Passive User Research: User Insights Without Reaching Out To Users
In my current position as the User Researcher at BlueMatrix, a project I recently completed involved establishing a baseline of user experiences, needs, and expectations in a product space in order to gain approval to pursue the project.
Purpose:
I worked on this project to gather user insights for a business proposal. This meant that we did not have approval to reach out to clients for direct input, so I was challenged to find ways to ascertain user expectations without direct user involvement.
Process:
My approach involved two methods to triangulate user needs:
Content Analysis: Competitors’ User Reviews
I reviewed hundreds of user reviews left for competitors’ applications and coded them for thematic analysis. I was able to turn that into 2 lists of competitors’ assets and miss opportunities from users’ perspecitives. Examples of results included consistent user desires, frustrations, and even price points.
Heuristic Review: Competitors’ Product Offerings
I complemented the content analysis of reviews with a heuristic analysis, using the industry standard 10 principles. Results I was able to convey from this analysis included recommendations for homepage layout and alert notifications.
Outcomes:
The two analysis types I performed allowed me to ascertain specific themes in unmet user expectations. This allowed me to present a comprehensive list of of our competitors’ fees, features, pros, and cons — all without ever reaching out to a user directly.
Lessons Learned:
This project taught me that there are ample ways to gather user insights that do not involve the resources needed to involve actual users. These insights can be valuable to Product Teams as long as they are interpreted well and presented without assumptions.
I was careful to present my results as just analyses of our competitors’ products as reported by users who are willing to write reviews; this is not necessarily indicative of the true user experience, but they do reflect some opportunities for our future product to excel at.