Why does your startup need a UX Researcher?
“I am an entrepreneur and I have observed a need for my product in the market. All I need is a designer, a couple of developers and then we can test how the product works in the market after the launching the MVP (minimum viable product.)
Why do I need to hire a UX Researcher at this stage?”
I have heard many founders disregard the necessity and impact of hiring a User Experience Researcher (UXR) at the early stages of growing their start-up because of various reasons. Let’s go through some of the most common ones I have observed.
Founder doing the research
“As the founder and someone who has been in the field for many years, I understand the market and I do the research myself”
A lot of startup founders are convinced that there is a market need for their idea. It is obviously this conviction that motivates them to give up secure salaried jobs and lead ‘ramen profitable’ lifestyles to ensure the success of their company. A study conducted by CBInsights, which analysed 101 startups that failed, found out that “No Market Need” was the number one reason why startups failed!
A UXR can help set aside the biases that a founder conducting research for their own startup might have and help validate the identified problem or find the right problem to solve.
There are success stories like that of Airbnb’s where the founders were conducting field research themselves. In their case, they were the initial hosts on the platform. Not all founders are users of their product and experience the same pain points of their users.
I worked for an IoT startup where the two founders had more than 10 years of experience in the field and already founded other IoT companies of their own. They approached me with a market need they observed and asked me to find out if their idea will actually solve their users’ problem.
After the research, we were able to not just validate their idea but also uncover new problems that required a different business strategy that their initial idea did not consider.
There was also a founder, in an other startup I worked for, where they were convinced of their solution and delayed meeting the clients and testing it until proper design mocks were made. Imagine learning that some of the clients don’t even need the tool in the first place after spending the design team’s efforts on making it!
Founders need to be cognizant of the fact that having a lot of experience in one field can be a double edged sword, they could be in an information silo or have blind spots. A UXR can help them see with an unbiased lens.
Making the UX Designer do the research
Our designer does the research work needed for them to design the product and they also test their solution.
A researcher’s role is to find the right problem and a designer’s role is to find the right solution. Ideally, this process is collaborative where the researcher can help the designer get closer to the user and the designer can help make tangible solutions with the researcher’s recommendations.
There is a great risk of confirmation bias affecting how the research is being conducted if the designer has to conduct it themselves. Survey or interviews could have leading questions that could help validate the hypothesis of the designer instead of finding the right problem.
We humans have more than a 100 known biases and researchers, although not infallible, are trained to minimize them while conducting research.
However, in the event that your team does not have a dedicated researcher, the designer can certainly take on the responsibility of conducting foundational research prior to the product design phase. This research will help the designer gain insights into user pain points that need to be addressed and enable them to design task flows that align with user needs.
Misunderstanding what a UXR does
“I don’t have a product yet, what can the UXR test?”
UX Research isn’t just testing the usability and appeal of an interface; it is also a tool to guide product design and business strategy. This can be achieved by using various methodologies like field studies, diary studies, surveys and is not limited to interviews, usability tests or A/B testing.
For a startup, a UXR can help mitigate the risk of wasting away their funding trying to solve the wrong problem.
Not enough funding for UX Research
“We want a UX Researcher but it’s not our priority right now since we don’t have the funding for research”
If the problem is not having enough funding to hire a UX Researcher, you can always hire a freelancer as per your needs. I have worked with startups that hire me for single projects that help answer specific questions.
If the problem is not having enough funding to conduct the research, there are always scrappy ways of doing it that require almost no additional cost. You can send out surveys for free, you can interview known clients for free, you can test your prototype for less than $300!
Even if you compromise on getting the ideal participants or reaching more people with paid surveys, some good data is better than no data.
Asking users what they want kills innovation
“If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”
— Henry Ford
Some founders believe that user input should not be taken in the starting phase of the company because users don’t know what they want and it would kill innovation. This is a gross misunderstanding of what the user-centered process is about.
We don’t ask users for solutions. We ask them about the problems they are facing. The company still needs to innovate to find the right solution.
UX Research might not produce tangible assets for the company like a well-designed interface or the code of your product but skipping user research will often result in decisions that are driven by technical possibilities and not filtered by user goals.
Reworking code costs much more than the cost of research.
By doing user research in the preliminary rather than after the development phase, you’re mitigating hundreds of hours of rework in functionality and, in turn, saving your company money.
I am a User Experience Researcher with experience working for both start-ups and big tech. Let’s get in touch if you’re a founder and have a hypotheses you need to test! :)
