User research is a cornerstone of successful product management, providing key insights that drive UX enhancements and product decisions. However, without a clear direction, user research can feel like an overwhelming task.

To streamline the user research process and gather meaningful insights from the start, it's essential to have a structured approach. Let’s dive deeper into how product managers can effectively conduct user research and choose the right techniques and tools to support their goals.

Start with a Clear Objective: Three Key Questions

Diving headfirst into user research without a defined goal is like getting the news from social media—you may grasp the gist but miss critical details. Before diving into user research, ask yourself these three crucial questions:

1. What are you trying to learn?

The first step in any user research project is to determine the focus. As a product manager, you might want to explore topics like:

• Understanding the meaning behind the user’s decisions and why they will make certain actions.
• What’s the best pricing model for your business, what appeals to the user? Subscription? One-time fee? Per service?
• Determining how to increase user retention and drive product upgrades.
• Segmenting and profiling different types of users. Different users require different solutions, ask why?

Prioritising these topics is crucial since you can't tackle them all simultaneously. Striking a balance between addressing immediate user needs and aligning with long-term product strategies is key to successful research planning.

2. Why do you need to learn it?

Understanding the importance of your user research project will help you:

• Communicate the Value: Clearly articulate the purpose, expected outcomes, and potential impact of your research. This will help secure buy-in from your team and stakeholders, without resorting to jargon.Tip: Try presenting this in more engaging ways outside of a PowerPoint presentation. Try sharing clips of user feedback, collating common problems or needs from users. With this focus in mind will help your narrative when securing business buy-in.
• Select the Right Techniques and Metrics: When you know the purpose behind your research, it’s easier to decide on the appropriate user research techniques and which key metrics to focus on. If you require user behaviour data on how your website performs, try getting screen recordings backed up with web analytics when conducting your research.

3. When do you need it?

Ideally, user research projects would fit seamlessly within your company’s sprint cycles, allowing you to create a comprehensive annual research roadmap. However, real-world constraints often require flexibility.

If your research doesn't align perfectly with sprints, consider adjusting your definition of completion. Instead of waiting for a final project report, share incremental findings, such as early insights or new questions that arise during the research process. Using unmoderated and/or remote user research techniques often expedites the survey process, saving you and your participants hours of research time.

Find the Best User Research Techniques for Your Objective

Once you have defined a clear research objective, the next step is to choose the right techniques and tools to achieve it. Here’s how to align your research methods with your objectives:

Quantitative and Qualitative Research: A Powerful Combination

For comprehensive insights, consider combining quantitative and qualitative research techniques. Qualitative research is much more valuable and will help you build out your product and features, whilst quantitative research will help validate and get a general consensus surrounding your research. As a rule of thumb quantitative research should be conducted at the start and end of a research cycle.

Here’s how to effectively use both types of research:

Understanding User Decision-Making

• Use tools like video feedback/interviews to analyse how users interact with your product and webpages. Combine this with open-ended surveys to gather feedback on areas where users may have questions or concerns, providing insights into what drives their decisions.

Identifying Reasons for User Drop-Off

• Session recordings can help you observe user behaviour on specific pages, identifying points of friction or UX issues. Use these insights as a foundation for further research, such as interviews or surveys, to understand why users may be abandoning your site.

Analysing User Segment Behaviour

• Conducting user interviews across different user segments can reveal varying preferences and motivations, helping you tailor your product to meet the diverse needs of your audience.

Consider Your Constraints

When planning user research, it’s important to start with your ideal scenario but be mindful of constraints such as time, budget, tools, and support.

For instance, if you're facing a tight deadline before a product launch, prioritise research that directly impacts conversion rates, even if it means allocating additional resources. Alternatively, for longer-term projects, you might opt for a series of smaller research initiatives spread out over time.

Engage Stakeholders Early

To ensure alignment and adoption of your research findings, involve stakeholders early in the process. Keep them informed about your goals, methods, and sources of data, which will help you avoid misalignment and ensure that the insights you uncover are actionable and widely supported.

Focus on Actionable Insights

The ultimate goal of user research is to generate insights that inform product decisions and enhance the user experience. Here are three strategies to ensure your research remains actionable:

1. Evaluate Results in Phases: Instead of waiting until the end of your research to evaluate data, review it in phases. This allows you to make informed decisions earlier in the process and adjust your research direction if needed.
2. Align Metrics with OKRs: Ensure that your research metrics are aligned with your team's objectives and key results (OKRs). Whether you're focusing on increasing upgrades or justifying a site redesign, aligning your research with broader company goals will make your findings more impactful.
3. Translate Insights into Challenges: Present your research findings as challenges to be addressed, rather than just data points. This approach encourages collaboration and drives actionable outcomes, ensuring that the insights you’ve gathered lead to tangible improvements.

Choosing the Right Tools for User Research

The effectiveness of user research is often determined by the tools you use. Leveraging advanced user research tools can provide deeper insights, helping you uncover and address user needs with precision. Whether you're conducting remote research, unmoderated testing, or collecting video feedback, the right tools can make all the difference. Which is why we created Emble, to streamline and provide efficiency to the user research process.