#1 — Lack of Stakeholders
Meetings and phone calls with a client are a nightmare for any UX specialist. And indeed, instead of spending a lot of time discussing seemingly obvious things, it’s better to devote it to work. Unfortunately, this carelessness can come at a cost. Over time, there are risks that you will have to explain the rationality of one or another decision and discuss its right to exist.
And vice versa, constant interaction with the client helps to quickly respond to comments and coordinate the interface to the smallest detail.
How to solve this problem?
You should be ready for teamwork from the very beginning, no matter how ignorant of the specifics of creating UX your client may be. It’s better to overdo it and once again make sure that the client is satisfied with everything in your work and your further plans about the project’s implementation than later be puzzled by corrections and explanations.
#2 — Too Many Parties to Interact with
You may find yourself in a situation where too much work is piled on you: too many stakeholders, too many teams to interact with, too many requirements… Unfortunately, this is a typical story for large companies. In this case, successfully completing the project will not be easy.
How to solve this problem?
You should come to terms with the fact that you will not be able to meet the needs of all parties 100 percent, otherwise, you risk burnout at work. It is much more correct to learn to prioritize and delegate your tasks to your competent colleagues. And of course, discuss your problems with the clients — perhaps they will help you optimize your work processes and make your life easier.
#3 — Too Many Conclusions
It happens that the result of the UX research is a large number of conclusions, with which it is not clear what to do. Even if you did your job perfectly, a large number of disparate data can lead you into a stupor and reduce the usefulness of your research to a minimum.
How to solve this problem?
If the research has already been done, try to establish relationships and priorities between the findings. Perhaps you can link all of them into a single logical chain and eliminate the problems as they become important. You can also provide the results to your colleagues for consideration — in such a situation, a third-party, uncluttered look will definitely be useful.
#4 — Direct Follow User Reviews
Has it ever happened to you that your idea of what you were doing was very different from what you were actually doing? The same can happen with representatives of your focus group, who, when testing a particular feature, can draw the wrong conclusions and point out incorrect flaws.
How to solve this problem?
Try to look at things rationally and globally. Blindly following the wishes of all members of your focus group is guaranteed to lead to interface redundancy and make it too confusing and expensive to implement. Neither you nor your client needs this. Therefore, before taking into account “I would like something else instead of this button,” ask a few clarifying questions and offer users your optimization options that are rational from the point of view of implementation.
#5 — Using a Single Research Method
You can have your favorite UX research method, however, it’s not guaranteed to work effectively with absolutely all projects. You should understand that there are many additional factors like the size of the focus group, the complexity of the project, the speed of its implementation, etc., that affect the effectiveness of your approach. That’s why the ‘X’ method might work great on a sample of 10 people for a niche solution but won’t work on a sample of the same size for a mass-targeted one.
How to solve this problem?
Test your hypotheses with at least two or three different methods. If this hypothesis is correct, each of the methods will show the same result.
#6 — Research Bias
Research bias often interferes with obtaining truthful results. In particular, UX research is carried out to get a new look at things that are familiar to us (in particular, a specific interface). This is why the leading questions you ask focus group participants can provoke incorrect results and confirm false hypotheses.
How to solve this problem?
Try to be impartial and accept with equal value the opinion of absolutely all participants in the focus group. Thus, you will be able to evaluate your product without prejudice and optimize it in the future for the needs of its target audience.
#7 — Too Little Time for Research
To reduce the budget and bring the product release date closer, the client sometimes insists on reducing the time allocated for UX research. Usually, the consequences of such a decision turn out to be negative, and the product begins to acquire redundant and irrelevant features that are not required for implementation and even confuse the end user when handling the interface.
How to solve this problem?
You need to try to explain to the client that your requirements for the time frame for conducting research are not a whim and not a reason to increase the budget, but a predictive measure to reduce the risks of releasing an outdated or useless product. After all, as a rule, restarting a product with optimized functionality costs customers much more than one or two additional weeks spent on analyzing the needs of the target audience. You can also involve your colleagues in the work to speed up the research without reducing its effectiveness.
#8 — Incorrect Research Reasons
Have you ever thought about the purpose of conducting UX research? Perhaps this is proof or a refutation of your or someone else’s hypotheses? Most likely, your goal is wrong, and the results of your activities will be useless.
How to solve this problem?
