Research should be established as an ongoing cycle, one that is woven into the fabric of the company, and should never drop-off nor be simply ‘tacked on’ as acceptance testing after launch. User research is imperative to the success and prioritization of any software application–or any product, for that matter. The article then addresses some of the challenges around being able to automate, scale, document, and share these efforts as your user base (hopefully) increases.įinally, the article goes on to propose a methodology that allows for an adjustable balance between a department’s user research and product design and highlights the evolution of trends, best practices, and common avoidances found within the user research industry, especially as they relate to SaaS-based products.

It first outlines a point of advocacy around why it is important to build user research into a company’s ethos from the very start and states why relying upon standard analytics packages are not enough. This article is targeted at user experience practitioners at small- to mid-size companies who want to incorporate a component of user research into their workflow. Recruiting, screening, and scheduling daily or weekly one-on-one walkthroughs can be daunting for someone in a small department having more than just user research responsibilities, and the investment of time eventually outweighs the returns as both the number of participants and size of the company grow. Yet, it is hard to both establish and sustain a continued voice amongst the business of our schedules. An important part of any user experience department should be a consistent outreach effort to users both familiar and unfamiliar.

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