Great researchers know that it’s not enough to simply understand user’s current behaviour – what they are doing.  You need to understand how the user’s current experience is shaped by the context of use, their task and experience goals, their frustrations and their emotional pain-points.

To achieve this a researcher must be able to empathise with the participant – to understand not only what participants are doing, but also what they are thinking and feeling…objectivity and impartially.

Prejudices, preconceptions, norm and values must be discarded.  To properly understand their motivations and attitudes, researchers must see the world from the user’s perspective; to climb out of their own and their client’s echo chamber and ask the right questions of the right people in the right way – appropriate to the context.

This is not about gathering information on requirements, it’s about solving user problems by placing yourself in their reality and seeing the world from their perspective.  These users may not have the faintest idea what solutions are possible, so don’t ask them what they want or ask how they want to get there.  Instead understand where they want to get to.  It’s the job of the researcher to use creative research techniques to extract insights and lay out the path of opportunities that can lead to prototype solutions.

If there’s one thing critical to achieve this, it’s empathy.

This holds wherever creativity is required.  As Susan Sarandon observed; “When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.”

It has become almost a cliché to recall that Steve Jobs was totally against market research and never needed to do any.  His quotes on the subject have turned into a view widely held by many that no consumer research is necessary.

In fact, Jobs’ observations were about not asking customers what they want because they don’t know until you show it to them.  And this is the nub of the issue.  Good research is about asking the right questions of the right people in the right way to understand their behaviours, attitudes, habits, values, norms, beliefs and routines.  In other words, to understand their lives and what makes them tick to identify their frustrations, pain-points and un-met needs.

Consider the recent launches of very expensive, full-frame, mirrorless cameras by both Canon and Nikon that featured just one card slot.  This caused both consternation from those who feel two card slots are a minimum requirement in case of card failure (especially at the price points concerned) and ridicule of that consternation by others insisting they have never had a card fail and therefore it never happens…to anyone.

This argument in the photographic community has blown up into a huge issue with its own momentum.  There has even been a meme of someone taping two film canisters to the outside of a film camera trying to imply it was not a problem in the days of film.  Well, it was, which was why in the days of film pros always used multiple film camera bodies at events, in case of problems.

Interestingly, differing perspectives on the slots issue seems to be driven by the modern phenomenon of the ‘fanboi’ or ‘fangirl’; the allegiance-driven psychology of defending the ecosystem that’s been bought in to (often literally) and dismissing any objective analysis or counter position that might conflict with the fan’s subjective stance.  Some companies, in some industries, may depend on such unyielding loyalty to ameliorate shortcomings in their products and services, but it is likely to lead to a long-term decline in fortunes.

So, what could UX research have done to eliminate such user frustrations and pain-points?  Fundamentally, it comes down to posing the right questions of the right people in the right way.

Who ultimately decided that one card slot was “good enough” and how was their decision informed?  How deeply were users engaged in the design process?  Critically, what iterative testing processes and prototyping was undertaken and with whom?

Was the research unbiased or was designed to lead to a pre-determined result or, worse still, designed to validate a position already taken? Or was any research undertaken at all during product development?  Too often research stops at the un-met need.  Good user research takes the opportunities derived from insights and prototypes and tests, tests and tests again…with users.

It’s a myth that Apple doesn’t do research.  It does and always has.  It succeeds by focussing on understanding the user in the round, where they suffer frustrations, inconveniences, pain-points in their lives and uses these insights to create and inform opportunities that could appeal to archetypal users exploiting new products and services that are tested and improved through iterative evaluation and prototyping.

Research is not a bolt-on extra, it needs to be integral to the design process.  Well-designed research delivers well-designed products and services.