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Product Research: The Building Blocks of a User-Centered Solution

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Product research is a foundational step in building user-centric products. It allows you to understand customer needs, preferences, and market trends, informing the development of successful solutions to user problems. Read on for the ultimate guide to product research, including methods, processes, and best practices—plus our favorite tips from the industry’s leading experts.

Product research 101: Definition, methods, and best practices

You may only build new products once, but you iterate on them continuously. The ongoing evolution of a product’s user experience (UX), informed by user insights, is pivotal to staying ahead of competitors and giving your users exactly what they need. In chapter one of this guide, we’ll explore what product research is, give an overview of key methods (and when to use them), plus best practices to follow.

What is product research?

Product research is any research you conduct to better inform your product and understand your user and market. Unlike user research , product research goes beyond evaluating the user experience and includes market analysis, pricing, feature prioritization, and assessing business viability.

Product research is a broader term than UX research—you can conduct research on the user, the interaction, the market, or your business strategy.

Matthieu Dixte , Product Researcher at Maze

It helps you understand the world you are bringing your product into, and what your users expect to do with a product like yours—so you can use their insights to influence development and design decisions.

Product research can be conducted in multiple ways, such as talking directly to users in focus groups or user interviews , or through product experimentation, usability tests and competitive analysis.

Other research terms you might come across

Ultimately, all research falls under the 'product research' banner if it influences the final product. For some product teams, ‘user research’ and ‘product research’ may be interchangeable. But there are some subtle differences between various research terms that it can be helpful to know. Here are the distinctions between key terms you might hear, explained by Maze's Product Researcher, Matthieu Dixte:

• Market research: Discover who is leading the market, who your direct and indirect competitors are, and what similar products are available to your users at what price
• User research: Understand the user, including their needs, pain points, likes and dislikes, and characteristics—both as a consumer and user of your product
• User experience (UX) research : Learn how your user perceives and interacts with your product—where they click, which paths they follow, and where they search for information on-page
• Product discovery : Uncover what your users’ needs and problems are, validate ideas for potential solutions before development, and apply user insights to your product strategy
• Continuous product discovery : Adapt the mindset of an ever-evolving product and user; conduct research continuously throughout the product lifecycle and ensure all decisions are informed by user insights

For example, let’s say you’re thinking of developing and launching a note-taking app for teenagers. You’d need to conduct market research to see if there are any similar products in high demand to gauge if your tool is something customers want. In parallel, you should run user research to discover who your user persona would be and what their pain points are.

You also have to do product discovery to identify the best way to build and design your potential product to make it appealing for teens. And, if you want to know how your users will feel about your product compared to other options, you need product research .

Lastly, run UX research tests on your mobile and web app to gather feedback, and improve the experience. You should continue to talk with users regularly after launch by adopting a continuous product discovery mindset (and ensure you’re always updating and offering the right product).

Talk to more users without needing to grow your product team

Recruit and test users from Maze’s high-quality panel to get more eyes on your product, without increasing payroll.

Why is product research important?

Are we making the right assumptions? Is this product what users really need? Can they use it effectively?

Research answers all those questions. But product research goes a step further by placing those answers in the context of your niche and the market. It empowers your team—not only to create unbiased, user-centric products—but also to create best-selling products that are based on a robust business strategy and deep understanding of the market.

Product research will also help you:

Head in the right direction

Conducting types of product research like competitive analysis gives you inside information on what your users value in a similar product—and what they’re missing. It ensures you’re heading in the right direction by only working on aspects of your product you know will succeed. This helps you speed time-to-market, reduce the cost of fixing future mistakes, and achieve higher goals.

Product research allows you to “define the total addressable market and north star metric, based on the customer segments that found your idea and product valuable. We would fail at achieving product-market fit without doing customer research,” explains Prerna Kaul , Product Lead for Alexa AI at Amazon.

Make the right decisions at the right time

User data can inform your decisions and help you prioritize them according to the goals of the business. “Make choices regarding the evolution of your product and find the right balance between what you want to deliver to improve the user experience, and the benefits it’ll bring to your company,” advises Matthieu. Without product research, you’re building products in the dark with no idea whether your target audience will like or buy them—which could mean wasted resources and sinking revenue.

Get stakeholder buy-in

You’ve probably found yourself explaining multiple times to stakeholders why you need to prioritize one feature over another. Conducting product research enables you to “clearly articulate the customer value proposition to leadership, tech, and science counterparts,” says Prerna. Having quantitative and qualitative user insights provides reassurance to stakeholders and speeds up sign-off—while ensuring the wider organization is aligned on your product ideas.

In short, product research provides you evidence you need to start evangelizing research among your organization, and get the whole team on board.

Understand the position your users hold in the market

User research is about getting to know your target audience and building ideal customer profiles, but product research is about discovering where your potential customers are located in the market and which trending products to take note of. If your audience is already using a similar product, this means finding out: Which one? Why? Are they willing to switch to a different product? What would it take for you to get them to switch?

“Analyzing the market lets you determine which areas could be ripe for disruption or creation. By analyzing existing products and doing conceptual thinking you can build a picture of how you can get your product to gain traction in the market and offer something new, nuanced, or better than the current options,” says Nick Simpson , Head of UX at Airteam.

Challenge your assumptions and anticipate problems

When Prerna worked at Walmart Labs, her team introduced a feature for users to scan products in the Scan and Go app. “We initially believed that all of our inventory was available in a common database and accessible through the app. However, during research and user testing, we identified that some rare products were not in the online database,” she explains.

This caused test users to drop off the app, so her team had to take a step back and prioritize fixing inventory issues before launching the product. Without conducting product research, you can be left guessing at the cause of user problems, or wondering why they prefer a particular product. Research offers your team a chance to challenge what you think you know, and pre-empt what you don’t.

Product tip 💡

You can use Maze to conduct multiple tests on your product through development, such as Five-Second Tests or Content and Copy Testing , or get insights on your live product through Live Website Testing .

Product research methods

There are many different product research and UX research methods , all of which offer different kinds of data and insight, depending on your objectives. If you’re looking to conduct product research to better understand your users, market, or competitors, here are eight product research methods you should consider to help you build winning products.

1. Customer interviews

Interviews can take place at any take of the product development process and consist of direct conversations with current or potential customers. You may choose to conduct interviews with a market panel during concept testing and idea screening to validate your ideas, or you may want to speak to current users after the product goes live to gather post-launch feedback. Interviews are a varied and flexible product research method.

During customer interviews, you should ask open and unbiased research questions to gather insights about customer needs, preferences, and experiences regarding their pain points, your product, and competitors.

2. Voice of customer (VoC) analysis

Gauge what current and potential customers are saying about your products or competitor products online. You can do this using VoC tools , by reviewing what people post on social media, looking at Google Trends, or reading reviews on websites like G2.

You should conduct customer voice analysis continuously throughout the lifecycle as it can help you gain a competitive advantage. “Review what’s publicly published, check feature requests, and ask sales, customer success, or support teams for feedback coming from the user,” adds Matthieu.

For example, if a competitor gets acquired by a bigger firm and users start to complain about them removing a feature, you can use the opportunity to develop a similar functionality or improve the one you have. You can also make it more visible on-page and get the sales and marketing teams to use the information to advertise your product.

