{"id":1915,"date":"2017-02-16T22:36:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T19:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tubikstudio.com\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2025-03-31T19:32:04","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T19:32:04","slug":"user-research-empathy-is-the-best-ux-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tubikstudio.com\/blog\/user-research-empathy-is-the-best-ux-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"User Research. Empathy Is the Best UX Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting any project, which is not their personal presentation but a product for users, designers should be deeply aware: they work primarily not for self-expression, not for showing their creativity to the world, not for creating something revolutionary new that will make the world go round in opposite direction. They work to solve users’ problems, satisfy their wishes, and achieve business goals.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is why it’s vital to establish who the potential users of the future product are and which their wishes and needs could be met. This is the time when the designer turns into the researcher to get as much information as possible and analyze it for the sake of user-friendly solutions in design and interactions. In our earlier articles, we have already mentioned the significant role of user research in creating problem-solving user-friendly designs, and today we suggest getting deeper into its definition, methods, techniques, and benefits in the process of creating a digital product.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"tubikstudio<\/p>\n

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What is user research?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Generally, the word “research”, being quite universal for the diverse spheres of professional activities, roots into the Old French word\u00a0recercher<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0meaning “seek out, search closely”; first, it was the verb and later transformed into the noun of the same semantics. The modern definition of the noun according to Cambridge Dictionary<\/a>\u00a0state the meaning as “a detailed study of a subject, especially in order to discover (new) information or reach a (new) understanding”. This sort of activity is widely applied in a variety of sciences and practical fields, including informational architecture and user experience design.<\/span><\/p>\n

Basically, user research is a comprehensive and multilayered activity whose aim is to collect information about the potential target audience of the product. Via a number of techniques, user researchers collect and then analyze the information obtained from real users, and this outcome usually allows the design team to work on the optimal solutions which will make the product user-friendly and attractive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, user research means getting deeper into details of the core target audience<\/a> to understand their preferences and psychological peculiarities, the influence of different factors like colors, stylistic decisions, and logic of interaction on emotions and experience of the defined group, the sources of information and creative performance ways which could engage users and make them active. On this basis, visual design presumes to create the original and recognizable style that will make the product stand out from the crowd and draw potential customer\u2019s attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

User research is actually the way by which the designer is able to step into the shoes of the user and go along his or her path feeling all the stones on the way. This is the way to create designs based on empathy – the ability to place yourself in the place of the other person, to feel what they are feeling and see what they are seeing. This precious ability enables designers to create things that not only work well and look good but also do what the particular users need them to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"tubik-studio-designer-ecommerce\"<\/p>\n

Why is user research needed?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Famous guru of advertising David Ogilvy emphasized the great importance of research for creating effective results: \u00abAdvertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.\u00bb Time has changed the means, goals, and technologies, still, the vital role of research established even stronger. Neglecting the research stage and relying only on their creative intuition, experience, and talent, designers risk failing this task as they will not know the conditions of the app functioning and will not be able to make it efficient, user-friendly, and original.<\/span><\/p>\n

As we mentioned before<\/a>, designers who start creating a product just at once when they get the task are quite risky guys. There are plenty of things to do before the designing process itself. Ignoring those things can give an interesting but not viable result. It\u2019s important to analyze the competition, to understand the target market, to find out the sources of traffic and potential expectations of the users before setting off. Otherwise, you can waste much more time on loads of inefficient variants.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Toonie<\/p>\n

When is user research applied?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Describing the typical stages of the product creation process here in Tubik, we have mentioned the set of the following stages: <\/span><\/p>\n