Member-only story
The business value of UX research
This is a part of my class Assignment at UW Madison.
Time for a Kutty(Small) Story:
In my professional experience, while working as a Frontend Developer in a startup, I found myself in a team with diverse backgrounds. Two of us came from business backgrounds, while the other two were developers. With only four of us on the team, after completing the initial documentation, we immediately delved into the development of a new tool. Our shared goal was to create a tool that could streamline and improve the often tedious hiring process. Despite our lofty ambitions, we initially overlooked a crucial question: ‘What do users truly want?’
As we began promoting the tool, we received a barrage of feedback indicating that it did not fully meet the needs of our users. This was a pivotal moment that led us to reevaluate our approach. We decided to go back to the drawing board and take a more user-centric approach. To do this, we brought in a user experience designer, and together, we began collecting valuable data from the hiring companies (who were our primary clients).
This decision proved to be immensely beneficial, as it allowed us to define the Unique Selling Point (USP) of our tool with precision. We decided to exclusively connect trained professionals fresh out of training camps or bootcamps with companies that prioritize specific skills. Even though we had invested significant development hours that could have been saved with upfront user experience research, we started seeing income pour in through tool sales.
In Conclusion — This experience marked a turning point for us, underscoring the critical importance of user experience in the success and business of our product.