3. Diary studies

Diary studies involve users self-reporting behaviors, habits, and experiences over a period of time. This is often used during the discovery phase with a competitor product, or later down the line with a prototype. By observing how users feel prior to, during, and after using your (or a competitor) product—and their experience throughout—you can gather valuable, in-the-moment insights within a real life context.

You can conduct diary studies on paper, video, or online on a mobile app or a dedicated platform.

Data from diary research can turn into new product ideas, new features, or inform your current project. For instance, if you have a social media scheduling tool and you identify that users open a time zone calculator when they’re scheduling posts, you instantly have a new feature idea, to add a widget with different time zones.

Learn more about the types of diary study and how to conduct diary research here.

4. Competitive analysis

Analyze competitors' products and strategies to identify what works for them and identify any gaps in the market. The idea behind competitive product analysis is to explore your competitor’s products in-depth, sign up for an account, use them for a while, and take notes of top features, UX, and price points. You can run competitive analysis during the discovery, concept validation , or prototyping stages with direct and indirect competitors, or aspirational businesses.

Matthieu Dixte, Product Researcher at Maze, notes the value of competitive analysis is in understanding your users perspective: “We conduct a lot of competitive analysis at Maze because it's really important for us to understand if the market is mature regarding a particular topic—and to identify the current ground covered. This helps us understand the pros and cons our customers perceive when they choose between our product or another tool.”

Surveys can be a great way to get feedback or gather user sentiment relating to existing products or future concepts. You can also use them to dig deeper into the data gathered during other tests, and understand user issues and preferences in context.

For example, if you ran an A/B test and discovered that certain copy was causing potential users to churn, you could follow-up with a survey with targeted questions around their demographics, preferences, and personal views. This would help add qualitative insights to your quantitative data, and help understand what your users are looking for from your product.

Remember, you can create surveys at any stage of the product development to collect data from users in small or large volumes. You can use different types of surveys and survey principles to validate or debunk hypotheses, prioritize features, and identify your target market. For example, you could ask questions about your product, competitors, and prices or even your customer’s preferences and market trends.

Surveys can have a high drop-out rate, harming the validity of your data. Check out our survey design guide to discover the industry’s top secrets to an engaging survey which keeps users hooked.

6. Usability testing

Since conducting product research is also about understanding how well your customers navigate through your product and if they find it usable, you can run usability or prototype tests . Usability testing evaluates the usability of your product by asking test participants to complete tasks on your tool and seeing how they interact with it.

While typically conducted as a pre-launch check, usability testing is now widely understood as a building block of continuous research. Conducting regular usability tests is crucial to staying familiar with users, taking the pulse of your product, and ensuring every new product decision is informed with real data.

Conduct usability tests on a product research tool like Maze and record your participant’s audio, video, and screen with Clips . This offers you a mix of quantitative and qualitative data to learn why participants take certain actions to complete test tasks.

7. Fake door testing

The fake door testing method, also called the ‘painted door method’, is a way to validate whether your customers would be interested in a particular feature. “It works by faking a feature that is not actually available and implementing a tracker to know how many people click on it,” explains Matthieu.

When people click on the feature, they see a message explaining it’s not available at the moment. If the click-rate is high, you can assume there’s interest in the feature and conduct further research to identify how to design and develop it.

While it’s a quick way to gauge interest, fake door testing runs the risk of frustrating users, so if you’re using this method on a live product, you should be cautious and set a short testing period to avoid creating false expectations in your users.

8. Focus groups

Focus groups are when you gather a group of users to try your product and discuss their thoughts on the design, UX, usability, or price. You’ll offer them prompts or ask a series of user research questions to spark conversation, then observe and take notes.

This can be an expensive or admin-heavy method, as you need to rent a space, find participants who are willing to attend, and compensate them for their time. However, you can also conduct focus groups remotely through video conferencing tools. These groups are a good way of generating new product ideas or gaining deep insight in a short space of time, as you can hear directly from your users and adjust your questioning to follow up on important topics or opinions which participants mention.

When to perform product research

Source: 2023 Continuous Product Discovery Report

According to our 2023 Continuous Product Discovery Report , most teams conduct research at problem discovery (59%) and problem validation (57%), with only 36% researching post-launch.

The consensus is that product teams don’t think that’s enough—78% think they could research more often: which means there’s a big opportunity for you to implement regular research at all stages of the product research process .

Here’s when to conduct research on your product:

• At problem discovery stage to outline a hypothesis based on user insights
• During problem validation to prove your hypothesis
• During solution generation and concept development to see if you’re moving in the right direction
• As you’re screening different ideas for prioritization to identify the ones your users value most
• At solution definition and once you have your initial design to test early wireframes
• After developing a prototype to see assess usability and direction
• During validation and testing to review changes made to previous prototypes
• After development, and post-launch to get feedback and plan your future steps
• Before launching a new feature or doing product optimization to gauge users’ perceptions

Best practices for effective product research

If you only have time to consider one best practice for product research, we’ll keep it short. Just start.

Any research is better than none, and there’s a wealth of knowledge out there waiting to be discovered. If you don’t use it, your competitors will.

Now, here are six other best practices to help you improve your results and get the best insights possible:

1. Conduct research continuously

Your product is never done, at least not while the market, your customers, and technology are evolving. So, for your users to keep choosing you, you need to grow with them, adapt to trends, and keep iterating on your product. The right way to make product iterations is by conducting continuous product research, having frequent communication with your users, and actively listening to the market.

Did you know that user-centric organizations achieve 2.3x better business outcomes? 📊

By putting customers' needs front and center, research-mature organizations are driving better customer satisfaction (1.9x), customer retention (2.4), and increased revenue (4.2x). Learn more in our Research Maturity Report .

2. Focus on the business problem when presenting to stakeholders

It’s easy to get so involved in the product that you forget to mention how it helps the business when presenting research findings. To get stakeholders on board and to build great products that are profitable, always keep the business needs in mind. There’s no product without business success, so always align with your stakeholders and bring it back to team KPIs and business metrics. To convey your story, it’s a good rule of thumb to start each cross-team meeting by presenting the business problem, then sharing how adding a certain feature decision will help you solve it, before getting into the data that backs this up.

3. Embrace your curiosity

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in product research is letting cognitive biases take over the process. Work in teams and ask questions out of curiosity—consider research a way to disprove your hypothesis or challenge your assumptions, rather than a way to prove them right. As Prerna Kaul, Product Lead for Alexa AI at Amazon explains, you often gain more insight from an answer you don’t want to hear. “A huge trust-buster is when researchers sell an idea to customers and reinforce their pre-existing beliefs.” Doing so makes the user tell you what you want to hear but not what you need to know. It’s better to know that you have the wrong assumptions early on and build products that solve the right problem.

It’s non-negotiable to ensure that you are solving the right problem for the customer. Your solution is a painkiller, not a vitamin.

Prerna Kaul , Product Lead for Alexa AI at Amazon

4. Focus on the end goal rather than specific features

When you work closely with a product you’re passionate about, it’s only natural to think of all the possibilities, and minute details and features of the product. However, it’s crucial to understand that, while you might be the one making the internal decisions, the user will have the final call. Getting hung up on specific features will get you frustrated if users disagree, or lead you to make biased choices. To overcome this, you can write a research statement explaining the big problem you’re trying to achieve with the product. Come back to this before and after each decision, to keep your choices grounded in what’s best for the user.

