Win your Clients and Stakeholders over with User Research ❤
Many organizations still live in the culture of top-down leadership, which promotes fear of having to follow the opinions of internal leaders who may be so far away from the real needs of their products and the real frustrations and needs of their customers — so much so that it becomes quite difficult for Product Designers, UX Designer, and User Researchers to do what they are supposed to do, what they got hired to do, and what they do best, which is: Solve real-world user problems with delightful design. It sounds simple but is often tough to achieve.
User-centered design is not stakeholder-centered design. However, both are important, and bridging the gap is the job of Design Strategists at this day and age.
Stakeholder management is indeed a real skill that should be developed and used by everyone working in a company setting, especially when stakeholders come from multiple backgrounds (business, tech, marketing, etc), have a vision for their company, and are still not quite familiar with the practical applications and concepts of Design Thinking. They rely on us to let them know what ought to happen to steer the wheel of the ship. But letting go of control takes time and patience.
What can be done?
As Product Designers, we know that the voice of the user, especially when extracted and synthesized through the power of qualitative and quantitative research, when it clearly points to opportunity areas for bettering the products, and when it also speaks to our intuition and creative senses (staying neutral, here, I promise), becomes a reliable force that drives business growth and success.
And so, our role as Designers and Researchers becomes vital for the survival of tech companies and their usable (?) products. Conducting user research is indeed a rich skill that can beautifully align with business needs. Researchers and designers, with training, develop a very fine-tuned skill of listening empathetically to users, distilling lots of data points into categorized and manageable bits of information, all while remaining neutral and positive, and having the intention of serving their users (and Stakeholders) with delight. However, it is often diluted or missed, and gets brushed off and overshadowed by other prioritized BAU tasks, which is a mistake leaders make.
So leaders should make time and allocate resources, and Design Thinkers should conduct regular research studies (qual and quant), and then include reporting on research findings in regular leadership checkins. Then align those with actions, due dates, and success metrics.
A user journey map, for example, that uncovers the fragmentation in digital flow of users and an opportunity to unify their needs in one tool, is key to showcase the need for redesign efforts, but requires User Research and User Empathy. Running multiple qualitative and quantitative research studies, Researchers and Designers should collaborate to make sure users’ voices are heard, research findings are documented, and the project has a vision for betterment.
It is indeed possible for the seemingly unrelated worlds of business, research, and design to meet, and that is when the real value to serve customers with delight becomes possible.
Using skills such as UX writing, wireframing, prototyping, UI design, and creating research artifacts like user flows and personas, becomes an invaluable skillset that drives conversations forward and enables stakeholder alignment on the common point of focus for all: how to make successful, useful, and usable features that answer real user needs and solve real-world problems.
Is the world of UX and UR dying? I do not think so. It has always been about the mindset of serving customers and enabling business growth, even though the tech tools may have changed with time. However, Design Thinking has to be part and parcel of stakeholder management in order to help you reap the real benefit; as it just cannot survive in silo.
