The danger of not doing UX research

Most of the UX research and UX strategy projects that come to us are startups that suddenly realize they have to pivot, larger businesses that thought they needed an app, built it and it’s failing. That’s 90% of our clients. Only about 5% come to us with some initial research validating their concept and another 5% come to us purely with an idea and what us to either validate it or just start from scratch.

So. Over 90% spent a lot of time and money and didn’t start by doing even just a little homework. Most too, start out with the idea of solving a problem, not building a business. It’s not their fault. The investment industry, the VC’s, often drive the thinking for startups. Because the startups want their money, they follow what the investment community says, even though that may be wrong. The language for years has been “solve a problem and build the product so you can sell it to a tech giant.” It’s one approach. There are others. Like building a business.

The product is not the business. The customer is the business. And they may have a problem, but it doesn’t mean they’re willing to pay for that problem to be solved. Travel sites that sell hotel and transportation solutions don’t expect the consumer to pay for solving the problem of finding the lowest cost route and accommodations. They expect the hotels, airlines and car hire firms to pay for that.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be solving a problem. For some problems, consumers will pay. Bit not all problems and who you think might pay, may not be the one who will actually pay. Doing some UX research and your UX strategy up front can save you a lot of time and money and help you make more money. You’ll get an MVP faster and have a better pitch deck for raising capital. Or, if this is for an enterprise idea, you’ll be able to sell it to the executive making the decision much better. Either way is risk reduction and investment protection.

A good UX researcher is highly collaborative as is the proper process. You’ll be able to go along the journey. It’s one of the aspects of research projects that we enjoy the most. Along the journey of research and building a strategy comes a lot of “ah-a” moments, sometimes the pivots happen in this phase. At the end though, there is confidence and the data and insights to back up that theres viability to the idea. You’ll end up building a better product and have a greater chance of success at launch. Some say “do the math” we say “do the research.”