“We always ask: Are we solving the right problem by creating this product? Is it going to have a measurable benefit to people?” says Nick Simpson, Head of UX at Airteam. “Then, we try to answer those questions through research methods to determine whether this investment will be worth it, to both business and users.” By thinking of the overall end goal at all stages, you get to build profitable products and features that really respond to that intention.

5. Take notes of everything

This one might go without saying, but it’s crucial to keep track of everything. Not just to inform future research and remind yourself where decisions came from, but to democratize research and bring the entire organization into your research process .

Set up a centralized research repository that anyone can access, and share it with your wider organization. Within the product team, keep a record of all user insights, even if they sound impossible to achieve at first. “These ‘futuristic’ thoughts or ideas are the ones that can either inform future iterations of the product or that you can creatively turn into something more feasible to design and build,” explains Nick. Keeping an organized information bank enables everyone on the team to get to know the user, the market, and why you’ve made certain decisions in the past.

6. Combine user feedback with data

While your users should be at the center of your business, don’t rely solely on their comments without checking other data. In reality, not everything people say is exactly what they do . Research participants can be influenced by any number of factors, mostly unconscious, so it’s important to use qualitative and quantitative data to reinforce each other.

For example, the users you interviewed might tell you they love a certain feature, but when you contrast those comments with heatmap data and time on page, you see that only a small percentage of your customers actually use it. Consider what research can be conducted to ascertain why this is, how you can improve those metrics, or whether it’s more helpful to refocus efforts on a different feature with a higher profit margin.

Keep learning about product research

In this chapter, we’ve covered a lot about product research:

• What product research is (and what it’s not)
• How researching your product is beneficial to your business
• The different methods you can use to conduct product research
• When to conduct product research
• Best practices for your research

Now, it’s time to kickstart your product research process in the next chapter. We’ll also talk about how to conduct product experiments and competitive analysis, so stay tuned.

Product research process

What is Product Research? Methods, Process, and Benefits

Product research is a vital initial stage that starts well before the product development process . Successful product research teaches product teams about 

• how to shape a product idea
• what similar products there are on the market already
• what is the best way to develop and advertise the product
• whether the product will be a success in its market

The process of product research will also teach you about what customers want and how to adjust your strategy to meet their needs. Surveys are a great tool to get this process started.

But product research does not just happen in the initial stages of product development. Well-seasoned product managers know that the process should be continuous. Businesses that perform best conduct regular product research to stay ahead of their competitors .

Without proper product research your chances of success, like your product decisions , will be random. Learn from the market and your customers to perform data-driven and customer-centric decisions.

Product research methods

The optimal method of gathering product research data will vary depending on whether you are launching a completely new product or a product update.

If you are working on new features for an existing product, your goal is to examine product satisfaction

• customer needs and pain points
• how those needs have changed over time
• how users are adopting new features

Then use this information to decide which initiatives you should prioritize and what to concentrate on within the updates.

If, however, you are developing an entirely new product, you likely won’t yet have a customer base or any historical information about user behavior. You’ll have to concentrate on learning about competitors and the existing market your product will fit into.

Let’s have a look at some ways you can obtain this information.

Product surveys are a great way to learn how existing and potential customers feel about your product. 

These surveys can include questions about what consumers think of your product

• what frustrates them the most
• what the most needed improvements include
• what their favorite features are, and more.
• You can also gain insights into how these aspects compare to that of your competitors.

Product surveys can be sent via email or link , in-app , in-product , or through your website . This is probably the most convenient, affordable, and effort-efficient way of gathering information to fuel your product research.

Another kind of survey that can prove useful is a quarterly-basis NPS survey . The open follow-up question can be a great source of new product and feature ideas.

You can also run in-product surveys to see what potential struggles your customers come across. Pair this with session recordings and heatmaps to get a complete picture. Survicate integrates with products like FullStory and SessionCam to facilitate this process.

💡 YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN: After scenario questionnaire survey template

Customer interviews

At Survicate, we run product research surveys in which we ask customers about their needs. The surveys end with the following question:

“Would you be interested in talking with our team once we work on that feature?”

That way, we can recruit candidates for user interviews and usability testing .

This feedback from sales calls is a great way to get qualitative data on product ideas and concepts.

Lastly, we use Intercom conversations with customers to gather additional feedback and input on silent launches. Respondent attributes identify customers who would be good candidates for product testing .

Concept testing

Concept testing is the process of surveying users about a potential product . You can learn how they feel about it and whether they would be willing to purchase such a product were it available on the market.

This method is very versatile, as it can happen online, over the phone, or through real-life interviews. It can be difficult to obtain a sample of potential clients willing to provide you with feedback, so we recommend using a customer feedback tool to facilitate the process.

Focus groups

You can find focus groups of people who already use a product similar to the one you are thinking of developing. You can enquire about things like an optimal price , the most important features , and features they are missing in their current solution.

This can help you estimate your budget, product development strategy, spending, and profit margins. You can also find out about the qualities of your product that will make it unique and outbid your competitors.

To eliminate bias , choose third-party interviews or online surveys .

Usability testing and demos

Conduct product testing once you create a test model of your product. Show it to potential customers to get their feedback. This can also include having them watch a demo if you don’t yet have a beta version of your idea.

As above, surveys can be a great way of learning about their experience.

When to perform product research

Product research usually happens at these four stages of a product’s (or product update’s) lifecycle.

Before launch

Product research before launch lets you figure out what the competitive market is like, what features are missing but in demand, and what aspects of your product you should prioritize.

Testing and feedback

Once you have a beta version of your product, you can perform testing. This will help you understand how customers perceive your product or its new iterations, what they like and don’t like, and how you can still improve your product.

Soft launch

A soft launch means releasing the product to a part of your customer base to see how it will work in a “real world environment”. At this stage, there is usually still no advertising, so research should focus on usability and value rather than pricing or market fit .

Post-launch

Product research after launch should focus on customers’ behavior, satisfaction , and potential struggles.

Product research process 

Product research is essentially studying users to learn their needs and expectations for your product. Start with general information about the competitor landscape and end with detailed data like pricing , subscription plans, and visual design.

Analyze the competitive landscape

A part of product research should always include an analysis of your competitors' products, audiences, and processes.

Even if you are the first to market, you’ll have some indirect competition you need to be aware of or maybe even drive inspiration from. You’ll also likely need to do extra research to ensure there is in fact a demand for your product.

The existence of competitors is not always a bad thing. It at least confirms that the market has been validated. But you will need to come up with ways to differentiate your product and break through the crowd.

Find out how competitors reach their audience and what they do to retain customers for as long as possible.

Evaluate the size of your market

The first step in determining your market size is defining your potential customer . You have to know who you are going to cater to in order to estimate how large that target market is.

We recommend running a demographic survey among users of your competitors.

Market segmentation research

Once you have an idea of who your customers are or are going to be, you can categorize them into segments based on specific characteristics.

This will help you figure out the optimal ways of reaching them, meeting their needs and expectations, understanding struggle points, and learning about their goals.

Product feedback

Test your product before launching it. Use different marketing strategies, pricing options, and distribution methods to learn what conditions your product will thrive in.

We have many product feedback surveys that can help evaluate key aspects of your idea. Most notably, examine your users’ onboarding process …

… product experience …

…and usability of your product .

Price testing 

The price is a huge aspect of your product. Of course, you want to be as competitive as possible, but at the same time, you want to make the biggest profits possible.

Use a product pricing survey to learn about demand elasticity and the relationship between product demand and pricing.

