These days, the mature UX design process includes usability research. Real user insights are what sets the experience designer apart from the interaction design role of decades past, or the lone wolf UXer. You may have met designers like this — they hoard their special, private knowledge. Not always the best team players.

In contrast, we accomplish Lean UX by uncovering usability issues prior to design and development. We lead the cross-functional team through targeted exploration with real users by persona group. Knowledge sharing by involving multiple roles brings an unprecedented involvement and whole-team ownership, thereby circumventing extraneous development cycles. This saves money and time. Meanwhile the lone wolf interaction designer may be on the mark, or miles off. When it comes to your product, we prefer not to guess.

But which research method is best in each instance? Between our experience and deep ties within the research + design community, UXbuddha can identify the fastest and best research methods to answer business and UX requirement questions before interaction design begins. Whether we come in as a consultant or in-house specialist, we strongly recommend that true user insights be taken into account before interaction design starts. 

“If you want a great site, you’ve got to test. After you’ve worked on a site for even a few weeks, you can’t see it freshly anymore. You know too much. The only way to find out if it really works is to test it.”
— Steve Krug

Persona research gave this web product team a jump start on a new blue sky product. Testing internal users, we found our team’s business assumptions were a good start, but were slightly off. It turned out the users we planned to prioritize were less frequent users of the tool. Only through research did we know to shift our development priorities to target our largest user group, bringing the product to market sooner and more successfully.