How To Communicate The Value Of User Research

The beginning of a new project: Your client needs help with a redesign of its website or application.

“We want to improve the user experience, it has to be jaw-dropping for our customers, we want them to fall in love with our product.”

Here is the good news: Your client is aware of User Experience (UX), cares about customers’ needs and sees the value in investing in a great user experience. They asked for an expert with UX skills to help, but do theyreally understand what it means to deliver an exceptional user experience?

User research is a vital component of UX design. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

UX is more than a bunch of rules and heuristics that you follow in your product design process. UX is subjective, as the name suggests. It is the (subjective) experience that a user gets while using a product. Therefore, we have to understand the needs and goals of potential users (and those are unique for each product), their tasks, and context.

As a UX expert you should already be familiar with the maxim, It all starts with knowing the user.

Now for some bad news; this is the point when you discover your client’s misconceptions about UX.

UX expert: “Ok, let’s start with your users: Who are they? What do they do? What do they want? What are some of their pain points? I would like to talk to them, observe them, learn from them…”

Client: “Oh, we don’t need user research, that’s a waste of time.”

Wrong!

In this post I will try to explain why, and hopefully, help fellow UX specialists in their efforts to convince clients that good UX is next to impossible if it is not preceded by good user research.

No Need For User Research? There Is Always A Need For User Research

You cannot create a great user experience if you don’t know your users or their needs.

Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Don’t simply accept the common argument that there is no time or money to do any user research for your project.

User research should shape your product design and define guidelines that will enable you to make the right UX decisions.

User research will shape your product; it will define the guidelines for creating a product with a good experience. Not spending any time on research, and basing all of your design decisions on best guesses and assumptions, puts you at risk of not meeting your user needs.

This is how senior UX architect Jim Ross UXmatters sees it:

“Creating something without knowing users and their needs is a huge risk that often leads to a poorly designed solution and, ultimately, results in far higher costs and sometimes negative consequences.”

Lack Of User Research Can Lead To Negative Consequences

Skipping user research will often result in “featurities,” decisions that are driven by technical possibilities and not filtered by user goals.

“My wife would really enjoy this feature! Oh, and I heard from this person that they would like to be able to xyz, so let’s add it in there too.”

This leads to things such as overly complex dashboards in cars, where the user’s focus should be on driving, not on figuring out how to navigate an elaborate infotainment system.

Many users find automotive infotainment systems overly complex and distracting. Identifying the target audience is crucial to good UX design.

Tesla’s cutting edge infotainment system, based on Nvidia Tegra hardware, employs two oversized displays, one of which replaces traditional dials, while the other one replaces the center console. Yes, it looks good, but it was designed with tech savvy users in mind. In other words, geeks will love it, but it’s clearly not for everyone. It works for Tesla and its target audience, but don’t expect to see such solutions in low-cost vehicles designed with different people in mind.

Poorly designed remote controls are not intuitive, so casual users tend find them overwhelming, resulting in a frustrating user experience.

Old remote controls are another example of hit and miss UX. There is little in the way of standardization, so each one takes time getting used to.

But what about the purely digital user experience? Too many fields in a form, or too much information may overwhelm and drive your users away.

Poorly designed digital interfaces can drive users away. Even if they don’t, they will annoy users and feel like a waste time.

Instead of creating the opposite behaviour, poorly designed and implemented interfaces are more likely to scare off potential users.

Start User Research With Sources For Existing Information

Yes, user research will expand the timeline and it won’t come cheap, but both time and costs can be minimized. You can start with existing, and easy accessible, sources of information about user behaviour to gain a better understanding of user needs. These are:

• Data Analytics
• User Reviews and Ratings
• Customer Support
• Market Research
• Usability Testing

Quality user research requires time and resources. However, you can start by using existing information to get a sense of what your users need.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these sources.

Data Analytics

If you are working with an existing product, your client might have some data and insights about its use. Data analytics assist with getting a good overview about general usage: How many visitors are coming to the website, what pages are most visited, where do visitors come from, when do they leave, how much time do they spend where, and so on.

But here is what this data is not telling you: How does the experience feel? What do users think about your service, and why are they spending time on your website? Why do they leave?

For example, your data indicates that users are spending a lot of time on a specific page. What it doesn’t tell you is why. It might be because the content is so interesting, which means users found what they were looking for. On the other hand, it could be an indication that users are looking for something they cannot find.

