Getting started with user research
It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. A short on-ramp to user research for teams who have not touched it before.
Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
Why this earns attention
Five conversations beat a hundred assumptions. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Watch what people do, not only what they say
- Change one thing and measure it
Talk to the people who did not buy. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.
The short version
The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about user research before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Five conversations beat a hundred assumptions — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.