“Research is worth nothing if you don’t act on it properly. The leap between research insight and the design action is the most important part of a UX designer’s job.” - Harry Brignull, UX consultant at 90 Percent of Everything.

notice what the user experience could be like for other people, specifically our users. This means we can easily miss opportunities to improve our service or product to meet their needs. Additionally, we might find our system easy and obvious to navigate, but we already have a history with that system — not to mention a great deal of prior knowledge of it.

Put simply, our users don’t have the benefit of this experience and knowledge.

Mastering the UX design process means always thinking from the perspective of the user; learning what that perspective is can only come about through working with real users when performing in-depth user research.User research helps us find out exactly how our target customers feel when interacting with a product that is designed to meet their goals and whether it actually does a good job of this.

During user research, a UX designer will collate information through a variety of means and sources to better inform the ultimate design.

Jeff Gothelf, the author of Lean UX, had this to say about user research:

“Over the last 5 years the nature of software has fundamentally shifted into a state of continuous improvement and iteration. This provides designers with an amazing opportunity to turn this into a continuous conversation with your audience. Continuous conversation — small chunks of research done frequently and consistently — ensures the customer’s voice in our decision-making process. In fact, it ensures that research, as much as coding, designing or gathering requirements, takes its intended place in the iterative loop of product design and development.”