Data Analytics is a good starting point, but it needs further qualitative data to support the interpretation of the statistics.

User Reviews And Ratings

Your client’s product might have received some user feedback, already. There might be a section for feedback or ratings on the website itself, but external sources may be available as well. People might have talked about it in blog posts or discussion boards, users may have given app reviews in an app store. Check different sources to see what users are saying.

However, be aware of limitations. People tend to leave reviews and ratings about negative experiences. Don’t take this as a reason to shy away from user reviews or to ignore feedback!

“All these complainers… These aren’t the users we want, anyway!”

Instead, try to look for patterns and repetitive comments. Here are a few tips for making the most from user input:

• Check whether any action has been taken on negative comments.
• Compare the timing of negative comments to releases and changelogs. Even great apps can suffer from poor updates, leading to a lot of negative comments in the days following the update.
• Do your best to weed out baseless comments posted by trolls.
• What are users saying about the competition? Identify positive and negative differentiators.
• Don’t place too much trust in “professional and independent” reviews because they can be anything but professional and independent.

User reviews are a good source for collecting information on recurrent problems and frustrations, but they won’t give you an entirely objective view of what users think about your product.

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Customer Support

Your client might have a customer support hotline or salespeople who are in touch with the user base. This is a good resource to get a better understanding of what customers are struggling with, what kind of questions they have, what features/functionality they are missing.

Setting up a couple of quick interviews with call center agents, and even shadowing some of their calls, will allow you to collect helpful data without investing too much time or money.

Customer support provides you with a good opportunity to learn about potential areas for improvement, but you will have to dive in deeper to get detailed information about problems.

Market Research

Your client may have some basic information about the customer base, such as accurate demographic information, or a good understanding of different market segments. This information is valuable to understand some of the factors behind the buying decision.

It does not offer any information about the usage of the product, though.

Market research is a good source of information if you need a better understanding of how your client thinks, what their marketing goals are, and what their market looks like. However, it won’t reveal all relevant details about user goals or needs.

Usability Testing

If you are lucky, your client might have done some usability tests and gained insights about what users like or dislike about the product. This data will help you understand how people are using the product and what the current experience looks like.

It is not quantitative research, and therefore you won’t get any numbers and statistics, but it helps you identify major problems, and gives you a better understanding about how your user group thinks.

There is also the option to do some quick remote testing session by using services such as usertesting.com.

Usability tests are another good way of identifying key problem areas in a product.

How To Educate Your Client About The Value Of User Research

The budget might be small and the timeline tight, but ignoring user research will eventually bite you. Help your clients avoid pitfalls by making them aware of the benefits of user research.

What’s the ROI of good user experience? Knowledgeable UX experts must be able to communicate the value of user research to clients.

Here are some common arguments against user research and how to deal with them:

• We don’t need user research. We trust in your skills as a UX expert

As a UX designer, you need to view user research as part of your toolkit, just like a hammer or saw for a craftsman. It helps you to apply your expertise in practice. No matter how much expertise you have as a designer, there is no generic solution for every problem. The solutions always depend on the user group and the environment, so they need to be defined and understood for every product.

User research will help get an unbiased view, to learn about users’ natural language, their knowledge and mental models, their life context.

You are the UX design expert, but you are not the user.

• Just use best practices instead of research

Best practices originate from design decisions in a specific context; the digital industry is evolving at a rapid pace, design trends and recommendations change constantly, there is no fixed book of rules. We need to be able to adjust and adapt. Those decision should be made based on research, not practices employed by others, on different projects.

• We already know everything about our users

Invite your client to a user needs discovery session to observe how users are using the product. Start with small tests and use remote usability testing tools such as usertesting.com to get some quick insights and videos of users in action.

The outcome might be a user journey map or a user task flow. Aim for a visualized document that identifies outstanding questions so you can define areas that need more research.

• We have personas, we don’t need more research

Personas are a good tool for making your target group more tangible, and for becoming aware of different needs, key task flows and and how that might vary for different groups. It’s the common ground and a good starting point.

However, to redesign a product you need a better understanding of the usage. You need to know how people work with your product, what they do with it, when they get frustrated.

Ask for further details about user stories and task flows to make use of personas.

• We don’t have the budget for it

The above list of sources for information about user behaviour should give you a good starting point for sharing ideas with your client on how to gain user information on a (very) tight budget.

