Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Clémence Debaig

Where to start, when you are alone, with no budget.

“User research is important but it’s so expensive!”
“Our company is too young to spend time with our users, and we don’t have the budget.”
“I am the only designer in this company and I have no time and no budget, so there is no way I can do some user research…”

Wrong!

No, user research doesn’t have to be an arm wrestling. And budget is never a good excuse to not talk to your users.

User centric design is not necessarily expensive and getting insights from your (future) users will help you to improve your user experience and grow your business.

Most of the time user centric design is not a matter of budget, it’s a matter of culture. And the best way to demonstrate the benefits of user research, is to start doing it. Start with nothing: no budget and not a lot of time. And start collecting insights.

First tips

Before you start, here are some general tips to help you in this journey:

Any user research is better than no user research at all
And, probably, if there is no budget for this in your company, that must mean that no one has done this before, so you don’t need some fancy user testing, you don’t need to be extremely precise or scientific, you just need to identify the big issues.
Before starting anything, be sure to define what you are looking for
Set a goal for your research. And then pick the right method to get the right insights to answer your question.
Do a screener to recruit participants
Yes, I said earlier that any user research is better than no user research at all. But… Be sure that you interview people that might use your product or pick someone that hate your product, but do it on purpose. It is always easier to ask your friends to help you on a project than to find a stranger that matches your customer target. But doing a quick screening will ensure you to have the right insights.
Collect evidences and user quotes. Videos are a powerful tool.
Analysis is important, but if you want to win the heart of other stakeholders, show a real user in action or talking about your product. And your job here is done. So if you can, record you sessions, take photos, write quotes, and so on.

Where to start

Define what you are looking for and your first hypothesis
Pick the right method
Organise your research
Sort your insights and analyse
Share your results and show some users in action
Transform your insights in projects
Start again!

There are many qualitative and quantitative research methodologies you can start using today with no or very limited budget:

User interviews
Understanding motivations, needs and behaviours
Concept testing
Testing a new idea / a new design early in the project, looking for appetite, preferences and improvements
Usability testing
Identifying pain points and new opportunities
Competition testing
Identifying best practices and common patterns on the market
Online surveys
Getting statistical insights on behaviours and preferences
Analytics
Understanding the journey and identifying the issues or underperforming pages
Social (Product review / Facebook / Twitter / Trust Pilot)
Getting feedback on your brand or your product and identifying the painful areas in your experience

My last advice would be: Stop talking about it or trying to convince people around you, start doing it and show results!

This story has originally been published on June 7, 2015 when I was Head of UX at lowcostholidays, with no team, no budget, and still a lot of work to do on influencing the culture of the company. I work in a very different context now, but 2 years later, it still feels very relevant for many of the teams I engage with as a consultant.

User research is not a matter of budget, it’s a matter of culture. was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

User research is not a matter of budget, it’s a matter of culture.

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