Running Research When You Have No Budget for It
You do not need a lab or a recruiter. You need five conversations and the discipline to not lead the witness.
Cost Is Rarely the Real Obstacle
The most common reason teams skip research is cost, and the most common reason research fails is that it was run to confirm a decision already made.
Five Sessions Will Do It
Five unmoderated sessions with people who resemble your customers will surface the majority of serious usability problems. Recruit from your own support inbox if you have to.
- Recruit from support tickets, waiting lists and churned accounts
- Write the two questions you genuinely do not know the answer to
- Record the session; never rely on your own notes
- Share the raw clips, not a summary slide
A round of five costs an afternoon. The redesign you avoid by running it costs considerably more than that.
Ask About Last Time, Not Next Time
Ask about the last time they did the thing, not what they would do in general. Memory of a specific instance is far more reliable than speculation about a hypothetical one.
“People are unreliable narrators of their future behaviour and excellent witnesses to their past. Ask accordingly.”
Run the next round before you have written a line of code. Research that arrives after the build is a review, not a decision.