Make your client aware of the risks if product design decisions are made without a good understanding of the user.

User Research Is The Basis Of Every Good User Experience

User experience is still a bit of a “mystery” in many circles: Everybody talks about it yet it is hard to define, as a good experience is in the eye of every user.

It is, therefore, key to gaining a sound understanding of the context, the user goals, and the thinking necessary for designing a truly exceptional user experience.

The more transparent you are with your work process, the better your client will understand your tools and the information you need to make good decisions.

While some clients may not be open to the idea of using additional resources on research, it’s necessary for experience specialists to explain the value of user research, and to argue for further research when necessary. To accomplish this, UX designers will require negotiating skills to make their case.

Luckily, proper user research is beneficial to clients and UX designers, so convincing clients to divert more resources towards research should be feasible in most situations. Reluctant clients may be swayed if you manage to devise a cost-effective user-research method, and I hope some of the tips and resources in this article will help boost user research, even if money is tight.

The original article is from Toptal and more UX resources can be found here.

When We Should Redesign: An Automotive Case Study

When is the best moment to do a website redesign?

This article outlines a prospective website redesign for an automotive company in order to question the best possible time to initiate a redesign, and also investigate the specific difficulties of the automotive industry’s digital space. Although there are some very progressive electric car companies, such as Tesla and Rimac Automobili, their digital presence is lacking despite their innovation in their field. It’s important to mention that this is not an official redesign, and I do not have any inside information on what is happening within the company, or the industry.

This article is simply my opinion on how the redesign process should unfold, and so I am using the automotive industry as a test case. Also, my intent is not to write this article, or conduct the redesign as self promotion, but rather as a discussion and education piece. You will see that I didn’t choose to redesign an already working platform, product or anything similar. Generally, only Fortune 500 website redesigns are published, which, in most cases, only serves the designer for better visibility or self promotion. Although this process has its merits, I wanted to offer something else. How can the web redesign be used, perhaps, as an educational, or research tool for other designers instead?

I should mention that I was inspired by the article from Tobias Van Schneider regarding the detriments ofdesigners redesigning for Fortune 500 companies.

Further, ever since I’ve been working in the digital field, I haven’t had the chance to design something on my own, something finished for the client, and something I can believe in as a great product. So, this has been my side project.

When is the best possible time to do a website redesign?

The Redesign Task

The intent of the redesign is to analyse and discover when it’s the best time to perform the page/service redesign. What are the benefits of choosing the right moment? And maybe more importantly, why? Why should someone do the product redesign just because their page is outdated?

The Automotive Problem

Last year, I chose to redesign the once famous Croatian automotive brand, Rimac Automobili. This is a brand that started with a simple car concept, and has since expanded into a massive components production company. This expansion automatically affected the website structure, and so the whole user-focus changed. Like many other startups, the company began with an idea that eventually evolved into something different. The market reshaped the company, so the focus of the website needs reshaping, as well.

So, this point of expansion would have been the ideal time to do the redesign. The changes could have reshaped the structure, and provided an even better user experience. There was nothing wrong with the concept of the old website within its context; it was made strictly for the needs at the time. However, it initially consisted of six main navigation links within a simple dropdown menu to the second level navigation. When I saw the website, I had a feeling that the designer must not have thought that the company would evolve, and that the website could simply scale without losing focus on the important elements.

There is always much to consider in any website design, and it’s hard to say how much time the designer had for research, wireframing, designing and testing phases. However, even the smallest design decisions early on can cause significant consequences to the quality of a final product. Such careless mistakes will ultimately lead to a website redesign only two or three years after the page was initially published. As a result, clients are likely paying much more for a product, in the long term, than they realize. This way, we can clearly see how important each phase of design is.

When it comes to designing large corporate websites, news portals and similar products, I love the idea of atomic design, and crafting all the components to work in multiple situations. I intend to apply the same thinking on this post. Even though it’s not a huge news portal, it’s important to set up the correct UX structure in the background. That will provide us with a good foundation for continuing to work on the experience of the website. Only when the page has the correct structure will I focus on the user experience. It’s not that I don’t consider the user experience while doing the IA (information architecture), but without the proper structure, the user experience design will be irrelevant. Perhaps at first glance, the website looks nice and functions well, but at some point we will need to reconsider a redesign. This we want to avoid. Redesigns are not cheap!

Why Redesign This Company’s Website?

