

4) Difficult to source participants when your product or service is a niche

Recruiting participants are always one of the most persistent pain points in conducting user research and usability testing. In the state of UX in the Enterprise survey by userzoom, it’s the number two toughest challenge, faced by 43% of our respondents.

Well, you could probably find as many users as you like spreading the net as wide as possible and offering generous incentives, but you won’t necessarily find the ‘right’ participants. These are the people who will offer you valuable, actionable, and objective insight. These might be your existing customers, or if your product is new, people who might hopefully use your product. Complexities occur, however, when your product or service is a niche and therefore the general population just can’t offer enough of your target users.

5) You are all alone

You may also find problems if you’re a team of one, or if you’re working within Agile sprints, and you simply don’t have the bandwidth to source the right people.

How to solve both-

The simplest route to solving this challenge is to use a platform that can source participants for you. For instance, usersoom.com has more than 120 million participants spread across the globe to pick and choose from, so this can significantly scale your remote research projects.

But even with a giant pool of people to pick from, you will still need to focus on clarifying your target demographic; the so-called ‘right’ participants.

Well, a good place to start is by creating an effective screener (or screener question). This is an opportunity for you to have a bit more control over who carries out your test before they begin. This will also help you filter out anybody who wouldn’t necessarily be right for it, ensuring you’re gaining insights from only the most valuable and relevant participants.

Download a free 21 UX Research Method Guide Book