Research vs. Action. When should you actually start building?
The UX Designer in me says you always do lots of research first. Understand your customers better than anyone else. Understand their problems better than anyone else. Send out surveys. Do user interviews.
But then you see people writing about research being overrated and favoring action. They say you have to get the real thing out there in the real world to meaningful insights.
As I’ve put more thought into when we should start designing and building out Flection (https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/flection), I lean towards action over research. We’ve studied the space and competitors out there. We’ve seen people talking on forums and Twitter. But to be honest, we haven’t interviewed one person. And right now, I’m okay with that.
Because first and foremost, we are building Flection for ourselves. Since we are the target audience, it seems to make more sense to be biassed towards action.
I don’t need to understand the problem better at this moment since I have the problem. I’d rather get something out there and try it out internally to see how it works for us.
In the future and as we go, will we talk to our users and listen to their feedback? Absolutely! But for the time being, the certainty that comes with actually using the thing is more valuable to me than digging for “groundbreaking” insights in mountains of qualitative data. So we've started design and development.
What do you all think? Where do you stand on the spectrum of research vs. action when pursuing a new idea?
There's a lot of good stuff on this by @asmartbear
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https://blog.asmartbear.com/stop-customer-interviews.html
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https://blog.asmartbear.com/customer-validation.html
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https://blog.asmartbear.com/vetting-startup-ideas.html
Those are some great articles! Really appreciate you sharing them @dkb868. It stopped and has me thinking more about the mindset I mentioned above. Pre-sales is something that is interesting and that I hadn't thought about previously. I believe it is something that could be accomplished :)
Generally I have found research to be worth it’s weight in gold. Per the UX adage “you are not your customer”
Though in your case, you are.
So, research seems wise to validate that your problem is not unique.
I have built a few things before doing the research only to discover the niche was only slightly larger than me. I learned a lot. It was painful 😖
Admittedly I’m conflating UX research with market research, but they are closely related...
Best wishes!
PS If it’s interesting, here’s what I built:
https://interrobang.online
https://stickshift.cubicle6.com
More recently with a lot more research:
https://authentiform.cubicle6.com
Thanks for the response Caleb!
I completely agree it can be worth its weight in gold :) I do research on client projects quite often. And I plan on us talking to users and incorporating feedback often once we have an initial version of the product. If we were building something for Truck Drivers, for example, I'd want to do a helluva lot of research. I know nothing about them or that space haha.
I want a starting point to have that conversation with people. And maybe I can achieve that with some screenshots or extensive landing page - at least for the time being.
Your point about making sure the niche is larger than just us is a really insightful one! In our case, it's about improving your performance at work through work-focused journaling. Which is a generic problem experienced by a lot of people. So I actually want to make the audience smaller and identify the right niche to go after. How broad it is a little worrisome.
Whether or not the solution will solve the problem for other people, besides just me, keeps me up at night.
Also, I love that you mentioned market research. It is something that no one really talks about in the UX world - yet it is incredibly important. Market research is something that we've done and continue to do. I'm a big believer in following competition and trends.