Storyboards and their impact on Mobile App Development
Service Design: Moving beyond UX for Mobile App Development
User research is an imperative part of the planning process for mobile app development and to get the best results out of it.
What is user research?
User research is a process of systematically investigating the needs and requirements of targeted users. It helps you to know how your product will work in the real world for real people and cater to their needs.
How is it done?
As an integral part of the app design process user research is done by using different types of observation and feedback collection methods to help you understand the needs, attitudes, and behaviours of users. It could be as wide as involving a research agency conducting street level 1000 of interviews and as small as the closed group of friends in your garage.
Convergent and divergent research approach
The convergent research approach is used for solving vexing and complex problems particularly focusing on different alternatives. It aims to reduce the options down to a clear set of alternatives. On the other hand, a divergent research approach is used to find and explore new, creative and different possible solutions to a problem.
Don’t start convergent thinking too soon so you may ignore an aspect that can be an important feature for the application. Convergent thinking focuses on a few things while the divergent approaches target a diversified group of users who are involved directly or indirectly.
Role of user research in app development
The role of user experience research is to enhance the design ideas and to bring forward the plausible solutions for which your app will work. It eliminates the uncertainty about the needs and desires of users to yield the best possible benefits for the business, user, and product depending upon the research outcomes.
Stakeholders don’t understand the significant role of User Experience or UX research in the process of app development. They consider it as a wastage of resources. Following are some important roles that UX research plays in the process of app development:
1. App. With easy to use features
Users enjoy using an app that contains their desirable features that are easy to use as well. The diversified users belong to different educational and professional backgrounds. They may not have enough knowledge or spare time to understand the complicated features of the application. Findings of user research can be of great help in this regard.
2. Combating users’ expectations
It assures that the design and features of the app will work as a solution to a major problem of targeted users. By doing proper research, developers and engineers start to think from a user’s perspective. Hence, they can now design a product that people will going to love and use. Researching a diverse group of people can give you an insight into their needs.
3. Assurance of ROI
The app, its functions, and features must lead to generate a adequate return on investment. It doesn’t matter how hard the developers and engineers work on the app if it fails to attract several potential users. User research assures that features of the app are a necessity for targeted users and they will use it anyhow.
Significance of user research for app development
Doing proper research about your targeted users is important to understand and fulfill their needs. Mobile app developers and engineers should be really specific in their goals. Hundreds and thousands of people are developing and launching mobile apps but only a few of them have hit the milestone of success.
The convergent approach is significant for identifying all the available alternatives and then a divergent approach helps to understand the thoughts of diversified users thoroughly. It makes the research more objective and does not neglect any group of targeted users.
A feature that is beneficial for a user can be a problem for other users. That’s why taking responses from diverse user groups can help you decide the features accurately.
UX research leverages users point of view while designing a mobile application. In this way, the features and functions app will be in line with the users’ needs. The findings of research are used to minimize adoption and usage challenges.
Hence, it is evident that user research helps to ensure the possible success of the project. The stakeholders should understand its importance otherwise they will be going to suffer