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Customer research is conducted so as to identify customer segments, needs, and behaviors. It can be carried out as part of market research, user research, or design research. Even so, it always focuses on researching current or potential customers of a specific brand or product in order to identify unmet customer needs and/or opportunities for business growth.
Customer research can focus on simple demographics of an existing or potential customer group (such as age, gender, and income level). Indeed, these considerations are vital determinants of a product’s target audience. However, such research also often seeks to understand various behaviors and motivators—factors which place a product’s use and potential on a higher level of study. Thus, the goal of such research is to expose clear details about who is—or will be—using a product as well as the reasons behind their doing so and how they go about using it (including the contextual areas of “where” and “when”). Customer research may be conducted via a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic field studies. It also commonly involves doing desk research of online reviews, forums, and social media to explore what customers are saying about a product.
While customer research is usually conducted as part of a design project, it is also often conducted in other departments of an organization. In some cases, customer research is part of marketing—for instance, to ensure that marketing campaigns have the right focus. In other cases, it can be carried out as part of concept development or ideation so as to identify opportunities for future products, services, or features. In any case, such research is an essential ingredient in keeping the end users in clear sight long before the end of any design phase.
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Remember, the more you learn about design, the more you make yourself valuable.
Why? Because design skills make you valuable. In any job. Any industry.
In This Course, You'll
Get excited to discover what people truly need so you can create products and services they love. In this course, you'll be guided by industry experts, including renowned Professors Alan Dix and Ann Blandford. They'll teach you how to plan research, fit it into real-world design work, and translate raw findings into deliverables that influence design decisions. Whether you're transitioning into design or stepping into a senior role, this course builds your research toolkit with four essential qualitative techniques: semi-structured interviews, contextual inquiries, observational studies, and usability testing. All four are just as applicable to reducing abandoned carts in online shopping as to improving patient outcomes in healthcare. As AI speeds up research synthesis, your real advantage comes when you build timeless, human-centered design skills to frame the right research question, read between the lines of what users say and do, and translate your findings into insights stakeholders can understand and act on.
Make yourself invaluable when you can plan, conduct, and analyze research to discover who your users are, what they need, and what gets in their way. PwC found that customers will pay a 16% premium for great experiences, and great experiences start with knowing your users deeply. By the end of this course, you'll know which qualitative method to use based on the product development stage and how to prepare a comprehensive project plan. You'll write interview questions drawing on Kvale and Brinkmann's nine question types and analyze data through a six-step thematic analysis. Whichever method you use, you'll apply research ethics and obtain informed consent, avoid pressuring participants, and handle vulnerable populations with appropriate safeguards.
Gain confidence and credibility when you can prove the ROI of user research to decision-makers. You'll articulate research's three core purposes and translate them into the language of revenue, cost, and risk to secure resources for research work. You'll map stakeholders across business, engineering, and UX using Tomer Sharon's framework and conduct interviews to surface constraints, history, and expectations. To turn raw research into shared understanding among stakeholders, you'll learn to run a five-part workshop that produces well-framed How Might We questions and a team aligned on what to do next. And because words alone rarely move design forward, you'll produce affinity diagrams, empathy maps, and user journey maps that turn research data into something stakeholders can connect with and build on.
Craft your personal portfolio with optional hands-on projects and gain experience with user interviews, contextual inquiries, and observations. You'll translate your findings into concrete design deliverables that serve as visual artifacts in your case studies, ready to prove your research abilities to hiring managers. Plus, with ready-to-use templates like interview guides and customer journey maps, you'll implement your new skills immediately in your work.
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Master complex skills with proven best practices and toolkits directly from industry leaders. Meet your experts for this course:
Frank Spillers: Service Designer and Founder and CEO of Experience Dynamics.
Ann Blandford: Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at University College London.
Alan Dix: Author of the bestselling book “Human-Computer Interaction” and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University.