Customer research

Learning about your customers or who your customers will be can help you make better product development and advertising decisions.

For example, you may find you have an international audience, in which case it may make sense to make your product or service available in multiple languages . 

Find out who your existing customers are to come up with ways to reach new potential clients.

You can also query customers who have recently stopped using your product to learn about ways of preventing churn .

Ask your customers about features they are missing in your product . If they are considering switching to a competitor, you may be able to prevent this by ensuring them you are working on an update.

And always stay on top of customer satisfaction to learn when you need to make changes to your product or its aspects.

Automate your product research

Product research and development should be a continuous process. In the modern world, it’s not enough to develop a great product and call it a day . Use a great product feedback tool to keep gathering customer insights that will drive growth to your business.

With a tool like Survicate, you can automate your surveys to be sent at regular intervals as to reduce your employees’ workload. 

All results are compiled in one place - our dashboard. The analysis panel generates survey reports in real-time.

You can also use ready-made visuals to get information across your entire team.

Segment results

Product research does not end with successfully gathered data. The last step is to use it to fuel product decisions that will realistically improve your product and customer experience , and drive brand growth.

Segmentation of results should be based on business goals and your KPIs. This step ensures data is not wasted and reaches appropriate teams. It will also help plan short-term and long-term goals so you know what data you might need in the future.

For example, tracking user pain points that an update didn’t solve might be helpful in the future when building new features. Documenting what went well during your last product update will help you design your roadmap more efficiently.

Benefits of successful product research

Let’s quickly run through what you can gain through thorough product research.

Identify user needs that your product can solve

Product research will not only help you boost innovation within your product, but it will keep your accuracy in check, too. You’ll be sure that the changes you are implementing actually align with user needs.

Understand the struggles and pain points of your customers

While customer feedback like your CSAT and CES scores are great ways to find pain points, you have to remember they are tied to your customer service and are solicited in nature.

No great business strategy should rely on great customer service to fix issues with the product setup. Make sure you are surveying your customers on the developments they’d like to see. Product research also provides you with behavioral data and insights to build optimal solutions.

Identify potential wins that will differentiate you from the competition

Product research will also help you gain a competitive edge. Researching the market and competitive landscape with help uncover market gaps you can fill with new features or products.

Design modifications in your roadmap to successfully hit KPIs

Successful product research will make prioritization simpler and more efficient. You’ll know what features users want and which ones make them consider leaving you for a competitor.

You can make sure the most important changes are lined up in the near future and your backlog is optimized. The entire team will be aware of which initiatives to work on next to improve customer satisfaction .

Use Survicate to make your product research effective

The best way to learn about your customers’ needs is to understand their behavior in context. Place surveys and feedback widgets in high-traffic visitor points for optimal feedback.

Survicate offers both website and in-product surveys to help you gain insights into customer needs, pain points, and feature ideas. There are over 125 survey templates that go well beyond your usual NPS , CSAT , and CES campaigns.

💡 YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN: Product research survey template

Survicate integrations with tools like Slack also make closing the loop an automated process. Set up notifications and communicate with customers immediately after receiving responses.

Wrapping up

Product management centres around product feedback . If you don’t take advantage of this process, you are at risk of missing users' needs and wasting your product development budget.

Understand what will make your customers happy and build a customer-centric product that will break through the competition. Organize your product research with Survicate to get insightful and contextual customer experience data .

The free trial offers 10 days of access to Business plan features and up to 25 survey responses. Sign up today!

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• Knowledge Base
• Methodology

Research Design | Step-by-Step Guide with Examples

Published on 5 May 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 20 March 2023.

A research design is a strategy for answering your research question  using empirical data. Creating a research design means making decisions about:

• Your overall aims and approach
• The type of research design you’ll use
• Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects
• Your data collection methods
• The procedures you’ll follow to collect data
• Your data analysis methods

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research aims and that you use the right kind of analysis for your data.

Table of contents

Step 1: consider your aims and approach, step 2: choose a type of research design, step 3: identify your population and sampling method, step 4: choose your data collection methods, step 5: plan your data collection procedures, step 6: decide on your data analysis strategies, frequently asked questions.

• Introduction

Before you can start designing your research, you should already have a clear idea of the research question you want to investigate.

There are many different ways you could go about answering this question. Your research design choices should be driven by your aims and priorities – start by thinking carefully about what you want to achieve.

The first choice you need to make is whether you’ll take a qualitative or quantitative approach.

Qualitative research designs tend to be more flexible and inductive , allowing you to adjust your approach based on what you find throughout the research process.

Quantitative research designs tend to be more fixed and deductive , with variables and hypotheses clearly defined in advance of data collection.

It’s also possible to use a mixed methods design that integrates aspects of both approaches. By combining qualitative and quantitative insights, you can gain a more complete picture of the problem you’re studying and strengthen the credibility of your conclusions.

Practical and ethical considerations when designing research

As well as scientific considerations, you need to think practically when designing your research. If your research involves people or animals, you also need to consider research ethics .

• How much time do you have to collect data and write up the research?
• Will you be able to gain access to the data you need (e.g., by travelling to a specific location or contacting specific people)?
• Do you have the necessary research skills (e.g., statistical analysis or interview techniques)?
• Will you need ethical approval ?

At each stage of the research design process, make sure that your choices are practically feasible.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

Within both qualitative and quantitative approaches, there are several types of research design to choose from. Each type provides a framework for the overall shape of your research.

Types of quantitative research designs

Quantitative designs can be split into four main types. Experimental and   quasi-experimental designs allow you to test cause-and-effect relationships, while descriptive and correlational designs allow you to measure variables and describe relationships between them.

With descriptive and correlational designs, you can get a clear picture of characteristics, trends, and relationships as they exist in the real world. However, you can’t draw conclusions about cause and effect (because correlation doesn’t imply causation ).

Experiments are the strongest way to test cause-and-effect relationships without the risk of other variables influencing the results. However, their controlled conditions may not always reflect how things work in the real world. They’re often also more difficult and expensive to implement.

Types of qualitative research designs

Qualitative designs are less strictly defined. This approach is about gaining a rich, detailed understanding of a specific context or phenomenon, and you can often be more creative and flexible in designing your research.

The table below shows some common types of qualitative design. They often have similar approaches in terms of data collection, but focus on different aspects when analysing the data.

Your research design should clearly define who or what your research will focus on, and how you’ll go about choosing your participants or subjects.

In research, a population is the entire group that you want to draw conclusions about, while a sample is the smaller group of individuals you’ll actually collect data from.

Defining the population

A population can be made up of anything you want to study – plants, animals, organisations, texts, countries, etc. In the social sciences, it most often refers to a group of people.

For example, will you focus on people from a specific demographic, region, or background? Are you interested in people with a certain job or medical condition, or users of a particular product?

The more precisely you define your population, the easier it will be to gather a representative sample.

Sampling methods

Even with a narrowly defined population, it’s rarely possible to collect data from every individual. Instead, you’ll collect data from a sample.

To select a sample, there are two main approaches: probability sampling and non-probability sampling . The sampling method you use affects how confidently you can generalise your results to the population as a whole.

Probability sampling is the most statistically valid option, but it’s often difficult to achieve unless you’re dealing with a very small and accessible population.

For practical reasons, many studies use non-probability sampling, but it’s important to be aware of the limitations and carefully consider potential biases. You should always make an effort to gather a sample that’s as representative as possible of the population.

