User Interview — What are they for?
I’ve previously written about my experience with starting and conducting user interviews. Yet, the true challenge lies in utilizing the research findings to enhance the product. In this post, I’ll delve into how I effectively leverage user research outcomes to optimize product development.
First off, let’s take a peek at the goals I established for the Qualitative research.
Objectives:
- Gain insights into user behaviors spanning pre-operation, operation, and post-operation phases.
- Outline the user journey throughout the entire process, from pre-operation to post-operation.
- Pinpoint common personas among our merchant partners.
- Uncover potential usability issues that users could face throughout the journey.
And now, let’s take a look at what we discovered through our User research, aligned with those objectives.
The outcomes
- Personas — Who are our merchants?
2. The user journey — Merchants’ activities & their pain points
3. Device evaluation — Device value to our merchants
What next?
So, how do we put these findings to work? What’s their purpose? Well, beyond just identifying user issues and needs, it’s crucial to pinpoint the key challenges that will make the biggest impact.
As the saying goes, “He who sees through life and death will meet with the most success.”
Trying to fix every single problem is a never-ending game. Our resources are limited. Therefore, we must concentrate on the 20% of situations that generate 80% of the outcomes.
Following the Peak-end rule, people don’t assess an experience based on the average of all individual moments. Their minds heavily emphasize those that leave the strongest impression.
Rank the priority based on the severity of the issues
My ultimate aim is to categorize issues by their severity, pinpointing exactly which problems should take precedence. This approach prevents us from losing direction, as it clarifies our target audience and purpose. To achieve this, we rely on the framework below, crafted by Amy Nguyen, which serves as a handy tool for designers to effectively convey the rationale behind our priorities to Product Managers, Engineers, and QA teams.
We measure how serious a problem is by looking at how visible and usable it is. We find out how visible it is through Qualitative research, and we understand its impact on users by using Quantitative research.
Rank the priority based on how much each user segment affects the business
During the preparation phase of the User interview, we collaborated with other stakeholders to define our user segments. These definitions can later be aligned with the User personas in the report, allowing us to gain a clear understanding of our users’ profiles, needs, and challenges.
This approach enables us to identify the problems that carry greater significance for the business, particularly focusing on segments that offer more advantages to the company.
And more…
Furthermore, by aligning user personas with the value of the device, we can shed light on the reasons behind specific features required by users on both mobile and web portals, as they work towards achieving their objectives using these devices.
Finally, these findings will be communicated with team members and other stakeholders. Each department will take the lead in addressing the issues. Being aligned with our colleagues and stakeholders is crucial. It ensures that we’re all united towards a common objective: delivering maximum value to our customers and maintaining their loyalty.
