 All right, you ready? Is user-reshirt Is user-reshirt Is user research actually important and this video you're gonna find out in the video Hey, I'm Jonathan CEO of AJ and smart. We're a small design for Hey, I'm Jonathan here in San Francisco and in the video you're about to see it's a small excerpt from our product Breakfast Club podcast Which is every Monday we put some of the clips here on YouTube and in this episode We're talking about one of the most common things that people ask when it comes to Designing products. Is there actually a point in doing user research? And if so how much is actually useful? Let me know in the comments what you think and I know some of the things here are a bit controversial But please don't troll just give your actual opinion. You know, bye We were doing a couple of Q&As. We were reading out questions from the Facebook group So basically when you join the masterclass you're in this Facebook group you can ask questions there's hundreds of questions that we were able to kind of go through in emails on the Facebook group and One of the most common themes that we came up against not against But I guess that one of the most common themes that was talked about was user research And now this is something that's huge the question that we're actually answering that you'll hear in a minute So you're gonna be hearing myself and Jake chatting the question was specifically about research for the sprint but we ended up going a lot deeper in talking about research in general and Whether research really is a valuable thing when you're working on a new product now We have kind of slightly controversial opinions on that if you've been listening to the product breakfast club for a while especially if you go back to the early user research episode and The Jason freed episode you'll know that we have maybe potentially Not mainstream views on how research should work But I also think that's interesting to bring a different angle than everybody else And I think most others are pretty much on the you have to research You have to understand the user user center design everything's about the user nothing is right unless the use blah blah blah Okay, so we're gonna be taking a slightly different angle which you're gonna be hearing in the Q&A coming up with myself and Jake I hope you enjoy it and Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Thank you for reviewing. It's really helping us get up in the iTunes charts So if you haven't reviewed this yet, please give it a review if you're enjoying it It helps us out a lot for doing this free sexy podcast. Thanks so much Hey, welcome back to the Q&A part of this course where I'm standing here with Jake Knapp And we're gonna be just answering your questions that you've been pumping into the Facebook group for the last few months And we've got a great one. We've got a doozy. Okay. It's a deal. Let's have it. Okay, Andre asks and I'm gonna set the scene I'm gonna set the scene I'm not just gonna read his question into picture. You're going into the design sprint Okay, you're going to the design sprint with a new client or it's the door. It's a creaky door It's a very creepy door. You shouldn't have creaky doors You shouldn't have creaky doors in the sprint room You're going to the design sprint whether it's with a client or an internal team and the internal team has a lot of Biases on what they want to do on what they think the sprint should be and what they think The product should be but they've done no user research at all. It's all based on their own biases. Okay. Okay, sure What do you think about that in design thinking that would be kind of a no-go kind of a non-starter? Yeah, so This is a really good question and it's tough because if you do research before you come into the sprint You will always be ahead like you're always going to be ahead of a team who hasn't had a chance to do research You're gonna know more about your customers I think of it almost as like you've already done a sprint if you've done research ahead of time and you're able to Present it effectively and the team believes it now That's an important question because for many teams actually if they don't already believe in research You may not be able to just convince them like this is the right way to do and listen to us So part of the idea with this sprint is it's a trojan horse for research at the end of the week Even a team who's totally averse to research will be really hooked on the idea of learning Whether their prototype whether their solution works and they're gonna see their customers react to it and Research is gonna happen by the time the week is over There's this sort of bigger question about where good ideas come from where do good businesses come from good innovative products If you like where do they come from like do they come from Doing exhaustive customer research talking to people and sort of discovering what their needs are and you know Sort of empathizing with them or whatever Or do they come from the insights that people in business have the way the workers or the folks on the team are Thinking about the problem and I want to say that they come from doing research and for really understanding customers But I think quite often they actually come from people just having an insight someone who knows a lot about a technology saying I think there's something really cool We could do with this technology and I think we should do it And you know a lot of those ideas fail a lot of those technology driven or business driven ideas They do fail But I think where the magic really happens and if you look at the products that we all use every day