Entrepreneurs’ compass: User experience survey
Eureka! One day you can be enlightened as Archimedes when bathing; you may think that you have found the perfect idea to solve people’s problems and meet their needs. In the next few steps, you may need to finalize your ideas and find an investor. For most entrepreneurs, this is how the process works. While some might find someone to invest in their idea as a result of much effort, others find an investor in the first three attempts. Then what? You turn your idea into a product or service, and you offer it to your users. We’ve come to the most exciting point! Will your users use your product or service?
Maybe you’ve never asked this question until this point. Depending on the experience of many entrepreneurs in different areas, many different predictions can be made on the answer to this question: Your users may love your product or service and be a part of your permanent audience.
Your users may love your product or service, but after a while, they might forget about it. If we come to one of the worst scenarios, your users can just look at your product or service and forget about it completely. Unfortunately, this is one of the most bitter truths for entrepreneurs. However, my goal is not to draw a pessimistic picture; on the contrary, to allow entrepreneurs to involve the user experience research to avoid confronting this painful reality and to reach a satisfactory result.
At this point, you might be thinking that you don’t have enough money and time for research and on top of that the investor would want to see something tangible. You might ask yourself “Where can we investigate? I would say that without any insight into your users, it will most likely cost you much more time and money than the user experience research methods I’ll share below.
Persona
The personas used in user experience research are tools that help you identify your target audience. Persona is a fictional presentation of a group of users based on data from real people. Demographic information (age, gender, educational status, occupation, marital status, etc.) matches the needs, motivations, and problems of your product or service. Making assumptions about who might be the target user for your product or service, and converting your assumptions into a concrete format helps clarify the big picture. For example; Let’s say that you are planning to develop a mobile application where people can share the second-hand items that they don’t use. Do you think that women or men would use this application the most? What would be the age range of users of this application? Does it cater to users with high socioeconomic status or the ones in lower statuses? You can create personas by directing these and similar questions to yourself and your team. The staff will create the needs of your users, their motivations, their habits and so on. Although it doesn’t help you with the details, it allows the team members to meet their assumptions in a single place. You can also create more than one persona to represent differentiated users. For example; for the application for the sale of second-hand goods, you suppose that university students and homemakers will be your users. So, you create an Ahmet (23) persona representing university students; Gülcan (34), who represents homemakers. After that, you can gather the characteristics of these two groups under these two personas. Thus, when you use one or more of the research methods which I share below, with very little effort you will be able to identify individuals who are your target customers.
Netnography
Netnography is a method to observe the behaviors of individuals on online platforms (such as Facebook groups, forums) and to collect qualitative data about these behaviors. This method, which can be utilized without getting on the field and meeting with the participants, is both a time and budget-friendly solution. At a time when we assume that people are having a problem and we’re about to develop solutions to this problem, this research method truly enables us to determine whether or not this problem is really happening. If we continue with the above example, it may be possible for you to determine the needs, issues, and motivations of the users that you want to reach by becoming a member of an existing group where the second-hand goods are exchanged, shared or sold, and by observing the users behavior within these groups. For example; a user wants to sell his television and has posted in a group. Under the ad, you notice that there are many people who like it and would like to purchase it, however, you also see comments that say that they can’t find a cheap shipping option for the TV. So you’ve discovered that people buying second-hand goods have a problem with the cost of shipping. In the next step, you can add a feature that will solve this problem for the product you are developing, and you end up completing one of the steps to create a product that would appeal to real users.
Survey
Surveying is a more familiar research method and does not take much time and easily reaches many users. Even though this method is not ideal when in-depth data collection is needed, it is a method that allows you to see if your assumptions are correct and it can be used as a mediator when a difference of opinion arise within your team. The questionnaire can consist of open and closed-ended questions. The closed-ended questions are ones that can be answered “yes” or “no”. Open-ended questions, on the other hand, allow participants to express themselves. You can create an online survey and make it available to many people. If you want to know how often people exchange second-hand goods, you can add options such as “once a week ”, “more than once a week”, and, “once a month.” If you would like to learn why they prefer to use second-hand goods, you can ask “What are the reasons for your preference in using second-hand goods?”. You can add possible answers such as “It is cheap” or “I am looking for something temporary.” When preparing questions and options, it is vital to act as impartial as possible and ask more general questions that do not manipulate participants.
One-on-One Interview
Unlike the survey method, in one-on-one interviews, open-ended questions are asked to the participants, and they are expected to tell stories specific to the topic. This method, which is effective for in-depth understanding, gives us insight into the attitudes of individuals rather than their behavior. Questions are prepared prior to the meeting. It is essential that the questions are as open-ended as possible and not manipulative. For example, instead of the question ”Do you like product A?” asking “Would you share your opinion of product A?” is a question that is more objective and does not guide the user. In the first question, the participant may leave the possibility of not liking the product. At the same time, the most frequently yet faulty question is “Would you use such a product?” and it should be avoided at all times. It is often not consistent when users are predicting their future behavior, and for this reason, it may be good to remember that they are living with the problem and not developing the product. In light of these facts, questions are prepared and a comfortable environment is created to help the participants focus. It is extremely critical that the interviewer by making eye contact and using body language effectively makes the participants feel that what they are sharing is being heard. One of the methods that can be used to analyze the data obtained after the interviews and to reach meaningful results is the correlation diagram. All the meaningful data obtained from the interviews are written to post-its. Team members associated with the project come together and group post-its according to their associations. In this way, by looking at your correlation diagram, you will be able to see in a single frame what different participants think about similar situations and what they experience.
Closed Observation
Closed observation is a method in which participants are observed in the context of research-related situations. It can be said that it is a method of collecting insights about individuals’ behavior. Participants are not aware of their observation. Therefore, it is a method that requires the observation to be conducted sensitively. Ethical rules which are taken as a basis in all research processes should be considered more carefully when performing a closed observation. Any behavior that may disturb the participants should be avoided and the data collected during the observation should be kept a secret when the data is shared with others. At the same time, recording a closed observation is not ethically correct. Here is an example of an observation process that you can conduct by adhering to these rules:
Suppose we want to understand the needs, motivations, and problems of individuals in the coffee-buying process and want to design an appropriate coffee-buying experience. You can observe this experience by allocating 2- 3 hours at each coffee shop. In this way, you will gain insights into what individuals pay attention to when buying coffee, what problems they face, and many other issues.
These methods, which I have briefly summarized, are some of the leading methods that can be conducted by reading up on them and getting a little support from people who are qualified in this field. I think it is necessary to emphasize this as I finish. By devoting time to these methods, the insights you have gained about your users will illuminate the way you are progressing and support you as you strive to be successful.