Case selection in qualitative research

In some types of qualitative designs, sampling may not be relevant.

For example, in an ethnography or a case study, your aim is to deeply understand a specific context, not to generalise to a population. Instead of sampling, you may simply aim to collect as much data as possible about the context you are studying.

In these types of design, you still have to carefully consider your choice of case or community. You should have a clear rationale for why this particular case is suitable for answering your research question.

For example, you might choose a case study that reveals an unusual or neglected aspect of your research problem, or you might choose several very similar or very different cases in order to compare them.

Data collection methods are ways of directly measuring variables and gathering information. They allow you to gain first-hand knowledge and original insights into your research problem.

You can choose just one data collection method, or use several methods in the same study.

Survey methods

Surveys allow you to collect data about opinions, behaviours, experiences, and characteristics by asking people directly. There are two main survey methods to choose from: questionnaires and interviews.

Observation methods

Observations allow you to collect data unobtrusively, observing characteristics, behaviours, or social interactions without relying on self-reporting.

Observations may be conducted in real time, taking notes as you observe, or you might make audiovisual recordings for later analysis. They can be qualitative or quantitative.

Other methods of data collection

There are many other ways you might collect data depending on your field and topic.

If you’re not sure which methods will work best for your research design, try reading some papers in your field to see what data collection methods they used.

Secondary data

If you don’t have the time or resources to collect data from the population you’re interested in, you can also choose to use secondary data that other researchers already collected – for example, datasets from government surveys or previous studies on your topic.

With this raw data, you can do your own analysis to answer new research questions that weren’t addressed by the original study.

Using secondary data can expand the scope of your research, as you may be able to access much larger and more varied samples than you could collect yourself.

However, it also means you don’t have any control over which variables to measure or how to measure them, so the conclusions you can draw may be limited.

As well as deciding on your methods, you need to plan exactly how you’ll use these methods to collect data that’s consistent, accurate, and unbiased.

Planning systematic procedures is especially important in quantitative research, where you need to precisely define your variables and ensure your measurements are reliable and valid.

Operationalisation

Some variables, like height or age, are easily measured. But often you’ll be dealing with more abstract concepts, like satisfaction, anxiety, or competence. Operationalisation means turning these fuzzy ideas into measurable indicators.

If you’re using observations , which events or actions will you count?

If you’re using surveys , which questions will you ask and what range of responses will be offered?

You may also choose to use or adapt existing materials designed to measure the concept you’re interested in – for example, questionnaires or inventories whose reliability and validity has already been established.

Reliability and validity

Reliability means your results can be consistently reproduced , while validity means that you’re actually measuring the concept you’re interested in.

For valid and reliable results, your measurement materials should be thoroughly researched and carefully designed. Plan your procedures to make sure you carry out the same steps in the same way for each participant.

If you’re developing a new questionnaire or other instrument to measure a specific concept, running a pilot study allows you to check its validity and reliability in advance.

Sampling procedures

As well as choosing an appropriate sampling method, you need a concrete plan for how you’ll actually contact and recruit your selected sample.

That means making decisions about things like:

• How many participants do you need for an adequate sample size?
• What inclusion and exclusion criteria will you use to identify eligible participants?
• How will you contact your sample – by mail, online, by phone, or in person?

If you’re using a probability sampling method, it’s important that everyone who is randomly selected actually participates in the study. How will you ensure a high response rate?

If you’re using a non-probability method, how will you avoid bias and ensure a representative sample?

Data management

It’s also important to create a data management plan for organising and storing your data.

Will you need to transcribe interviews or perform data entry for observations? You should anonymise and safeguard any sensitive data, and make sure it’s backed up regularly.

Keeping your data well organised will save time when it comes to analysing them. It can also help other researchers validate and add to your findings.

On their own, raw data can’t answer your research question. The last step of designing your research is planning how you’ll analyse the data.

Quantitative data analysis

In quantitative research, you’ll most likely use some form of statistical analysis . With statistics, you can summarise your sample data, make estimates, and test hypotheses.

Using descriptive statistics , you can summarise your sample data in terms of:

• The distribution of the data (e.g., the frequency of each score on a test)
• The central tendency of the data (e.g., the mean to describe the average score)
• The variability of the data (e.g., the standard deviation to describe how spread out the scores are)

The specific calculations you can do depend on the level of measurement of your variables.

Using inferential statistics , you can:

• Make estimates about the population based on your sample data.
• Test hypotheses about a relationship between variables.

Regression and correlation tests look for associations between two or more variables, while comparison tests (such as t tests and ANOVAs ) look for differences in the outcomes of different groups.

Your choice of statistical test depends on various aspects of your research design, including the types of variables you’re dealing with and the distribution of your data.

Qualitative data analysis

In qualitative research, your data will usually be very dense with information and ideas. Instead of summing it up in numbers, you’ll need to comb through the data in detail, interpret its meanings, identify patterns, and extract the parts that are most relevant to your research question.

Two of the most common approaches to doing this are thematic analysis and discourse analysis .

There are many other ways of analysing qualitative data depending on the aims of your research. To get a sense of potential approaches, try reading some qualitative research papers in your field.

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population. Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research.

For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

Statistical sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population. There are various sampling methods you can use to ensure that your sample is representative of the population as a whole.

Operationalisation means turning abstract conceptual ideas into measurable observations.

For example, the concept of social anxiety isn’t directly observable, but it can be operationally defined in terms of self-rating scores, behavioural avoidance of crowded places, or physical anxiety symptoms in social situations.

Before collecting data , it’s important to consider how you will operationalise the variables that you want to measure.

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

• If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts, and meanings, use qualitative methods .
• If you want to analyse a large amount of readily available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how they are generated, collect primary data.
• If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

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4 Product Research Methods & When To Use Each

As a product manager or leader, you want the company to find, sustain, and expand its product-market fit around every turn — and you understand that the key to unlock this is understanding your users even better.

How? Product research.

But that’s a big undertaking, and there are a million ways to do it.

How do you plan and execute impactful product research? What does the answer to that question depend on? How can you optimize the process for optimizing your product? We’ll walk through it all with some assistance and guidance from Reforge Executive In Residence Behzod Sirjani.

Meet The Contributor

Behzod Sirjani

Behzod is a Program Partner at Reforge, where he built the User Insights for Product Decisions program. Outside of Reforge, he runs Yet Another Studio and is a venture partner at El Cap. Previously, he led Research Operations at Slack and was a Senior UX Researcher at Meta.

What Is Product Research?

Product Research refers to the process of gathering and synthesizing evidence to reduce risk and increase confidence in the decisions that you’re making as you build products and services during the product development process .

This often includes activities like conducting interviews or usability tests and sending surveys to participants to better understand their perspectives and/or behaviors. Product research is also referred to as user research or user experience research.

Do You Actually Need Product Research?

The ideal first step in product research isn’t research at all. First, it’s best to take some time to get organized. Behzod Sirjani, Reforge EIR and former research leader at Slack and Meta, describes this as “ decision-first ” planning.

This approach directly contrasts to traditional product research approaches where data is collected, interpreted, and then used to make a decision. Rather than diving right into surveys, A/B testing, or focus groups,the best product research starts with defining the end-result decision you want to make based on research findings, then using that to inform how you conduct the research.

