The Benefits of User Experience Research

The Benefits of User Experience Research – Part 2

What is User Experience Research?

User experience research (UXR) aims to empathize with users, developing a deep understanding of their desires and abilities while maintaining the context of the business objectives. With possible applications to every aspect of the design process, user experience research supports iterative improvements to your software and services that enhance users’ experiences with and perceptions of your product.

By empathizing with users and testing the usability of your digital solution, user experience research determines the functionality, efficiency and desirability of your product. Best practices promote and “provide a consistent, rapid, controlled, and thorough method of examining the users’ perspective.” (1)

What is User Experience Research? Part 1

In this three-part series, REEA Global explores what user experience research is, the benefits to be gained from understanding your users’ voices, and practical use cases to follow through on insights and recommendations.

So what is user experience research? How is it different from user experience design? What’s included in the process? What type of study should be used based on your needs? Let’s dive in!

How to Set Requirements for Custom-Developed Software

Building custom-developed software without having solid requirements is like trying to fly a plane without a flight plan. Yet, so many custom software developers set off blindly without understanding the problem they’re trying to solve, only to discover when it’s too late that they were totally off course.

The only way to avoid this is to invest the time at the outset to draw up clear and concise requirements to guide the product design and development process.

Sounds easy enough, but creating a solid set of requirements can be a real challenge. Let’s look at the difficulties and how best to draw up requirements for software development projects.

The Quick and The Dead: Why Speed Often Wins in Software Development

The ancient idiom The Quick and The Dead conjures up images of a shootout in a good old-fashioned Western movie of the same name, featuring a cowboy drawing his pistol from his waistband, pointing it, and eliminating the enemy in seconds.

Similarly, in the Wild West of software development, it often is the speed of the draw that determines the winner. How quickly you bring a new product to market can be the difference between success and failure. The speed vs quality debate rages on, but in our opinion faster software development is often the only way to survive. Let’s explore this idea a bit further.

Is Your Company Ready for Web 3, the NFT Marketplace and NFT dApps?

If you’re unsure how smart contracts, the NFT marketplace, cryptocurrencies, decentralized apps (dApps), and blockchain relate to you, it’s time to work out where your company fits into the metaverse.

Experts say 2022 will be the year of the metaverse as Big Tech gear up to release hardware and software to allow us to play or work in a variety of virtual 3D worlds.

With big-box retailers such as Walmart appearing to be getting ready to enter the metaverse with its own cryptocurrency and collection of NFTs, the mass adoption of the metaverse can’t be far off. We only need to think back to how quickly the internet transformed our lives to realize the massive impact the metaverse could have on the way we do business.

UX Research: The Difference Between Good and Great

It sounds so obvious — when designing a new digital product, developers should take into account the experience of end-users. Yet in practice, user experience research (UX) is often ignored or, at best, treated as an afterthought in favor of the hunches and opinions of the founders, developers, or product team themselves.

Software Maintenance, Home Inspections, and Boosting Valuations

Creating a new software application is exciting – similar to building a new home. As the designs take shape, you already picture yourself admiring the views from the balcony, or in the case of an app, imagine the users navigating their way around to solve important problems.

Once the house is built (our analogy for building a software platform), the initial excitement dwindles, but the work is far from done. Just like your new home needs ongoing maintenance to ensure it stays in a good condition, your software – particularly if it’s a software-as-a-service product – needs the same upkeep to ensure it remains functional and relevant to users.

Hiring a Chief Technology Officer? Read This First…

At some point during the lifetime of a new software company, every founder considers appointing a Chief Technology Officer (CTO). When is the right time, and do you really need one?

Perhaps you’ve built the first version or MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of an application or platform with a sweat equity team or via outsourced developers and things are going well.

As the viability of the business becomes more certain and in order to move to the next phase, you may consider broadening the internal skills base by hiring an experienced CTO.

You may even think it’s essential.

NASA Space Missions: Lessons for Today’s Virtual Team Managers

Virtual team management has come into sharp focus during COVID but managing teams remotely is not new. Sending a rocket into space is arguably one of the most complex endeavors imaginable – yet NASA teams scattered across different locations have been using virtual tools to execute groundbreaking missions for years.

REEA CPO Alan Schunemann, whose former roles included a stint at NASA’s space program, explores the early development of online sharing tools and how their application laid the foundations for virtual world management processes today.

How Should You Measure Experience?

When shopping for a software development or analytics partner, the depth and type of experience they have is one of the most critical factors in determining success.

Beyond technical expertise – which in itself is rarely enough to guarantee success – what should leaders and founders look for in a technology partner? A true partner in the broader sense is not just a technology partner, it is a business partner who brings additional dimensions of capabilities and perspectives that drive better planning, decisions, and execution. For this reason, it is important to consider a partner who has built products, teams, and companies by navigating the real world, with all of its inevitable surprises, challenges, and imperfections. In essence, the best technology partners are “technology business partners” who really understand the bigger picture.