While the appetite for user insights is growing, companies are forced to scale back with budgets. More than 75% of the companies I speak to want to do more research—yet time, budget limitations, and internal challenges hinder product teams from running more studies.

The benefits of investing in user research don’t end with the user. A customer centric design will save you money on support and development. It will also increase your revenue by increasing sales. The time and money you invest in the beginning stages will provide a number of long-term benefits for you and your business.

A study by Smith & Reinersten found that the key system-design decisions made during the first 10% of a product’s design process can determine 90% of the product’s cost and performance. This is an excellent example of how a small investment at an early stage can have a huge ROI on your final product.

User research will continue to be a powerful tool to inform decision-making, even more so in uncertain market conditions. Collect customer insights throughout the product development process to mitigate risk, react effectively to changes in the market, and drive revenue growth.

Adapting to Customer insights will determine business growth

Gen Z has been changing the products and the way they interact with them for a couple of years now. Companies are starting to adapt to the needs and wants of the new generation.

Gen Z expects everything to work as simply as possible and they also get distracted quickly. Which is why a whole different approach is required when designing products for them as a target audience.

Use qualitative and quantitative research

So far, we’ve seen that more and more businesses see the value of engaging with their customers to understand their needs, pain points, and motivations and make the right product decisions.

To obtain customer insights throughout the product life cycle, product teams are turning to various research methods—the most frequently used being qualitative task-based user interviews, quantitative studies backed with statistically significant data, product analytics, competitive analysis, and unmoderated usability tests.

“Companies today are partnering with trusted UX research firms. The shift to investing more in research means they’re embracing customer-centricity.” CEO/Founder OneSource Labs, Sharon Rahmanian

Overall, our research shows that qualitative methods are more frequently used than quantitative methods (63% vs. 51%). Yet the best results come from a combination of these methods. While quantitative research helps you understand what your users are doing, qualitative research tells you why they’re doing it.

UX tools help research be more efficient and effective

To stay ahead of the competition, organizations need to gather high-quality insights at scale—this is where the right UX tools come in. With the global pandemic and the rise of remote research, the need for digital tools that support user research teams is higher than ever. At OneSource Labs, for example, we’re focused on creating an end-to-end solution for research.

OneSource Labs leverages best practice UX and user research methods, strategic UX research analysis, and actionable user recommendations. With extensive experience across industries: Automotive, B2B, Entertainment, e-Commerce, financial, Healthcare, Tech, Travel and more, we design a wide range of user research studies customized for your business goals and users’ needs. We partner with panel vendors, online testing tools, recruiting firms, and testing facilities to accommodate all of your user research needs.

In Conclusion

As we move into the latter part of 2023, we can see that the remainder of the year and beyond will be filled with lots of experimentation. Implementing the latest trends, including voice interactions, AR and AI will take time. What will that mean for you and the market? Following these trends will help developers and businesses create innovative, delightful, user-centric, and successful websites, mobile applications, and other digital interfaces in today’s ever-evolving digital landscape.

By SHARON RAHMANIAN, Founder & CEO – User Experience Research, OneSource Labs