Let’s look at a quick hypothetical example. Let’s say you want to understand why customers are churning. If you approach product research in the traditional way, you might design a survey to ask users why they decide to stop paying for and using your product. While the findings of that survey might be interesting, they aren’t necessarily going to help you make any decisions about how to address churn.

But, let’s say you work in the opposite direction instead. In this case, the first thing you do is outline the decision you hope to make about addressing churn, which is closer to something like “ What can we do to improve retention with our target audience? ” Then, you select a research method that can capture the type of information needed to build confidence in that decision.

Maybe, in fact, it is still a survey that asks users about their behavior. But, in this case, the users you send the survey to are different and the research questions will be specifically designed to generate evidence to help you make the decision you’ve scoped. So, with a more focused research method, you’re able to collect relevant evidence to inform your decision and positively impact your product and be more respectful of your customers’ time and energy.

We refer to this as decision-first planning for product research. In this approach, you still care about churn, but instead of unfocused learning about churn, you can identify what evidence you need to make the decision about improving retention with your target audience, and then identify what research approaches will help you gather the missing evidence.

On a high level, this means that doing product research and collecting user insights involves three phases:

The decision you define depends greatly on your product and organization. Our User Insights for Product Decisions program outlines a decision matrix to guide your thinking. It’s based on your product’s stage of development and how many people, both stakeholders and customers, will be affected by that decision. For more info on kicking off the decision-first planning process for product research, check out that program.

Here, we’re going to focus on how to select a product research method that matches the type of evidence you need to make the decision you’ve scoped.

How To Choose the Most Impactful Product Research Method

Once you’ve defined the decision you intend to make with your product research, you can work backward from there and choose a research method. The one that you pick will rely on the type of evidence you need to confidently make that decision you scoped.

“Great researchers let the evidence they're looking for guide their research design, and not the other way around.” – Behzod Sirjani

To start the research method selection process, let’s break down evidence into two categories, based on types of user responses:

• Qualitative. A response that’s qualitative is often more unstructured and open-ended than one that’s quantitative.
• Quantitative . While a qualitative response shares overall impressions that can be grouped into themes, a quantitative response might include percentages or exact numbers.

Both will be useful in product research, depending on the decision you need to make. We’re also going to break down what evidence can reveal and put that into two categories: attitudes and behaviors .

Attitudinal evidence uncovers what users think, feel, and believe about a product, whereas behavioral evidence shows the actions that users take in the produc t. When looking for attitudinal evidence, you’ll need to ask users what they think, but you can observe users’ actions if you’re looking for behavioral evidence. Both will be helpful, just in slightly different ways.

We’ve mapped these four categories into a two-by-two matrix to guide us as we select a research method. The types of responses – qualitative and quantitative – are on the X-axis, and what user responses can reveal – attitudes and behaviors – are on the Y-axis.

Looking at types of evidence this way, we can organize product research methods into four quadrants.

1. Observational

In quadrant one, we have behavioral, qualitative research. You’d want to choose a method that falls in this quadrant if you’re looking to observe user interactions with surroundings, people, and products and extrapolate those behaviors to understand users in a deep way. Research methods in this quadrant fall under the Observational label .

Quadrant two is all about behavioral, quantitative research. Here, we’re looking for evidence about user behaviors — how do users interact with the product, what actions do they take, or not take? And we want this to be more structured evidence at a large scale. We’re typically learning things like "What percentage of users did action X?" and "How many users completed a task?" Research methods in this quadrant fall under the Testing label .

3. Conversational

Moving to quadrant three, we’re at the intersection of attitudinal and qualitative evidence. Research methods that will fall here can help you understand how users feel in a deep way. Research methods in this quadrant fall under the Conversational label.

Last but not least, in quadrant four, we have attitudinal, quantitative evidence. This is how users feel and what they believe. Here, we’re trying to answer questions like "What percentage of users prefer option one over option two?" or "What are the top five reasons for user churn?" Research methods in this quadrant fall under the Survey label .

There are many research methods within each of these product research archetypes. Again, the right research method for you depends on the decision you’ve defined. With the decision in mind, you know what type of evidence you need to gather, and you can see now which quadrant you’re going to be focused on.

12 Product Research Methods

We’ve plotted three product research methods into each quadrant.

We’ll start with the Observational quadrant, which covers behavioral, qualitative research methods.

Observational research methods include:

• Participant observation: observe users interacting with your product without interrupting them or affecting their behavior to understand specific user behaviors in specific contexts
• Ethnographic research : researchers immerse themselves in the context of their users and often used to understand different cultures, or norms when different from your own
• Heat mapping : user actions are tracked and aggregated into a visual summary like a heat map of where users move a cursor on a homepage

Next, is the Testing quadrant, which includes behavioral, quantitative research methods.

Testing research methods include:

• Usability testing : participants are provided a set of tasks to perform on the solution and their behavior is tracked and quantified
• A/B testing: two variations of a product are shown to different users and their performance is compared to find statistically significant differences
• Beta testing: a nearly finished product is given to users to test its performance in a real-world environment

Now, we’ll go to the Conversational quadrant, which covers attitudinal, qualitative research methods.

Conversational research methods include:

• Interviews : broad category of live discussions researchers have with users and can be used in many different situations
• Focus groups : variation of interviews where a group of participants has a discussion about a product or experience facilitated by a researcher or professional
• Design methods : facilitated exercises that can be done with one or more users at a time, such as card sorting for prioritization, five-second tests to measure user impressions, and more

And lastly, we’ll go to the Survey quadrant, which covers attitudinal, quantitative research methods.

Survey research methods include:

• Map-making surveys : surveys that build a map of user attitudes, like shallow versions of field studies
• Intercept surveys : targeted surveys looking to understand specific attitudes toward specific aspects of a product
• Validation surveys : a specific set of mostly standardized surveys that validate value or satisfaction, including NPS surveys, CSAT surveys, CES surveys, and others

Keep in mind that this approach is called decision-first for a reason. You can’t choose any of these research methods until you’ve figured out where you want to end up with it.

“When it comes to planning research, I always tell people to think about their end deliverables and draw what they will want to show their stakeholders. A lot of times, they want to show one thing but are not planning on collecting that data. That's when we have to go back to the drawing board.” — Behzod Sirjani

For example, if you launch a survey with the broad intent to capture what users do and don't like about a product, you may be left with a wholly unhelpful output like a wordcloud. But if you draft a mockup of the output you want to create, you can not only validate that your chosen method will work to get the data you need for the output, but you can tailor your method to best collect the right data.

By mapping out four types of methods, we can see how different research methods are effective for generating different kinds of evidence. The most impactful product research method for you will depend on the decision you’ve outlined – you’ll want to pick the method that’ll produce the evidence you need to make that decision.

Improve Your Research Methods

While it might seem like a lot of upfront work to identify the decision you want to make with research findings before even selecting a research method, it’ll pay off in the end. Decision-first planning streamlines the product research process so that you aren’t wasting resources, including stakeholder and user time and energy.

“Everyone has limited resources and time—even if you're a huge company. You should be worried about your time. You should be worried about your resources and moving quickly.” — Gina Gotthilf, former VP of Growth and Community at Quartz and former VP Growth at Duolingo

Conducting product research doesn’t have to be a slow, expensive process. Beginning your product research with the end in mind will enable you to design and execute any research method with more confidence, meaning you can make decisions quicker and drive impact faster.

To learn more about how to execute product research effectively, check out our User Insights for Product Decisions program.

