We know it’s hard to find the time and the budget, manage the logistics, do the recruiting, gather and analyze insights, run presentations, and the list goes on. Those things are complex and can be overwhelming at the beginning. With this guide, we will try to make it a bit easier.

Doing something instead of nothing, and regularly practicing the bold act of talking to your users, customers, and would-be users and customers. The insight you will get will benefit you the whole effort. At first, someone needs to believe, right?

💡 Minimum viable user research tips:

Recruit about 5 “good” people

While qualitative research can be time-consuming, the good news is you only need to talk to about 5 people before you hit a point of diminishing returns in terms of insights. Of course, that entirely hinges on finding the right people. This doesn’t have to be complicated.

• Know your learning goals for research. Use that to determine your right audience.
• Determine if you need existing or target users—a good rule of thumb is for new power features of your existing product, talk to existing users; for out-of-the-box perspective on a brand new feature or product, talk to your target users.
• Build a simple screener survey to identify and filter out people who will give you diversity and relevance of insight. Pro tip: Don’t over-screen. We see this a lot.
• Distribute your survey to a list you manage or use a third-party service or platform.
• Contact 5 people to set up in-person or remote sessions with the relevant directions, web meeting links, etc. You might do a second round if you get a couple of no-shows or didn’t get the insights you sought. It does happen.
• Compress the timeframe of sessions so you can focus, build momentum, and get to the action faster.

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Here’s where we subtly throw in that User Interviews makes all this much easier and sometimes cheaper, but of course, you can do this manually if you like. Google Sheets + Craigslist + Mail merge FTW!

Write a quick moderator guide

This need not take more than 15 minutes or so for MVR. Don’t go into a session without a simple set of questions.

• Define your research mission and learning goals on top of your guide for a steady reminder and a thing to go back to as your session progresses. Make sure whatever else happens—sessions are predictable in their unpredictability if nothing else—you get back to the matter at hand.
• Have a hypothesis or assumption you want to test, but be totally prepared to be wrong and watch out for unconscious bias. The below point is your friend here.
• Use open ended, why oriented questions, focus on past behavior vs hypothetical future behavior, and avoid adjectives—let your participant decide on the adjectives that describe their experience.
• Write your opening and closing, verbatim. Choose something warm, authentic to how you actually talk, that puts the participant at ease. If you get flustered or things go off script, you can just read this in the moment.

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Run an effective session

You are a human, talking to another human. What an amazing opportunity to get permission to connect with someone you wouldn’t otherwise. Be warm, be authentic, be yourself, just don’t get too chummy or start influencing the participant’s ideas with your own enthusiasm. Be a professional.

• Listen lots, talk little, get comfy with silence. Watch people too. What do they do with your prototype, site? Behavior, behavior, behavior.
• Show something if you have something to show, but focus on one thing at a time.
• Probe, give context, set expectations about why you’re here and what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t share your assumptions or hypothesis.
• Take notes. If you can spare someone to take notes for you or use a transcription or recording service, that means you can really focus on being present in the session, which will help you pick up on all those juicy micro-moments.

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Review and share, results

Don’t let your research die in the session itself. Again, don’t over-complicate this if time is not a luxury you have.

• Highlight key insights, quotes, thoughts from each session immediately after, if you can.
• Review all your notes. Look for themes. Highlight those themes and supporting evidence in a document of your choosing, something that is easy for you and acceptable to your audience of stakeholders.
• Share your insights! Different organizations do this in different ways, and we’ll cover this in depth later. At a minimum, shoot a Slack or email linking to your document and host it somewhere people can access it on demand. You’ve done important work. Don’t hide it.
• Connect with your stakeholders (product, sprint, design team, whoever you’re working with on the research) ASAP with your insights and move things forward!

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That’s it. Of course there’s much more to cover, and cover it we will, but hopefully the above tips empower you to just get out there and do some research today. Building a regular research habit is the best way to build discipline in yourself, your organization, and to consistently show its importance to your product and customers.