There can be many reasons why some people do not believe in UX research: a lack of understanding of what the researcher does, emphasis on short-term team goals, perception of research process complexity, conflicting stakeholder interests, and prior negative experiences with research.
A key single most important factor to a successful research study is team focus on the Outcomes (and not the Outputs), where people are not afraid to be wrong about their initial assumptions. Unfortunately, as a UX researcher, you can’t really control your stakeholder’s attitude towards research, nor you can change a Confirmation Bias (we tend to ignore evidence to favor information that supports our beliefs).
But there are factors that we can and should control, which will impact the success of a study:
- Narrative Bias (and “Leading the Witness”): We tend to rely on storytelling, instead of “storyfinding”, which doesn’t help to reveal our user’s paint points. It’s hard to say “no” to a well-trained elevator pitch that we’ve carefully prepared to convince people of the goodness of our design.
- Wrong Persona: Appropriate user group is crucial to get relevant data. It’s not easy to create an environment where you can have access to the right users any time you want, and that’s why a systematic research practice is crucial in an organization.
- Wrong Focus: Each research study should have a clear goal, and all individual sessions should be helping to collect data related to this goal. We tend to go too wide with the objective of our study, so the data we get became too complex to digest and understand.
- Wrong Methods: There is a reason why a variety of Quantitative and Qualitative studies exist. A method that is appropriate for one project can not be suitable for another one.
- Wrong Analysis: We need to be technical enough to understand the message that our technical users provide, or find an efficient way to deliver this message to our technical research stakeholders. Sometimes what we hear is not what our customers say.
- Insufficient Sample Size: I do believe that any research is better than no research at all, but an appropriate sample size of the research participants is often necessary to produce a high-quality research result and avoid bias.
Proper research practice provides accurate and reliable data that can inform and improve decision-making, builds trust, provides evidence-based design decisions, and leads to the development of products that are more effective, efficient, and user-friendly. By doing research properly, you can increase the validity and reliability of the findings and make informed decisions that drive the success of your products.