Currently, Rimac Automobili is expanding, and according to official posts of Mate Rimac, the new model, or the ‘concept s’ car, is already in production. Currently, the website is limited to only one car/product. The current website is created from two main templates and maybe one or two special templates, so basically, each page looks the same. The design focus is on big images of the car, but there isn’t much else, graphically, to illustrate the car’s quality (or the company’s) that helps making a decision to purchase. Although, the disorganization of the website is likely representative of bigger, underlying systemic issues within the company, rather than being solely a design matter. For those with the money, however, the website’s poor design does not encourage the customer. First impressions are crucial, and the website should be able to persuade its user to purchase a $1 million car. Let’s say it should be “appetite appealing,”even though nobody knows what that means. Just like people, websites need salesmanship and charisma.

The design must stand out amongst a sea of similar websites.

I don’t want to offend the original site designers, even though automotive competitors, such as Ferrari, Lamborghini and even my favourite, Aston Martin, have simple websites, also don’t offer great user experiences. They’re all just typical corporate websites. Volkswagen/Toyota/Peugeot and the like have similar website structures. The biggest difference between these brands is the price. So, why doesn’t the Rimac site reflect this disparity in vehicle quality?

Yet, here we are talking about some ultra expensive brands that only a few of us can afford. If I were the customer, I would expect much more from these websites. I want to be sure that I am buying the best product for so much money. What is the difference between these brands? Why is Rimac a better car than Toyotasince Toyota has an electric car? Shouldn’t this be evident in the quality of its digital space?

Why do high quality automotive companies have a low quality web design?

The biggest problem in the automotive industry is that all its websites are pretty much the same; other than different colors and Hero images (product shots), they’re based on the same wireframe. There are many factors behind the automotive company’s decisions, but I believe that there should be a clear distinction in digital presence between a $1 million and a $25,000 car. Since this difference is not apparent on its websites, I challenged myself to create a solution. Before I start explaining the redesign process, I will explain the thinking behind defining a target group.

Automotive Target Group

Any website must consider its users. Who is the target audience for this kind of car? What are they looking for? Unfortunately, I haven’t conducted any additional user research since it’s pretty difficult to to target those people who can afford to buy this car. The cars cost about $850,000, and, as far as I know, there will only be eight Concept _ One vehicles made. However, although we cannot be exact in identifying the type of customer, we may assume that most users will be one of two types: Either someone interested in purchasing a product (or requesting a service) of the company, or a potential future employee.

Analysis of Information Architecture

On our example website, we could see the first navigation point was Concept One ( at the time it was the company’s only product. I should point out that at the time it was the company’s only product. The real website has since been updated. The second navigation item is its evolution, how the car was produced, while at the third point, we see its products and services, Rimac’s financial operation. The fourth navigation item is another important product of company (Greyp electric bikes), which evolved into a whole individual product and company. The last two items are Press, containing press releases, and Blog, neither of which are actually very useful since most of the news was published on social networks.

Another problem was that the career link was hidden as a secondary, less important navigation item, and given the huge expansion of the company, represents an important matter. So, if we consider the user as the focus of corporate concerns, we will see that at most company websites (exceptions are mostly corporate/huge websites) it’s very important to have prominent “Careers” buttons. At such websites, we need to understand that users are not coming to the page to read the news users are there to access the main content: service, and how the product helps them.

The second target group are people who are searching for a job. This is the most important place for providing information to job seekers whether they are local or international.

Possible Design Solutions

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Before and after

Originally, the intent was to create a darker, more powerful version of the car, and that I tried to achieve that with image sources I found online. With some Photoshop magic, I got the first hero image for the homepage. My idea for an animation was to slowly reveal the car; first the background, then dot components followed by the car. It was time to start designing the Homepage.

The Homepage Design

On the homepage, there are two main sections: navigation and car showcase. Anything I considered unnecessary was removed. With a quick glance, all the important things are visible, and everything else is on other pages. The user will get a “reward” if they continue to explore the site. At the bottom of the page, there is a progress bar, which at the subpages turns into sub-navigation. (A similar effect is used here http://villashvar.com/en/collection/villa-hera) The progress bar shows theuser’s current position and acts acts like a breadcrumb. This way, the user flow is enhanced and the user is more likely to continue to look at the whole website.

Content Design

For projects like these, I try to design the content, not only the structure. These kinds of projects provide us more freedom to experiment and an ability to design sites as we wish. Hopefully, projects like this will land in our portfolio, unlike projects where we haven’t had the opportunity to make our own design decisions.