First, you must figure out how your research goals will correlate with the client’s business goals. Otherwise, it will be just “research for the sake of reporting”. You must also make this process relevant to the end user and understand how the research can benefit the target audience of the product. Only such an approach will provide you with high efficiency in your activity.
#9 — Research and Design Are Created Separately
Sometimes, due to incorrectly established workflows, designers and UX researchers work separately, interacting little with each other and focusing only on the “raw” results of the work of their colleagues. This is fundamentally wrong and, in fact, “kills” all the benefits that teamwork can bring.
How to solve this problem?
Discuss with your manager how you can communicate with the rest of your team members to interact more productively with each other during your work processes. In this way, you will help designers to better understand the needs of end users and ultimately increase their satisfaction with the product.
#10 — Incorrect Usability Tests
Usability testing, being one of the most effective methods of UX research, can sometimes bring incorrect results. In particular, when you watch users too closely and guide their actions to the smallest detail, they can get results that you expect, but not those that reflect reality.
How to solve this problem?
Recreate the field conditions familiar to focus group representatives in a real environment. Of course, to get an objective assessment, you cannot do without a research plan and not give users any instructions on how to handle the interface. However, telling them what and how to do each step is also wrong. Let the focus group participants think that there is no one around.
#11 — Lack of Success Criteria
Even the most precise adherence to the rules for conducting UX research and a large sample of the target audience does not guarantee success if you do not have any metrics to evaluate user experience.
How to solve this problem?
Before starting your research, choose clear criteria for success and coordinate the focus group participants so that their activities help you evaluate these criteria. Otherwise, they may choose their own scenario for the study of a particular function and you will not achieve your goals. For example, you can offer to compare a product with its counterparts that have already proven their success in the market.
#12 — Misunderstanding Priorities
You can mistakenly focus on common success metrics (such as conversions) and forget about the more important ones specific to your product. In particular, the researched feature may have low conversion rates but positively influence sales. Should it be underestimated in this case?
How to solve this problem?
Think about how evaluation metrics can be combined to get a broader view of the features being evaluated. For example, the multiplication of these indicators will give you a more transparent understanding of the effectiveness of the analyzed interface element.
#13 — Strictly Following the Client Portrait
In usability testing, the compliance of the focus group representatives with the approved characteristics of the client portrait is not so important as the experience of using similar products. That is why relying solely on the parameters of the target audience, you can select inappropriate test participants.
How to solve this problem?
If you work on a highly specialized product that will be used by experts in a specific area, it would be more correct to collect a focus group of people who have experience using similar products, rather than focusing solely on demographic characteristics.
#13 — Too Meticulous Note-Taking
A facilitator is a very difficult position, which, in addition to a competent and objective assessment of the product, also implies the creation of optimal conditions for test participants. Of course, during the testing process, you will make some notes that will help you reproduce the testing process over time. However, too scrupulous recording of parameters important for evaluating a product can lead to the omission of other equally important aspects of this event.
How to solve this problem?
Try to spend more time observing than taking notes. You should have a general idea of how users react to the interface. In the end, you can fix all the parameters important for the assessment based on the written assessments of the focus group representatives. And of course, do not forget to sign a user data processing agreement with all test participants so that your event is completely legal.
#14 — Lack of Research in the Latter Stages of Product Development
Usually, UX research is carried out before designers and developers start working on the product. However, many products require further research at later stages of the project. If this aspect is overlooked, the product loses a lot of quality from the point of view of end users.
How to solve this problem?
Of course, you will learn the main part of the fundamental characteristics of a product at the initial stages of its development. However, usability testing will also prove useful during the product implementation process. Thus, you will ensure the maximum intuitiveness of the interface and will be able to reduce the entry threshold for all segments of the target audience.
#15 — Insufficiently Precise Questions
Clarifying questions is one of the main pains of the UX researcher. Some specialists are embarrassed or simply do not bother to ask such questions to the focus group participants and complete their own hypotheses about the assessment of a particular interface feature. The results of this approach are often wrong.
How to solve this problem?
Just forget about shyness and laziness and do your job as meticulously as possible. If you have any gaps in understanding what a particular test participant is satisfied with or dissatisfied with, clarify exactly what he or she means. It would be great if you prepare clarifying questions in advance (try to exclude questions with a binary answer from your list).
