As a startup founder at the beginning of your journey, one of the most important things you need to do is to ensure your idea has real potential, so that you don’t spend time and money creating a product or service that has no future. The most effective way to do that is to carry out design research. While I always advocate for thorough research carried out by experienced professionals, the reality is that startup founders rarely have the budget to pay for external researchers. This guide will provide you with the steps you need to take to carry out basic research, which, if done correctly, will give you solid insights into what your users need and identify any issues or blockers to success.
Does your idea have potential?
Generally speaking, a successful product is one that solves a real problem, or fulfils a real need well enough and for enough people that it can generate a real profit. Your research should be focused on understanding, as best you can, whether your product idea fits these criteria, with the aim of answering the following question: should I create this product, should I pivot, or should I abandon the idea entirely? Essentially, you are trying to figure out whether anyone wants or needs your product and whether you can feasibly build a business around it. Research won’t answer all your questions, but it should tell you if you’re on the wrong road, as well as highlighting hidden potential for growth.
For a user to pay for a product, it has to deliver some sort of value to them. It might help them get a task done more quickly, or make their lives more fun. If the value of your product is unclear, it will be difficult to sell. Therefore, your first goal is to clearly define the benefits your product provides and why your user cares about those benefits.
Consider these three key questions:
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Who is your user?
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What problem are you solving for your user/what need are you fulfilling?
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How is the product you’re delivering better than what the user has already?
If you can answer these questions very easily using specific details and examples and you have relevant and recent evidence to back your answers up, then you are in a strong position to get started on designing your product. However, if your answers are vague, or involve a lot of assumptions or guessing, then you need to do some research.
Define your user
Who will use your product? Clearly defining a target user will help to avoid falling into the trap of designing a generic product with no definite value. Is your product designed for people who work in a particular industry? Is it targeted at a specific age group? Even if your product will eventually be used by a very large audience, it is worth starting with a smaller subgroup first, to avoid getting overwhelmed with detail. For example, your aim might be for all doctors to use your product, but you may decide to start with general practitioners, as they have particular needs that other doctors tend not to have. Don’t worry too much if you’re struggling to define your user - research will help with that.
Delve into the problem/need
As well as understanding your user you must also get a practical, realistic understanding of the problem you are solving or the need you are fulfilling for them. When does the problem arise and how? In what situation does the need become relevant? Getting a detailed picture of the user’s problem or need will help you to avoid creating a solution that misses the mark. If, for example, the problem you’re solving arises in a noisy environment where the user has to wear ear protection, there is no point in creating a solution that relies on sound. If your user is engaging in a task that requires both hands, they’ll reject a solution that involves holding an additional object. The more you know about the reality of your user’s situation, the easier it will be to design something that really works for them.
Understand the value you’re delivering
The final question - how is the product you’re delivering better than what the user has already? - relates to the value you’re delivering to your user. If you’re solving a real problem, it’s likely your user will already have some sort of solution, be that a messy spreadsheet or a workflow they’ve cobbled together from multiple products. For a user to even consider your solution, it must be better in some way. If it makes the user’s life more complicated and frustrating, or costs too much for the value it delivers, the user will likely reject it.
Planning a short research project
Identify knowledge gaps
Sit down with your team and answer the three key questions to the best of your ability:
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Who is your user?
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What problem are you solving for your user/what need are you fulfilling?
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How is the product you’re delivering better than what the user has already?
Take an honest look at your answers. How many of them are backed up by evidence? How many are mostly or entirely based on assumptions? Are there any key details missing?
Structure your research around filling the gaps you’ve identified in what you know.
Identify participants who can give you the most insight
Usually, the people you need to speak to are your users, however, there may be situations in which talking to other people is more feasible or beneficial. Your users may not be easily accessible, in which case you may need to speak to someone who knows your users very well. You may have technical questions that can only be answered by an expert. Consider carefully who will be able to give you detailed insight into the day to day lives of the people who will eventually use your product.
Choose five people who will be willing to participate in an hour of research. If they’re people you don’t know, you should offer them at least £20 for their time. Make sure you explain the research clearly to each participant and ask them to sign a document saying that they understand and that they are happy for you to record the research session, either with video or without.