The process is simple; at a glance, I read (or prepare) the body of plain text that should appear on the website or app. Next, I try to communicate some elements through icons or interactive animation. For example, details about acceleration, horsepower and top speed are expressed via icons. This way, we don’t need additional words in the text and we have highlighted facts that are ultimately more important to the end user.

Navigation Redesign

The overall navigation structure is now reduced and rearranged based on importance. Now, we have vehicles as the first item, which allows the company to add more car models in the future. This avoids the need to change the website every time a new model is manufactured. For that occasion, the company may create an additional landing page with a different experience.

The secondary page could be entirely independent of the home page, or simply incorporated into it. For that I would recommend Three js, WebGL, Canvas, Greensock or similar. They are well known and are standard. The design below had already rendered components as icons and here are few more I’ve created.

Secondary Pages

An example for the Service page using a slightly different grid. The intent of the different grid is to provide the user a dynamic environment, while exploring the page. The deeper idea behind the dynamics is explaining the car’s behaviour while driving it.

You can see that the idea of consistency is visible in each page, and there is very little plain text. It explains why there are big headlines and different type styles. It’s important to note that page redesign is different from service redesign. Service and product page redesigns are made every day, as designers constantly work to convert clicks into profit. It’s all about performance and conversion rates, in the end. Whereas, a fullpage redesign is made only when necessary, that is hwen the company or product has outgrown itself, and when the page loses its function because it has too many features.

Conclusion

There are several articles online explaining why we should start working on side projects, and I will summarize them in few sentences. If you want to create a really cool project, pick any idea, project or company and solve a design problem for it. This will display to potential companies/clients how you think, work, and what you can offer. Sometimes, it’s really hard to convince a client to support the redesign. Often, clients are hesitant due to a lack of resources, funds, or time to work on the product/service page. Before you begin designing, consider how the page will look in three years. Not from the perspective of design elements, but from function and structure. Only when the product, or page, is working and scalable, is it easy to make small tweaks to fit modern technology trends. Until then, your product will be fine.

There are many factors that affect the direction of the redesign process, both indirectly and directly. I’ve gone through some of them, but what do you think? What are some key facts, or issues, with the redesign? When is the best time?

This article was written by GORAN RAMLJAK - FREELANCE DESIGNER @ TOPTAL

Emotional Sustainability in Brand and Product Design

Product design is a creative discipline that challenges designers to build an aesthetic, functional and marketable product. The rapid speed of innovation has stimulated interest and change in designing the user experience. The discipline is now responsible to create a new paradigm in the product design process, as there are many more factors to explore. Human behaviour has been studied to inform the design of this curated user experience.

Creating an emotional connection to your target market can translate into conversion, sales, as well as online and offline interaction. Good design is a huge part of this process. In order to understand the role of design, when establishing consumer relationships, we have to define design. Design is not just embellishing content , or the crafting of a clean site or application. Design can also be a way of thinking that is mindful of your market’s needs, and ideally addresses them before they are even known.

To build an emotionally sustainable brand, Design thinking requires a focus on building personalities and stories in tandem with building a product in order to establish an emotionally sustainable brand. Giving a product a life beyond its base function is how Apple gets us so excited about their latest release or why your favourite restaurant has a line.

What does it take to design a brand that really sticks with users?

The Emotional Levels of Brand Design

In the startup world, there is a term called “Unique Value Proposition.” This proposition is a clear statement that communicates to potential customers how your product or service will improve their lives. Instead of focusing on the unique value proposition, I often pitch the concept of the emotional value proposition. The difference between the two is that the latter is based on narratives or personality, while the former often occupies a more practical space.

Author Donald Norman offers a digestible breakdown of a concept he refers to as the levels of processing. These levels can be directly applied in product design.

The Visceral

The first emotional level is visceral. We have all experienced this level of emotion, as it is usually outside of our control and directly related to our physical senses. The visceral is an automatic, “prewired” level of emotion. When experiencing visceral emotions we make rapid judgments that are largely biologically determined. We are quickly able to categorize experiences as good or bad - safe or dangerous. This level is dominated by our senses.

In a three dimensional sense, the visceral is our environment. We react to the senses in the air, the touch on our skin, the sounds nearby and any taste we experience. Hearing a loud, unexpected sounds while relaxing on a quiet beach may ignite the classic flight or fight reaction. This would be an example of a visceral reaction.

