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- How to Conduct User Research (for Product Managers)
How to Conduct User Research (for Product Managers)
Every early entrepreneur & product leader has made this user research mistake…
They’re going about their day…
Taking a shower or washing the dishes…
And suddenly it happens.
They get the world’s best product idea.
They’re super excited and begin building.
Weeks or months go by as they write code, make a website & get everything ready.
Thousands of dollars might be spent bringing the vision to life.
The day finally arrives to launch!
And… crickets.
No one’s buying.
The launch falls flat on its face.
What happened?
The leader skipped the most critical step in the product development process:
Vetting the product idea with the potential customer via thorough User Research.
3 Benefits of User Research
1. Validate your idea (or fail fast)
These conversations will quickly inform you whether you’ve truly hit a gold mine, or if you’re sitting on a dud. Either is a win, because even if your feedback is negative, you’ve saved tons of time and energy that can be poured into other great ideas.
2. Crowdsource your feature backlog
If you conduct these conversations correctly (I share how later in this post), you’ll get tons of great ideas for your product from these conversations. You may even learn that you have a slightly different ideal user, or multiple user groups that you can design for separately.
3. Build a list of ‘ready to buy’ customers
If you’ve found product/market fit, you will naturally turn these interviewees into ready to purchase customers. By the end of your user research process you’ll have a pre-vetted list of customers ready to buy once your product goes to market.
How to conduct User Research
1. Hypothesis: who is the ideal user for this product
The first thing you will do is create a hypothesis for what problem you are solving for what type of consumer. For this, you’ll need to define the following:
Who are they?
What is their age, demographic?
Where do they live? Where do they hangout (in person & online)?
What pains do they have?
How does my solution hypothetically fix this pain?
You should not be attached to this hypothesis, more so knowing that it will shift/transform as you conduct your research.
However, it is very important to go into these conversations with a product plan that is tangible enough to drive a valuable conversation. If the product hypothesis is not thought through, you will have a tough time conveying your pitch.
2. Make a conversation plan
Before you begin conducting these interviews, document the questions you want to cover.
You don’t need to robotically ask these questions in each interview, let it flow organically, and at the same time make sure to hit each of these categories to get the full picture from each user.
Questions to ask:
What are their pains as it relates to this product/pain you have identified
How does this show up in their life?
Is the pain financial, time, emotional, etc?
How does this pain affect the other tangential areas of their life?
What are they currently doing to address this pain?
What solutions have they tried?
Did it work?
What did they like about it? What did they hate
Where is their current approach not meeting the need?
How much are they paying for it?
What solution would you like to see to address this pain?
How much would that be worth to you?
Would you be interested in being one of the first beta testers for our new product?
3. Find these people
You now have a conversation framework to conduct your user research, it’s time to find these people.
If your personal network is made up of people from your target demographic, you're in luck.
However, do NOT use your network if they are not your ideal user.
This will skew the data, and set you on a sub-optimal course from the get go.
So, where can you find them?
Social Media
Groups on LinkedIn, Instagram/TikTok hashtags, online forums such as Reddit, YouTube comments, etc. are all great places.
Think about what content your ideal user is currently looking at online, and go there.
Network Referrals
While your personal network may not be your ideal user, they probably know people who are. Ask your network to introduce you to people who do fit the demographic.
Conferences
Attend a conference filled with your ideal user, set up a series of 5-10 minute interviews at a cafe nearby.
4. Get them to help you
Life is about relationships.
Lead with value. Whenever possible go out of your way to give these individuals something for their time.
If you find them online, review their profile, and think of creative ways you can help them. Sure, you could offer a $10 Amazon gift card, or more creatively a personal introduction to someone you think they’d benefit from meeting, sharing their recent LinkedIn post, etc.
Doing your homework on these individuals will help you find creative ways to add value to their lives, and make them much more likely to support you now and in the future as well.
This concludes all of my tips on effectively conducting User Research in preparation for launching a new product (or feature).
My hope is that these processes will save you countless hours of wasted time & resources, and help you build the right product from day 1.
Let’s go change the world!
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