Plan and carry out your research
Observing participants completing a relevant task is the ideal way to get a complete and detailed picture of the world your users operate in. If you can’t observe them in a real environment, role playing and mock ups can be used, with the caveat that, in artificial situations, users may skip over steps that they would do automatically in a genuine situation. For example, a doctor pretending to carry out a procedure may not use aseptic techniques.
When you’re observing someone, ask them questions about what they’re doing. Why did they do things in that order? Is there any aspect of the process that they find confusing or difficult? Think about where your product might fit in - ask them questions that will tell you what your product needs to do in order to make the process simpler for the user.
If observation isn’t possible or suitable then an interview is the next best thing. When planning questions to ask your participants, focus on things that they will be able to speak about with confidence - concrete, recent experiences. Avoid hypothetical scenarios and predictions of future behaviour. Your goal is to get a clear picture of the situation in which they will use your product, to identify what your product needs to do for them to be useful and valuable.
The types of questions you might ask are:
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Tell me about the last time you did X
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What went well?
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What didn’t go well?
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What would you change about the experience?
Listen to what the person says. If they bring up something interesting, ask them to tell you more. For example if they say ‘we stopped using X product,’ ask them why. If they say ‘this task causes a lot of problems,’ ask them what kind of problems. Keep the questions open and avoid steering the participant towards the answer you want to hear. If the participant seems to be telling you things that you didn’t expect, don’t shut down or defend your idea - keep an open mind and delve deeper. You are far better off uncovering issues and blockers at an early stage than two years down the line.
The recording of each session should be stored safely and never shared with others without the permission of the participant.
Analyse your research
Once you’ve spoken to five people, the next step is to figure out how what they’ve said impacts your idea and your business. Review each recording in detail. If you have a team, split the participants among the team. The aim when reviewing the recordings is to really listen to the participant, to understand what they’ve said and to pull out the key points that they made. You may need to listen to the recording multiple times to fully identify all the relevant information. Don’t use AI to analyse the recording - AI tends to summarise what participants say, taking out any nuance. The nuance is where the interesting insight usually sits. Take care not to interpret what the participant says in a way that is biased in favour of your idea - assume the participant is correct and telling the truth unless you have solid evidence to the contrary.
On your own, or with your team, go through the key points that came out of the interviews. The first thing to consider is how relevant or important each point is. For example, if a participant says their organisation can’t use a particular product because it doesn’t fit certain strict regulations, will that also be an issue for your product? If you’re not sure, you probably need to find out. If a participant doesn’t like completing a particular task, does that matter? If their dislike is due to some issue with their current solution then the answer may be yes, especially if your product will improve on that solution. If it’s simply the case that they find the task boring and you can’t help with that, then you can probably disregard that piece of insight - it’s interesting background information, but it won’t change how you approach your design.
Draw conclusions from each piece of relevant insight by asking ‘what does this mean for my product?’ If the research has raised new questions, write those down and consider how you might answer them.
What’s next?
In an ideal world, the research process should indicate that your idea is a great one - all you have to do is go ahead and design it. If you find yourself in that position, then you should feed the research insights into your design process, ensuring that each aspect of how the product works is based on a real understanding of what users need. As you create your product and add features and functionality, you should use research to test each aspect of the product, ensuring that you are not adding confusion or unnecessary complexity to the design.
More often, this initial research indicates that there are some issues with some of the fundamental aspects of the idea. Maybe delivering your product will be very expensive and your users typically have a low budget, or your product won’t be compatible with products most of your users rely on. If you discover an issue like this, don’t despair and don’t ignore it. Look again at your basic concept - is there something that can be changed to address the issue? Do you need to approach the concept from another angle? Building a product is an iterative process, meaning that you need to constantly question and adjust your ideas and your design throughout the process, through testing and research. Finding blockers and issues is a normal part of that process. Even established companies have to pivot and change direction when market conditions or new technologies mean that their original ideas no longer fit what users need or expect. Dig into the details, examine what you know and figure out a way forward.
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