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Whenever you’re working in UX (User Experience) design, you have to understand user expectations if you’re going to be able to group information effectively. Card sorting is a handy and relatively simple way to engage participants so they categorize topics in a way they find logical. This approach h
Before the Design Process Starts: It’s Time to Get Out Of the Building
The mobile web means many opportunities for start-ups, from bootstrapped home-based ventures to those with venture capital funding. But where do you start to get the ideas to build that first app? According to Steve Blank, you get out of the building. Only when you meet and understand potential cust
Affinity diagramming is almost too good to be true. Write on some sticky notes, arrange them, and…that’s it. But don’t let its simplicity fool you. With affinity diagrams in your toolbox, you’ll have the power to bridge the gap between research and results.Begin with Affinity NotesAffinity diagrams
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Before the Design Process Starts: It’s Time to Get Out Of the Building
The mobile web means many opportunities for start-ups, from bootstrapped home-based ventures to those with venture capital funding. But where do you start to get the ideas to build that first app? According to Steve Blank, you get out of the building. Only when you meet and understand potential customers’ needs can you develop a product they would want to buy.
Entrepreneur and a key contributor to the Lean Startup movement, Steve Blank coined the term “get out of the building” (GOOB), which means to get to know your customers in their environment, similar to ethnographic research. This phrase is relevant now more than ever, given the high number of apps and sites released daily, and if you want to rise above the pack, you need to develop a product that will spark user adoption and improve business results.
In this video, Frank elaborates on “GOOB.”
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What is “Get Out Of the Building” About? User Research
With user research, you can understand your target audience's needs, behaviors, and preferences to inform and improve your business decisions.
To succeed in a mobile space, it is crucial to understand your target audience. Identifying and connecting with potential users may seem daunting, but numerous avenues are available in our always-connected world. Platforms like LinkedIn and personal networks provide many opportunities to find users who can drive the need for our products.
As Steve Blank suggests, it's essential to focus on talking to individuals who are best equipped to understand wide-scale issues and will better recognize what solutions they need. If you engage with these users early on, you can gain practical insights into their needs and understand their mental models so that you can tailor your product development according to their needs.
A Simple Approach to User Research
To get out of the building doesn't mean to go out to talk to people with just a vague intention to chat. It would be best if you had a methodology in mind. Here's a simple guide that can help, as suggested by Google Ventures:
Plan Your Questions
Decide what you want to know, and create a list of questions to help focus on the most critical aspects of your assumptions. You are welcome to let the interviewee take you off-track; you can find that many important problems are discovered through the information that the potential customer volunteers.
Plan Who To Talk To
Who would be the person to answer your questions? Are they representative of the audience you have in mind?
Plan the Interview
You've got the questions and the people; the next element is to structure your interviews. Where will they be held? Which order will you ask questions in? How will you record and analyze the data you generate? Keep this in mind to ensure that your research reveals the best results.
Share Prototypes
You may not be all the way there, but if you have a bit of a prototype, hand it to the interviewee and get their opinion. The more reality you can put into a product, the clearer that feedback should be.
Starting with paper allows you to try cheap and easy iterations of your idea and saves time and money.
Don't Pitch; Listen
You're not selling the product. You're trying to find out what people want so you can build a product. Don't pitch it; get feedback and listen. Don't use leading questions to get the answers you want; leave things open and get honest opinions. You may only sometimes like what people tell you, but it will leave your design process much better informed.
Summarize Your Findings
Finally, work through all the interview data—what have you learned? What trends emerge from this? What can you use in your product?
The Take Away
User research is crucial to understand your customers' needs. When you meet with potential users, you can get to understand their daily routines, pain points and frustrations.
Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank advocates for the "Get Out Of the Building" approach. In other words, leave the office to conduct user research and gather feedback in real-world environments. Follow sound research practices and plan your research before you head out. Define the objectives, identify whom to talk to and what to ask, and most importantly, listen! This approach can help teams identify new opportunities for innovation that they may have yet to discover through traditional research methods.