The products that are success stories What happened was somebody had an insight And then they were able to figure out how to take that idea about a technology or a new business model Or a new service model and then they were able to figure out how to really make it fit well with the customer They're able to sort of build a bridge from this crazy idea that they had the sort of brute force Maybe this wasn't something that really made sense to people right away And then they figured out how to make it make sense to people and maybe they had to like change the way people Actually behaved and the way people operated like airbnb is a really good example of this You know and those are designers who started that company They had this idea about this home sharing thing that honestly like when I first heard about it It sounded a bit creepy, you know, I mean, it's like you're going to be staying in somebody's place and like They had to sort of also change people's expectations in the world They had to figure out how to build that bridge and they did it by Taking their crazy idea and their sort of insight into the business into the service What was possible with technology and then they like figured out how do we make this fit the customer? But it's like the insight or the inspiration or the opportunity first And then figuring out how do we make this fit not every insight will even be possible to fit to people I'm sure there are stories where people just started with exhaustive discovery research and then came up with something But I don't know the stories the stories that we all like the products that we all know the businesses were so successful They started the other way. So in a sprint, I'm okay with starting with the company's insights and then seeing what happens Yeah, I think that's a great thing about the sprint You can start with a lot of assumptions and those assumptions are going to be challenged on the user testing day anyway And it is true. I think like there's some context that people need around user research large companies Let's say like a company like slap today They wouldn't have started with user research But today when they want to tweak little things and they want to do like small tweaks to the like conversion funnel Or they want to add new features today when they're already established. That's when they start building personas That's when they start going a little bit deeper into user research, but often at the start It is the whole other time personas But that's when they really start doing research and really trying to figure these things out the same with Netflix They don't start with that like companies think they do But this kind of almost like misinformation spreads around from these companies because they show that they do these processes and people think that they're about to start That's right. Yeah. Yeah, and I think yeah I don't want us to be coming down too hard on like design in general because of course like we think those things are important It's important to know your customers. It's important to do Product work that fits your customers lives. It really does matter I think that there's just sort of this philosophical approach about whether you try to convince the team that there's a sort of Golden perfect way to know your customer and like we must do like our design and our research this way Or whether you try to help your team I mean the design sprint my standpoint was I had tried in the past before doing this to like Figure out what the golden way to do design was and I sometimes try to convince people Look, this is the right way to do it. We should do it this way You know, you should feel guilty if you're not doing it, right? But the reality is I don't know that there is a golden way and instead Besides the design spread besides the design in a design spread you're really just trying to be helpful It's like look whatever you're trying to accomplish team and that might be that you are dead set on this one solution The design sprint is going to try to help you get there now along the way It's going to turn out that you're going to do a lot of design work You're going to consider carefully different viewpoints within your team You're going to put it in front of customers and you're going to find out really quickly if that's Actually something people care about you're going to do all those things that as designers we often want to do Those things will happen But they're not going to happen in a way where you're trying to like Convince somebody like force them down like just like ram through your your vision or make people feel guilty Instead, you're going to be helpful. You're going to be helping them along the way So you'll take their energy and their enthusiasm for their solution You'll help them. Perhaps they'll be right. If not, you'll have shown them a way to learn I think that's what it's all about to me That's a better way and a more fun way to work together great great answer. Jake. Oh, oh, thanks. That was amazing Oh, hey, didn't see you there. I was doing some user research So I hope you like that little clip from the podcast the podcast is now actually called Jake and Jonathan It's no longer called the product breakfast club So if you want to listen to more episodes of the product Because if you want to listen to more episodes of Jake and Jonathan Just go to any podcast app and check it out. Make sure you subscribe to this channel If you're interested in sort of designy producty UXC those sort of things and check us on an instagram at a jsmart design every day We have a vlog about the running of a design agency. Thank you very much. Have a great day