A common misconception is that user research involves asking customers to design the product. This is wrong. The process is a clear division of labor: customers articulate their problems and pain points. Your team's role is to then use its expertise and resources to devise the best solution.
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Asking users for solutions yields incremental ideas like "faster horses." Instead, ask them to tell detailed stories about their workflow. This narrative approach uncovers the true context, pain points, and decision journeys that direct questions miss, leading to breakthrough insights about the actual problem to be solved.
To get unbiased user feedback, avoid asking leading questions like "What are your main problems?" Instead, prompt users to walk you through their typical workflow. In describing their process, they will naturally reveal the genuine friction points and hacks they use, providing much richer insight than direct questioning.
Users aren't product designers; they can only identify problems and create workarounds with the tools they have. Their feature requests represent these workarounds, not the optimal solution. A researcher's job is to uncover the deeper, underlying problem.
Standard discovery questions about 'pain points' are too broad. Instead, focus on concrete 'projects on their to-do list.' This reveals their immediate priorities, existing attempts, and the specific 'pull' that will drive a purchase, allowing you to align your solution perfectly.
Don't design solely for the user. The best product opportunities lie at the nexus of what users truly need (not what they say they want), the company's established product principles, and its core business objectives.
Most problems customers describe are "pain points" they won't act on. You can't distinguish these from real, actionable demand ("pull") through interviews alone. The only true test is presenting a viable solution and attempting to sell it. Their reaction—whether they try to pull it from you—is the only reliable signal.
Directly asking customers for solutions yields generic answers your competitors also hear. The goal is to uncover their underlying problems, which is your job to solve, not theirs to articulate. This approach leads to unique insights and avoids creating 'me-too' products.
The true power of UX research is aligning the entire product team with a common understanding of the user. This shared language prevents working at cross-purposes and building a disjointed product that users can feel.
When designing for kids, the founder learned not to take feature requests literally. A child asking for a bike basket to hold rocks isn't just asking for a rock holder; they're expressing a deeper need for a versatile container for their adventures. The key in user research is to infer the underlying problem from their specific examples.
A common marketing mistake is being product-centric. Instead of selling a pre-packaged product, first identify the customer's primary business challenge. Then, frame and adapt your offering as the specific solution to that problem, ensuring immediate relevance and value.