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The Four Types of Research Design — Everything You Need to Know

Updated: December 11, 2023

Published: January 18, 2023

When you conduct research, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how to accomplish it. A good research design enables you to collect accurate and reliable data to draw valid conclusions.

In this blog post, we'll outline the key features of the four common types of research design with real-life examples from UnderArmor, Carmex, and more. Then, you can easily choose the right approach for your project.

Table of Contents

What is research design?

The four types of research design, research design examples.

Research design is the process of planning and executing a study to answer specific questions. This process allows you to test hypotheses in the business or scientific fields.

Research design involves choosing the right methodology, selecting the most appropriate data collection methods, and devising a plan (or framework) for analyzing the data. In short, a good research design helps us to structure our research.

Marketers use different types of research design when conducting research .

There are four common types of research design — descriptive, correlational, experimental, and diagnostic designs. Let’s take a look at each in more detail.

Researchers use different designs to accomplish different research objectives. Here, we'll discuss how to choose the right type, the benefits of each, and use cases.

Research can also be classified as quantitative or qualitative at a higher level. Some experiments exhibit both qualitative and quantitative characteristics.

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Experimental

An experimental design is used when the researcher wants to examine how variables interact with each other. The researcher manipulates one variable (the independent variable) and observes the effect on another variable (the dependent variable).

In other words, the researcher wants to test a causal relationship between two or more variables.

In marketing, an example of experimental research would be comparing the effects of a television commercial versus an online advertisement conducted in a controlled environment (e.g. a lab). The objective of the research is to test which advertisement gets more attention among people of different age groups, gender, etc.

Another example is a study of the effect of music on productivity. A researcher assigns participants to one of two groups — those who listen to music while working and those who don't — and measure their productivity.

The main benefit of an experimental design is that it allows the researcher to draw causal relationships between variables.

One limitation: This research requires a great deal of control over the environment and participants, making it difficult to replicate in the real world. In addition, it’s quite costly.

Best for: Testing a cause-and-effect relationship (i.e., the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable).

Correlational

A correlational design examines the relationship between two or more variables without intervening in the process.

Correlational design allows the analyst to observe natural relationships between variables. This results in data being more reflective of real-world situations.

For example, marketers can use correlational design to examine the relationship between brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. In particular, the researcher would look for patterns or trends in the data to see if there is a relationship between these two entities.

Similarly, you can study the relationship between physical activity and mental health. The analyst here would ask participants to complete surveys about their physical activity levels and mental health status. Data would show how the two variables are related.

Best for: Understanding the extent to which two or more variables are associated with each other in the real world.

Descriptive

Descriptive research refers to a systematic process of observing and describing what a subject does without influencing them.

Methods include surveys, interviews, case studies, and observations. Descriptive research aims to gather an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon and answers when/what/where.

SaaS companies use descriptive design to understand how customers interact with specific features. Findings can be used to spot patterns and roadblocks.

For instance, product managers can use screen recordings by Hotjar to observe in-app user behavior. This way, the team can precisely understand what is happening at a certain stage of the user journey and act accordingly.

Brand24, a social listening tool, tripled its sign-up conversion rate from 2.56% to 7.42%, thanks to locating friction points in the sign-up form through screen recordings.

Carma Laboratories worked with research company MMR to measure customers’ reactions to the lip-care company’s packaging and product . The goal was to find the cause of low sales for a recently launched line extension in Europe.

The team moderated a live, online focus group. Participants were shown w product samples, while AI and NLP natural language processing identified key themes in customer feedback.

This helped uncover key reasons for poor performance and guided changes in packaging.

What is Research Design and How it Can Elevate Your Product

As a product executive, you know a lot about your customers and their needs. But are you sure you know enough to deliver impactful solutions and outpace competitors?

According to a study by CB Insights,  35%  of new businesses fail to succeed as the market simply didn’t need their product. The other 20% go outcompeted. Understanding end users’ real needs and aspirations and finding a solution for bridging a gap between them is a must for your product's success.

For years of successful partnerships with businesses of different scales and directions, we know that delivering impact is only possible if all aspects of a user’s lifestyle, behavior, and mindset are taken into account. Luckily, there is a tool in place for that, and its name is  research design .

What is research design?

Why is research design important, what is the right time to get started with design research, how to conduct research for product design under an nda, what makes good research design, design thinking as a basis for innovation, how to evaluate the results of research design, how can research design elevate your product: a real case.

Research design is a set of means that allow a product team to understand consumer needs and aspirations and further address them via a product created or features introduced.

Among the typical research design methods are focus groups, surveys, and in-depth interviews with potential or existing end users. But the whole concept of research for product design is far more complex.

In fact, it’s a methodology used to carry out studies of your target audience and analyze the results. By building and testing various hypotheses about users’ day-to-day needs, research design reveals possible bottlenecks in user experience and identifies ways to overcome them.

While the notion of research design usually poses no doubt, understanding its actual impact on your business KPIs and the results you are getting with software development may lack transparency. Questions like “When should we get started?”, “How do we conduct research design?”, and “What will we get in the end?” are among the most frequently asked when it comes to recognizing the value of research design. Let’s have them answered.

Product design research plan

When approaching research for product design, it’s crucial to preserve consistency in the steps and actions taken. The research flow as well as the techniques and measures selected define the success of the whole endeavor and directly influence the research results.

Overall, a well-thought-out product design research plan consists of four essential stages that are consecutively interconnected:

1. Foundational research  where a general idea of the whole research is formed. Depending on your business needs, the aims of design research may range from promoting employee loyalty with a corporate mobile app to figuring out why e-commerce store visitors don’t complete the checkout.

2. Generative research  focuses on user studies by outlining user context, defining goals and pain points, and specifying how they see the solution. As a result, a design team comes up with user scenarios and sets up the metrics to measure success.

3. Information architecture , which often includes auditing the existing solution, rethinking architecture and the brand’s tone of voice, creating wireframes, and prototyping.

4. Evaluative research  focuses on testing the previously formed hypotheses and assumptions as well as the ease of use of design solutions. A lion’s share of this stage is usability testing which helps researchers understand if they are meeting the goals set at the beginning.

To get the expected outcome and correctly interpret the results of each stage, an absolute majority of business executives choose to partner up with dedicated product design teams. But how do they know if the whole research and design process was successful?

From idea to measurable results—make a step forward with Trinetix.

There are several milestones that define the success of research design and help evaluate the results achieved:

• Clearly stating and communicating the goal of the research and its stages
• Defining the objective numeric parameters to measure if the goal was achieved (sales growth, new subscriptions, revenues, product lifetime value, virality)
• Getting a research-based report with recommendations on future improvements

With each of the points above making a part of a design study, evaluating the results may be summarized in a checklist:

Business context

The idea behind the project was to create an online space for both casual life talks and knowledge sharing. To make sure they were doing right, the company approached their employees to present the idea and ask their opinion about the product (they planned to develop). The feedback was quite positive, that’s why they addressed our design team to get the ball rolling.

Introducing research design

Aiming to create a global product that would embrace people with various backgrounds and occupations, we suggested conducting profound research design to let their potential consumers describe an ideal product themselves. We created a focus group of 20 people and asked them basic questions including the below:

• How do you communicate?
• Do you really need to communicate more?
• Would you be using a product for communication and knowledge sharing?
• How often do you think you would use this product?

