Field Guide to UX Research for Startups
How to spot the 5 studies startups need most
After completing hundreds of research projects for startups across dozens of industries, I finally noticed something. Although each project seems unique on the surface, they actually match several patterns that emerge again and again. In my experience, startups look to UX research most often to achieve one of these five objectives:
1. Improve a Process or Workflow
2. Better Understand Customer Shopping Habits
3. Evaluate Concepts
4. Test Usability
5. Refine a Value Proposition
This practical field guide offers a way to quickly identify a startup’s objective, and what kind of research they actually need. It outlines how to conduct research that will deliver actionable results for each of these five common objectives. And most importantly, the “North Star Questions” will help you steer the project from start to successful finish. I’ve included a couple case studies to illustrate how they work.
Like any guide, you may have to reference this a few times until you get the hang of it, so don’t get discouraged if it feels like a lot of information right away. Whether you’re a founder, an engineer, a designer, or a seasoned research pro, I hope this guide will help you plan and use UX research more effectively.
Improve a Process or Workflow
When to use it
The company wants to streamline an existing process, or they want to create a new system or product that will save their customers (or themselves!) time, money, and mistakes. Use this to document the details of who does what when, highlighting problems and opportunities for improvement.
What to listen for
The client will say things like: “streamline,” “identify pain points,” “When is the best point to. . .?” “best practices for…,” “efficiency,” “process,” and “How do our customers currently. . . ?”
North Star Questions
This objective requires careful observation and a specific type of interview: we need to prompt customers to walk through a given process/workflow step-by-step so that we can study what happens. I flesh out a complete interview guide, but a few core questions serve as my North Star. I get pretty detailed with each step of their process, asking the participants, “What’s your goal right now? How does it start? Then what? And then what? Can you show me?”
During interviews, those North Star Questions help me focus on gathering the information I need most, and keep me from getting lost in the weeds, especially when talking to experts about an unfamiliar or fairly technical domain.
In addition, I will watch for and ask about:
- Pain points: What parts of the process are difficult, slow, unpleasant, costly, or error-prone?
- Variations: When have they deviated from the process they just described? How has this process changed over time?
Final deliverable
Our final step will be to put this information together in a way that makes sense to the client. In this case, I usually use a spreadsheet. Down the first column on the left, I label rows with the key details I want to capture for every step, such as: name of the step, who’s involved, their goals, what they do, questions they’re trying to answer, and pain points (or opportunities!). Then I fill out all of the fields for each step, fleshing out the columns from left to right.
Example
Let’s look at a real-life example so you can see how it works.
Flatiron Health’s mission is to learn from the experience of every cancer patient, and a top priority is improving clinical trials for potential new cancer treatments. A while ago, one of their product managers spoke to me about the difficulties of identifying and enrolling eligible patients into clinical trials, and he asked questions like:
- How can we help cancer centers enroll more eligible patients faster?
- How do practices find and enroll eligible patients?
- What are existing pain points in enrollment?
- When is the right time to alert physicians about eligible patients?
These questions may seem specific to Flatiron, but when I listened closer, I heard key words like “pain points” and “How do they. . . ?” and “How can we move faster?” I recognized he was really asking me, “How can we improve the existing process or workflow of enrolling new patients for clinical trials?” And to answer that question, I knew I’d need to interview clinical research teams about the nitty gritty details of each step of their workflow, then create a grid like the one I described above, highlighting specific points where Flatiron could help.
And that’s what we did. We visited five cancer centers in three states in four days, and interviewed 25 people. Every session followed a typical arc, starting with introductions, context questions about their roles and organizations, and conversation about their goals and metrics for success. But my North Star for the interviews (What’s your goal? How does it start? Then what? And then what? Can you show me?) helped me get what I needed most from my precious time with those clinical research teams.
We created giant posters of my summary grid to inform a design sprint we facilitated with the Flatiron team. After a lot more hard work by Flatiron, their OncoTrials product is now live in many oncology practices across the US.
Better Understand Shopping Habits
When to use it
A company wants to figure out how best to merchandise their product to increase online conversion. They need to know how customers judge and choose items in their category, and what content to present at each stage of the journey.
I’ve applied this method to improve online conversion for products as varied as coffee, APIs, furniture, vacation rentals, doctors, and databases.
What to listen for
Companies don’t usually frame their goals in terms of shopping or merchandising. They usually start by asking “How do we get more people to sign up/buy?” Listen for phrases like, “What do people want to know about our…?” and “What information or imagery is most important to explain or convince…?” “How do people want to sort or filter. . .?”
North Star Questions
When studying shopping habits, I build my interviews around a “shopalong,” shadowing target customers as they visit several sites or stores for an item. These shopping trips usually include a client’s homepage (or physical store) or prototypes, along with their competitors’. It’s easy for these sessions to stray if you’re not careful. In these interviews, I’m guided by my North Star Questions. Getting the answers to these is what makes each project a success. I ask each participant, “What questions are you trying to answer here? How? In what order?”
In addition, I will watch for and ask a few more things from the participant:
- Recent relevant experiences: Talk through both successful and unsuccessful shopping attempts.
- What content reassures you? What design elements convey (or detract from) trust and credibility?
Final deliverable
Describe their steps and the hierarchy of key criteria prospective customers use to narrow their options and validate their selections. In other words, answer the North Star questions: What questions are they trying to answer? How? In what order? You can read more about this in The Shopping Shortcut: How to Design for Your Customer’s Mindset.
