Why User Research is must in Product Development

User research is generally known as the "sweet-spot" where Engineers and Designers find a common ground to better understand the Business context and where the needs of end-users overlap. If there is a business requirement for a feature to be developed or a functionality to be enhanced, developing personas and applying user-centric design methodologies to come up with a prototype (mid-way or a solution) are quite popular with the engineering-design community. Businesses find it the most appropriate way to achieve maximum in minimum time and customers love it because they find a working prototype close to their hearts early in the development lifecycle.

What most of us miss as part of achieving the Right solution is getting to know our end-users, their task-lifecycle (for which the solution is being developed) and their touch-points with the solution/ software. Why User research is not made a compulsory step in the solution-designing process is best known to the Product Designers but the lack of it definitely guarantees a weak start to understanding the problem. User Research methods provide a framework where end-user psychology can be better understood in terms of their Attitudes & Behaviours. This can be understood as What People Say vs. What People Do! (which in most cases is vastly different). While most usability studies should rely more on behaviour, methods that use self-reported information can still be quite useful to designers. For example, card sorting provides insights about users' mental model of an information space, and can help determine the best information architecture for your product, application, or website. Similarly, other models such as Surveys, A/B testing or eye-gazing try to analyse different dimensions of users' behavioor with the products.

Although many of the user research methods are backed by scientific researches, there are quite a few where just analysing the users and noticing their habits have led to breakthrough solutions. For that reason, user research methods are easy to implement, provide a good understanding of the users and can be achieved in a shorter intervals as part of the SDLC. To summarize it, the success of the product development will be determined by how much of an impact it has on improving the user experience of the website or product in question. User research techniques are meant to help you make the best choice at the right time.