Mobile user research is a critical part of a product development process as it allows your team to shift from assumption-based decisions to decisions that are driven by strategic insight. Most important, mobile app user research strategies give you the opportunity to improve user experience to achieve increased customer engagement.
Google now has its own user experience (UX) research product where users can sign up to help researchers improve their products. Microsoft has its own user research team that is nearly the same size as its design team. Adobe, Autodesk, Intel, and IBM all have started to bring in designers and researchers to evaluate the user’s experience within their products.
While building an app is important, knowing about its users is essential too. This helps you foresight the success of your app in advance. Perhaps the most important step of the mobile app design process is the research stage. Getting into your user’s mind through using these mobile app user research strategies is the perfect way to release your app without any hitch.
42 % of consumers worldwide would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience. And among U.S. customers, 65% find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising, says PwC.
Here, in this blog, I have discussed some important qualitative strategies for Mobile App User Research. Let’s read more in detail about these Mobile App User Research Strategies to get into an app user’s mind.
Qualitative Strategies for Mobile App User Research!
Attributes such as user experience, customer liking towards an app, customer problems, and more just can’t be measured in numbers. There is a need for a qualitative approach to gauge these feelings and experiences. This is why businesses these days use qualitative strategies for mobile app user research.
When it comes to user experience research, qualitative research examines and analyzes how users feel about the app. It helps businesses find out user preferences for the app and what their personal experiences have been with the app.
According to Econsultancy’s recent report, 88% report that customer mapping had a positive impact on their ability to deliver personalized CX.
Lab Studies!
Lab studies are one of the most important qualitative strategies for mobile app user research. It is perhaps the most direct way to get into a user’s mind so as to assess user liking towards an app. This approach enables a mobile app user to engage directly with an app researcher who analyzes and examines the user’s movements through the app. Remember good customer experience is a key to a flourishing business.
Jeff Bezos invested 100X more into customer experience than advertising during the first year of Amazon.
In this approach, the researcher will provide a scenario to which the user can relate to and later ask the user to perform a task or activity related to the scenario. For instance, the user might be asked to open the app for buying a smartphone.
As soon as a specific scenario is provided, the researcher keeps a track of user activities while he uses the app to perform the task. This lets the researchers to understand and find out how people use the app or expect the app to work for specific functions. It is one of the most popular mobile app user research strategies to get into an app user’s mind.
Diary Studies!
Both written and video diary studies are ideal ways to analyze how users are feeling about the app. Diary Studies is one of the most commonly used mobile app user research strategies to get into an app user’s mind. Using this approach allows businesses to learn how the app relates to the user and why they’re choosing to use it in their daily lives.
A Walker study found that by the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
In these diary studies, the users record how they’ve used the app, what they were intending to do with the app, and what their overall experience was like. This is one of the most popular mobile app user research strategies to drive UX Success which gives researchers deeper insight into how users will access the app.
Focus Groups!
Let’s continue our discussion on major mobile app user research strategies to drive UX Success. Creating focus groups is one of the widely used qualitative strategies for mobile app user research. An ideal focus group has at least five or six participants. Preparing in advance is important for using a focus group for mobile app research.
Preparing well in advance helps you to make sure that your moderator is asking the right questions. You can design questions strategically around the answers that you’re looking for, to find out about the features that the users want in their app. Once you have all the answers, you can analyze the feedback to gain valuable insights into stages of mobile app development. Based on this information, you can incorporate and design new features in your app to keep your users happy and satisfied.
The Bottomline
By now, I am sure you have got a clear idea of the mobile app user research strategies to drive UX Success. Businesses leaders and strategists are using these qualitative strategies for Mobile App User Research to find user experiences and feelings. No wonder, customer experience plays an important role now.
Almost all businesses these days can benefit from the process of user research and app idea research. By providing beneficial actionable insights important for making informed business decisions, these user research strategies help businesses in expanding the customer base. Before making an app, it’s important to know how your users would respond to it.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Ruchita is a voracious reader and loves to write on technology & business articles. She is well-versed in creating content strategy deliverables across project life cycles. She is currently associated with Resourcifi – a Staff Augmentation Company.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruchita-varma-64088957/