Product Research
What are the unknowns about your product? What does your target audience want from your product? We find the answers to these questions and more.
“They were easy to work with and had a deep knowledge of technology and user behavior… It doesn’t get better than being on schedule and within budget.”
Mohit Bhargava
President, LearningMate Solutions
What is Product Research?
Product research is employed to ensure your product design and features achieve the needs of your end users. Product research surfaces information on the wants, needs, and pain points of your target audience, so you can then incorporate their feedback and tailor your product to them.
product research
pro-duct re-searchWhy is Product Research important?
We all know that research can be expensive and often times unfruitful. Without proper testing and unbiased attention to data, you cannot identify true results. Results must be replicable to be qualified as accurate. By testing product ideas, you are able to invalidate false assumptions and uncover information which can be used to optimize your product for market success.
In terms of digital product development, product research provides information on the content, user flows, features, and functions that will be of most value to your end users.
What are the results of a successful Research phase?
Throughout each phase of product design and development, it is recommended that you employ a variety of research tactics (ie. market research, consumer research, marketing research) to ensure your product or service meets the market’s needs. A successful research phase will provide insights into:
- Competition It’s important to understand how your new product may stack up against the competition. Are your competitors meeting the needs of their users? Often times existing products are lacking in one way or another. Qualifying your competitor’s shortcomings presents opportunities for advancement and helps you to gauge the likelihood of your product’s success.
- Design Surveying product assumptions against your end users will help uncover specifications for product designs that are otherwise unable to be obtained. From identifying interest in different icons to discoveries of touchpoints, the findings unveiled during a successful product research phase will help you optimize your software design efforts to match the preferences of your users.
- Value What are the benefits, features, and experiences you would like your product to embody? Typically, a handful of features are defined when ideating a new product, but how do these features benefit your users and how will you highlight these benefits in your product’s user experience? In order to give your users what they want, you must first validate what is most important to them.
- Users Identifying buyer personas is not easy. It requires spending time investigating not only the demographics of your end users, but also their interests, needs, and dislikes. By vetting your product’s competition, performing Value Proposition exercises, and testing your findings with user interviews and surveys, you can accurately define who your end users are and what is most important to them.
