Sell benefits of User Research and Usability Testing

Careers & Mentoring
#1

I’d like to know about the various ways a usability consultant can sell/pitch the benefits of user research and usability testing. The startup team does not have access to end users. There isn’t a UI designer and the requirements are gathered through the following steps:

  1. Usually the technical team meets few prospective customers and shows them a demo. Then, their wish list is noted and prioritized.
  2. Compile a list of the requirements shared by the marketing folks and prioritize them.

Have you faced similar situations before? Suggestions and tips would be much appreciated.

#2

I suspect this is something that lots of people face, and would probably make for a decent article on uxmastery.com. Before I jump in with my own ideas, I’d love to hear from others. It would be great to collate them and create an article from people’s tips.

#3

Technical team’s decisions are influenced by logic so I have a feel that quantitative results might influence them. The technical team creates the UI screens with emphasis on functionality. They want an UI designer to make the screens look *pretty."

#5

Hi

I see a similar relationships every day. I’ve worked for a lot in Graphic Design (print advertising), and often the designers don’t meet the customers,
only the Sales Reps do.
The customer asks for something specific that they like, but don’t necessarly need. Then pressure is put on design to be compromised in favor of “Giving them what they want”.

Its ‘The Customer is always right’ scenario.

What has to happen, is the design team in any area graphic/ux etc, must to take the lead. And really push for answers to the questions that will get to the best solution.

What I’ve always found is [B]‘The Customer is always open to meeting the person designing for them’[/B]
And meeting them is best chance to probe and find out what problems are the looking to solve.

P

#6

My two recommendations for instituting a user research culture:

  1. Start with the bottom line: If you want to pitch to decision-makers about usability research and testing, you need to demonstrate business value (whether it’s in a startup or a huge, hierachical workplace - both of which I’ve worked in). I’d look at it from the product manager’s or even the CFO’s point of view. Their ultimate goal is to maximize profit. So the more you can show that usability affects revenue (getting people to like and engage with your product for the long term) and expenses (small iterations now instead of large overhauls later when it’s too late), the better your case will be. If you start googling, there are tons of case studies where user testing/research has proven to be a strategy for profitability, not just usability, so I’d suggest selecing a few relevant ones to your industry for presentation to The Elders of your company.

  2. Just do it: ask for permission to just start VERY small and come along to a couple meetings or calls with potential users. Write a very concise script and have whoever usually does this see you doing it, or record it if that’s possible. It might mean a bit of extra work for you, but it becomes a much easier sell when people actually see how it’s done in reality and and feel the “aha” moments themselves.

#7

Hi Hammer, Paddy, and JollyZ, Thanks a lot! Sorry for the delay in responding.

A quick question. To evangelize the benefits of ROI, what are the UX metrics usually set and what is the benchmark for UX metrics? Are they set against the existing competitors?