Translated into design, the User Interface as a product would be a great example of designing for the visceral. The two dimensional world of our phones may not include smell, and a wide variety of touch - but color and fonts can have a similar effect.

These initial, visceral reactions shape our immediate experience of a product or brand.

How can design elements create sensory, visceral emotion within users?

Behavioral

The behavioral emotional level mostly involves cognitive processing within the mind. Behavioral, is the interaction between your product or service and the consumer over time. This level occurs as the user moves through the cognitive process of planning, expecting and learning within your product.

In the world of web or application design, the behavioral level could be seen as the User Experience design. How is the consumer interacting with your brand or product?

How easy is it to reach customer support on your website, for example? A hard to react support team may build narratives with a lack of trust and therefore reduce the emotional connection. A very interactive site with many members, for example, may build a sense of community in the user’s narrative of the brand or product.

Reflective

The third emotional level is reflective and it’s about the message. The reflective level thinks back to the behavioral user experience and the visceral reactions to the user interface and gives the experience meanings. The reflective stage is when the user makes a connection between the experience and their own sense of self.

The meaning assigned to an experience will be contingent on a variety of variables; including the user’s culture, past experiences, and the situation they find themselves in when interacting with your product.

The reflective state is the most conscious of the three levels of emotion and can observe the impact of both the visceral and behavioural levels.

Can your users see themselves in your product?

Addressing the Cognitive Levels in Product Design

Building emotional ties with a brand and their customers requires the designer to know their market. Each generation enters the world with a new set of needs and understanding of how the world is. Understanding the beliefs and priorities of your market is vital for your brand’s emotional durability.

For example, marketing to millennials has become a challenge because of the noncommittal, value based, experience oriented relationship this age group has towards brands. Understanding the value systems of your target market will help you build your product’s value.

Identify Your Market, and be Specific

Target market selection is a very important decision for many companies. Identifying your target market starts with looking at the problem you are trying to solve, or the ways you are attempting to make your user’s life better. It is imperative to tailor your marketing and sales efforts to reach the specific segment of the population that will most likely interact with you brand. As much as we may like to think our products or services will be useful and beneficial to all markets, this is often not the case. A broad market is a great starting place, but defining the specifics of your market will allow you to create a more curated experience for your users. Targeting a specific market attracts loyal first users or customers who then can become advocates for your brand or product.

Identifying a customer’s desire to buy your product or interact with your service is a question of customer values. Understanding the value your product offers goes beyond knowing its ‘features’. A feature is a default characteristic of your product or service. Today, iPhones now come with the ability to scan your fingerprint. This feature is used to unlock your phone, make purchases and to open certain application. To some, the value or benefit of this feature is safety. Understanding that your market is not looking for a fingerprint scanner in a phone but rather values safety is a very important distinction to make.

What value does your product or service have?

Using the iPhone as example, safety is a largely universal value and will only segment your target market so far. Technical factors such as geography, demographics, psychographics as well as behaviour will help dissect your market further.

Don’t Create User Story, Listen to Them

After identifying your market, listen to them. It is important that your brand has an internalized sense of who it is speaking and interacting with. Qualitative research is a method focused on understanding the motives behind thought patterns and behaviours. Interviews are a great source of data in qualitative research, so are observations. Observations are extremely important when designing an emotionally sustainable brand, as they take place in a setting that naturally occurs in contrast to a formal interview.

Renata Tesch, a qualitative researcher, outlines three major approaches to qualitative research that we can apply to product or brand design.

Ethnography

The ethnographic approach, in regards to qualitative research, is largely based on the understanding of culture and its influences in a potential customer’s or user’s behaviour. Originally, designers could assume concepts of culture around ethnicity and geographic location. Today the concept of culture is much more broad as it includes groups, organizations, sexuality and much more. The most common way to study the ethnography of your target market is through observation.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the focus on the individual and their understanding of the world. This research method focuses on the individual’s subjective experience and personal interpretation of the world. With this method of research we can understand a collective ideology of our market through individuals, to perhaps create a related brand culture. A great way to collect this type of data would be through formal and informal interviews.

Field Research

Field research is an extremely broach approach to qualitative research but will certain help create a more internalized sense of your target market. Field research is when the researcher enters a natural setting where their market can be found and observers. Notes are critical for successful field research.

