Collaboration & Process › Product Thinking

User Research

Learning what users actually need.

User research is learning about people’s needs, tasks, and context through methods such as interviews, observation, surveys, and usability sessions. Its purpose is to inform product decisions, not to collect quotes that justify a decision already made.

Ask about concrete recent behavior rather than only hypothetical preferences. “Tell me about the last time you reconciled a report” can reveal workarounds that “Would you use this feature?” may miss. Choose participants and methods suited to the question, and record what you observed separately from your interpretation.

Research has limits: a small set of interviews can uncover themes but does not estimate how common they are across a whole market. A survey can gather broader responses but may not explain behavior. Protect participant privacy, obtain appropriate consent, and avoid collecting sensitive details that are not needed.

Backend, frontend, and data engineers can join sessions to understand constraints and ask clarifying questions, while leaving space for participants to speak. Translate findings into decisions, assumptions, and follow-up questions rather than treating one person’s request as a universal requirement. See working with product, experimentation culture, and MVP.

Connect the discussion to a user or business decision, and make assumptions that could change the solution explicit. Revisit the choice when new evidence arrives instead of preserving a plan only because work has started. Backend developers can surface reliability and integration costs, frontend developers can test usability assumptions, and data engineers can check whether the evidence is trustworthy.

Revisit the decision when user evidence or operating costs change, and keep the assumptions visible to anyone using the result.