User Research Can Start Now

At work, one question I'm often asked is "when should we engage you on our project?" Unfortunately, by the time I'm asked, the project is heading into final QA. I'm happy to help run some usability tests and do a quick heuristic evaluation at a late stage in hopes that:

1. The project team learns how much I could help if brought on another project even earlier.
2. I can teach people what usability and user research is all about.
3. Recommendations will become ingrained in the heads of the project team, ideally meaning that those problems won't exist in future applications.

However, I'm happiest when engaged at the beginning of a project lifecycle. As soon as you know you are creating or changing a product, call me - immediately.

Why immediately? Because user research can begin immediately.

Here's what a usability/ux researcher can do for you:

Help gather requirements
Want to know what your customers really need? Let a researcher hang out with them, observe them working with your product, ask them open-ended questions, and identify both what works and what doesn't. They don't even need to already use your product. Watching a customer complete their work without your product is just as valuable.

Find problems before you upgrade
In cases where it's time for a product upgrade or appearance refresh, let a usability researcher have a look. Using their vast knowledge of usability guidelines and experience from previous projects, a researcher can identify quite a few major usability problems before you put that product in front of users.

Help ensure the best experience for your customers
Let the usability researcher evaluate your sketches, your wireframes, and your prototypes. Don't ever feel like it's too early to engage the user experience team. It probably isn't. The earlier you catch usability problems, the cheaper and faster they are to fix.

Validate an awesome design
If the design meetings the needs of your customers, you'll know before you launch, if you engage a usability researcher. The researcher can run a few test sessions in front of actual customers as they perform specific workflow tasks. If there are still usability problems at this point, you'll know. If not, you'll have some validation that you made great design decisions.

It is ideal to bring that usability researcher into your project as early as possible and to devote the appropriate amount of research time into the schedule. Not all usability work takes a lot of time. Even the tightest schedule can have some amount of user research included, even if just a couple of hours for a quick expert review.

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