Example
One Medical asked our team for help redesigning their homepage to increase member sign ups. They wanted to answer questions like:
- How do we get more members to sign up on our site?
- What information do they want to see?
- Where do they look for that information?
- How do they choose a primary care physicians? What criteria are relevant?
“Doctors” and “primary care physicians” seem pretty industry-specific, so it would be easy to assume this project would need a custom approach. But a second look at their questions reveals that what One Medical really wants to understand is how people shop for primary care physicians.
That objective told me what kind of interview to conduct. As usual, I planned the full arc of the interview — starting with introductions, learning a little about the participant and their past experiences, etc. But what really mattered was the shopalong and my North Star: What questions are they trying to answer? How? In what order?
And for One Medical, we learned that patients first look for doctors who are conveniently located, accepting new patients, and of the preferred gender. Once they have this, they narrow their list based on additional criteria like expertise, years of practice, education, hospital affiliations, and online presence. As a result, One Medical redesigned their landing pages to help prospective members find the details they care most about at each stage of their shopping process.
Evaluate Concepts
When to use it
A company needs to gauge interest and reactions to an idea or concept before they invest time and effort to build it. They have to determine which parts of a new concept appeal to their target customers and why. In this case we’re trying to understand customers’ perceptions of new features and ideas rather than testing usability.
I often plan this type of interview for the last day of design sprints to test the ideas we’ve prototyped.
What to listen for
Questions like, “Which way will people prefer to. . . ?” “Will people want to. . .?” “How will customers react to this?”
North Star Questions
With these interviews, I want participants to experience a few different prototypes or sites during our interview session. I also want to see what they think are the best (and worst) parts of each. My North Star questions are: How does this idea compare to the others? What are the pros and cons of each product (or prototype)?
In my interview, I’ll follow this basic arc:
- Discuss relevant habits, experiences and needs: For context and to help me interpret their feedback, I ask about any relevant past experience.
- Introduce prototypes and products: Next I’ll describe a scenario and invite participants to look at a mix of sites or prototypes with me. For example, “Imagine your boss asked you to review and evaluate these different services for use at work.” How do participants perceive what each site or prototype does or is offering? (You can even use competitors’ offerings as “free prototypes.”)
- Compare features & value prop: Prompt participants to contrast the products they’ve just tried. The goal is not to pick a single winner, but to tease out the best elements of each that we can combine into the next better prototype.
Final deliverable
After these sessions, briefly highlight what worked well about each concept, and what didn’t work well. (What are the pros and cons of each product (or prototype)?) Document which aspects of each prototype seemed most (and least) useful, valuable, and credible to the testers, along with any additional insights about customers’ needs and expectations.
Example
This short video demonstrates what this kind of interview actually looks like.
Test Usability
When to use it
These studies help teams see whether their users are able to complete certain tasks with a detailed design prototype, a launch candidate or a live product — and why! This is what people typically think of when they talk about “user research” or “user testing” or “usability testing.”
What to listen for
Questions like, “Will users be able to. . . ?” and “Are there any red flags in this design?” “Why are users getting stuck?” Will our customers understand how to. . . ?” “Is it intuitive?”
North Star Questions
In these sessions, we present testers simple goals and scenarios so we can observe them using the product or prototype to complete key tasks while they think aloud. For task-based usability sessions, my North Star is: Can users complete the task(s) with this design? Where do they get stuck or confused? Why?
I usually start these sessions with a brief conversation about their past experiences and existing habits that are relevant to whatever I’m testing with them. Every session helps the team learn a bit more about their customers.
Final deliverable
After several test sessions, a topline summary simply answers the North Star Questions: “Where did people get stuck or confused? Why?” Document patterns you observed about what did and didn’t work well about the design and instructional text. Also take note if most users failed to discover any important elements or features. Indicating the relative severity of the different problems helps teams prioritize their work.
For more details about conducting basic usability studies and interviews, see the PDFs and video from my User Research, Quick and Dirty workshop.
Refine a Value Proposition
When to use it
A company needs help communicating the key benefits of their existing service or platform in ways that resonate strongly with prospective customers. . . or they’re struggling to distinguish themselves from their competition. This type of study also often reveals weaknesses, along with where a company should invest in amplifying distinguishing features.
What to listen for
Questions like, “What is our value prop?” “What features distinguish us from competition?” “Why should customers choose us?”
North Star Questions
The goal of these interviews is to study your happiest, most successful customers (like Dan Heath’s “bright spots”) to find out why they chose your service from among other alternatives, and what they value about it. The answers may surprise you!
When trying to understand what appeals to happy, high LTV (lifetime value) customers, my North Star Questions are: Why do you use this service or platform? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
It’s also important to ask about:
- Background about their business or organization: Get some context about the work they do, and why they need this kind of service or platform. What are their goals and constraints?
- Previous experiences: What other solutions have they tried? What did they like and dislike about those? Why did they switch?
- Stories and examples: Ask customers to describe (in detail) recent examples of how and when they used your service or platform.
Final deliverable
Summarize key takeaways and patterns you heard from customers to answer the North Star questions: Why do high LTV customers use this service or platform? What are the strengths and weaknesses?
Conclusion
Phew! We made it. Hopefully you’re able to see that no matter how unique each project may seem on the surface, identifying the patterns provides a shortcut. Of course, these aren’t startups’ only UX research objectives, but in my experience they’re the most common by far.
For some additional material, I recommend checking out this article on a 4-day process for answering important startup questions that also offers some insight on recruiting the right participants for your projects.
Best of luck!
