CHAPTER 24USER RESEARCH INSIGHTS: INTRODUCTION: Building and activating the portfolio of insights
What Is User Research?
User research is the discipline of gathering, curating, and tracking user insights. It allows you to develop a deep empathy for the user and guides all subsequent experience design activities. The discipline of user research requires a high degree of rigor, and when done correctly, it has far‐reaching effects, not only on the experiences you create for your users but also on your capacity for finding opportunity and mitigating risk.
1. The Impact of Research
No matter the field, intelligence is the basis behind every significant decision. Different types of organizations—military, financial, consumer goods—all depend on their intelligence analysts to collect data to derive meaningful insights. Where might product companies find such insights? User research.
Not investing in user research (due to its nature of delayed gratification) is a mistake because competitors can easily replicate small design attributes (visual, interaction) but can’t easily copy the research’s insights and organizational focus.
User research lays the critical foundation for all aspects of experience design by generating intelligence on who, what, how, and why to build. When user ...
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