User research is the technique of gathering qualitative feedback direct from users on their motivations, challenges and behaviour. This is incredibly valuable to product managers to reduce two key risks when building products:
- Value risk – it helps ensure that we are building things that solve user’s problems
- Usability risk – it helps ensure that users know how to use our product before it goes live
Check out our articles on:
- Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) – understanding your customers’ underlying needs
- Customer Journey Mapping – mapping out the user needs and problems as they experience your product
- Customer Development Interviews – understanding what customers think about a topic, and where they have pain points you can solve
- User testing – testing proposed solutions on users before you build them to flush out problems