Identify your market, and listen to them!

Create a Personality

A brand personality can be defined as a set of human characteristics associated with a brand. To illustrate, GoPro personifies itself as an adventurous, sporty, young, and creative brand. Consumers can easily relate to a brand if they can project their identity onto the values of the product. Research around brand building techniques has suggested that the greater the connection between the human characteristics that describe an individual idealized or actual self and those that describe the brand, the higher preference the user or consumer will have for that specific brand.

Although there may be similarities in the adjectives used to describe human characteristics and brand traits, they are very different the ways that they are formed. Human traits are based on attitudes, beliefs, physical appearance as well as behaviour. Brand personalities are built based on direct or indirect contact with the consumer or user. People begin to build personas of brands based on the employees, the CEO, brand endorsements - and many more factors. Brand personalities are also built in indirect ways such as the brand name, logo, advertising and price for example.

There are many different aspects of a brand and consumers will continue to draw new links, that expand your brand identity further. Here are some dimensions of your brand to be mindful of:

Attribute

These are distinctive features that concisely characterize the product or brand name. For example the feature can be intrinsic - which would relate to product performance, features, and unique abilities of your product. In contrast, the attribute can be extrinsic and relate to the personality or history of your brand or product.

Benefits

The benefits outline the individual value the consumer has attached to your products attributes. For example, the iPhone may be known by some for its easy to use interface. For many consumers, that is the primary attribute of the iPhone. Yet, the benefit looks at what an “easy to use” phone means for the consumer. How does it relate to their sense of self? For some the benefit may include a strong family connection - as even your grandmother can use this phone. For others, this benefit may include more family time because you spend less time figuring functions out on your phone. In Apple commercials, they often highlight the attribute in response to the benefit. Now they are more connected as a family, because of Apples’ easy to use interface.

Imagery

Visual information is often closely linked with a brand personality and overall voice. Imagery can be concrete and deliberate, sourced from your company, or they can naturally occuring. An example of a naturally occurring image could be a consumer wearing or using your product, seen by another consumer.

Experiences

An experience of a brand can occur at purchase, contemplation of purchase, and during consumption. These experiences shape the narrative of your brand. If the purchasing experience is difficult, your product and whole identity as a brand could be interpreted less positively.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of User Testing

Usability testing is extremely important in product design. Understanding areas where people may struggle with your product, opens up space for recommendations and possibly a strong end result. The goal is to have a better and more accurate understanding of how your product is being used and where it needs to improve. User testing often happens in a controlled environment that allows for live/real time observation or instant feedback.

When testing with users it is important to understand what aspect of your product you are testing. Although it may be tempting to test the entire interaction, more valuable specific data can be collected when goals are established. What do you hope to learn with this test?

Testing can be done at each stage of product design, allowing for your product to be highly consumer centric. Here are the stages of product testing:

Low-Fidelity Prototype or Paper Prototype

This stage of testing is done very early in the product design process. A mockup, wireframe or hand drawn version of the product or website allows businesses to test basic assumptions and flows.

High-Fidelity Prototype

An interactive version of the product, usually computer based, is used in this level of testing. The form of the product varies significantly depending on if it is natively digital or a three dimensional product, but interaction is the key to this stage. The product responds to user inputs at this stage of testing.

Alpha and Beta Version

These products are not ready to be released, but are stable enough to have an accurate idea of usability.

Release Version

At this level of testing, the product has been released to the mass market. This is an opportune time to test entire user flows from beginning to end.

Comparative or A/B Test

Multiple versions of the product are designed to measure the impact of small changes. These designs are alternated between consumers to test the performance and satisfaction. During comparative testing it is important in emotional branding that concept are also tested, not solely elements. For example, when testing which headliner works better - refer to your qualitative data about your target market and build concepts around their values in regards to the words you are using in the headline.

Optimize for the Emotional Journey

This article has provided a series of tools that will allow your brand to be optimized for the user or customers emotional journey. In no way has this article summarized all of the tools that are available to aid in building an emotionally sustainable brand, but simply serves as a launch point. Consumer values translate into consumer preferences. Understanding the “why” behind your target markets behaviour will aid you in building a strong emotional brand. Emotional brands not only translate into conversion, sales and offline and online interaction, but build strong consumer connections for your product or service and in turn strong consumer communities.

The original article can be found on the Toptal Design Blog.