Results and transformations

Upon analyzing the results, we confirmed the client’s initial hypothesis and figured out that the demand for the product was real. However, the focus should be shifted from casual communications to mentorship and professional advisory to address the needs of potential users and bridge the communication gap they were experiencing.

This way, the product became a digital contacts book where users could find expert opinions and establish long-time online acquaintances.

This story shows that meaningful products are created by consumers and evolve together with their needs and expectations.

At Trinetix, we deliver experiences that matter to help you build truly impactful products. With conventional research design, you are letting your users express themselves. With us, you are ready to understand what’s next for your customer. Serhii Misnikas, Lead Experience Designer at Trinetix

Make a step forward. Give the stage to your customers and listen to their expectations.  Let’s chat  about making them real!

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What is product design?

What is product design? Is it the same as UX? What are the key principles of product design, and what does the product design process look like? Find out here.

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Product design is a cross-functional discipline that spans research, strategy, design, and business—with lots of collaboration along the way.

The goal of product design is to ideate, design, and iterate on products that meet a specific user need, make sense from a business perspective, and compete successfully in their given market.

It’s a multifaceted field, touching on UX and UI design, engineering, product management, and more. But what exactly does it entail? What are the core principles of product design, and what process does it follow?

Consider this your ultimate introduction. Keep reading to learn:

• What is product design? 

Why is product design important?

Is product design the same as ux and ui design.

• What are the 7 fundamental elements and principles of product design?
• What is the product design process ?
• What does a product designer do ?
• What are the most important product design tools ?
• How to get started with product design

Let’s begin with a high-level overview.

Product design is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the conception and creation of products that:

• Solve a user problem
• Fill a specific gap and perform well in their given market
• Contribute to the achievement of business goals.

Product design usually sits within the wider product team or department, working in close collaboration with engineering, product management, UX and UI design, and customer experience.

It involves coming up with new product ideas based on extensive user research, market research, and competitor analysis; devising a strategy and vision for the product; designing and testing product prototypes; and collaborating on the development, execution, testing, and subsequent iteration of the product.

We’ll take a closer look at the product design process later on. First, though: why product design matters.

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Product design is crucial for both end user satisfaction and business success. It helps businesses and brands to:

• Deliver a positive user experience and gain loyal customers. A key aspect of product design is understanding end user needs and creating a product that meets those needs. This is essential for ensuring happy, satisfied customers who remain loyal over time.
• Secure a competitive edge. Product design involves extensive market research, helping to identify gaps in the market and determine how to successfully position the product within that particular market. This is critical for building brand awareness and outperforming competitors.
• Boost efficiency. Another important aspect of product design is developing design systems, processes, and documentation which help to streamline and optimise collaboration. As such, product design plays a crucial role in driving efficiency.
• Track product performance over time. A good product design process includes setting a clear strategy for the product which is tied to business goals. It allows businesses to define and measure success metrics and monitor the product’s performance on an ongoing basis.

Product design has many similarities with UX design . It’s steeped in user research , usability, solving user problems, and providing a positive user experience. So aren’t they just two terms for the same thing?

Not exactly. 

UX design focuses on the experience a user has while interacting with a product or service . It seeks to identify the end user’s problem(s) and provide them with a functional, delightful, easy-to-use solution. 

Product design, on the other hand, takes a broader, more holistic view of the product—considering not only the usability of the product, but also where the product fits into the market and how it serves business goals. 

You can think of UX as a subset of product design. It’s just one of several pillars that product design encompasses. UI design (or user interface design) is a subset of UX, focusing on the look, feel, and interactivity of a digital product. You can read more about the differences between UX and UI design in this post . 

In short: Product design, UX design, and UI design are not the same thing:

• UX and UI design are subsets of product design, focusing on the usability, functionality, look, and feel of the product itself.  
• Product design takes a more holistic approach, considering the design of the product but also its position in the market, the product strategy, and how it relates to business objectives. 

With all that said, it’s important to note that the distinction between UX, UI, and product design can get murky in the real world. Larger companies with bigger budgets are more likely to have dedicated roles for each discipline, while smaller companies may have just one or two designers who span product design, UX, and UI. 

As with most design job titles , each company has their own interpretation. We recommend reading through product design job ads to get a feel for how different companies tend to define the role.

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What are the 7 fundamental elements and principles of product design 

Product design is all about creating products that meet the end users’ needs, are competitive in their market, and help to achieve business goals. 

To ensure success in all three areas, product design must consider seven key elements:

• Desirability
• Feasibility
• Functionality
• User experience (UX)

Let’s explore how each element contributes to a successful product.

1. Desirability

This considers whether or not the product you plan on designing is actually wanted or needed by your target users. If your product idea doesn’t solve a user problem or meet a specific need, it’s not desirable and therefore won’t be successful. 

2. Feasibility 

A good product must be feasible—or, in other words, “doable”. You might have the best idea ever, but if it isn’t achievable in terms of the technology, materials, and resources available, or within your desired budget and timeline, it may not be feasible. 

3. Viability

Product design must also consider whether or not a product is viable. That is, does it make smart business sense? Will the product be profitable and contribute to long-term growth for the business? If you can’t put forward a strong business case for building the product, your idea is not viable

Learn more: A guide to desirability, feasibility, and viability in product design .

4. Functionality

Every product must have a clearly defined purpose, and it must be functional in relation to that core purpose. It should be designed and built in a way that enables the end user to perform their desired tasks, and it should function just as the user expects it to. 

5. Aesthetics

A competitive product offers seamless functionality and visual appeal. The aesthetics of a product help to forge a strong brand identity, attract the target audience, and enhance the user experience. Aesthetics includes the colours, imagery, typography , and overall UI design of the product. In the case of physical products, it also includes the materials used. 

Quality is a key differentiator. The markers of a quality product include high performance, reliability, meeting the user’s expectations, and adhering to industry standards. If a product falls short in terms of quality, it will struggle to compete with similar products on the market—and the brand reputation will suffer. 

7. User experience (UX)

This pillar of product design considers the quality of the user’s experience with the product. A successful product is easy to use and navigate, is accessible and inclusive, and does exactly what it promises. You can learn more about good vs. bad UX here .

What is the product design process? 

Now we know what product design is, let’s outline the process that a product designer might follow.

Bear in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all here. Every product designer will have their own approach depending on the context, and it doesn’t always unfold in a linear fashion. Still, here are the key steps that typically feature in the product design process:

Define a product vision and strategy

Conduct user and market research, test and iterate.

• Develop and launch 
• Post-launch: gather user feedback and make improvements

So what happens at each stage? Let’s take a look. 

Every successful product is underpinned by a clear vision and a solid strategy. 

What’s the difference? The product vision defines where the product should end up in the long-term, while the strategy looks at how the vision will be achieved in the short- to mid-term. 

At this stage in the process, the product designer works with the rest of the product team to answer key questions such as:

• Why are we building this product?
• Who is the product for?
• What problem will the product solve?
• How will the product evolve over time?
• How will we define and measure the success of the product?

Product vision and strategy are essential for ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned and moving towards a common goal, and that the product evolves in line with business objectives.

The research phase comprises both user research and market research. 

The goal of user research is to gain a deeper understanding of your target users. What do they want and expect from the product? What challenges and pain-points do they need you to solve? 

Common user research methods include user interviews , surveys , and contextual enquiries. You can learn more about different types of user research and their associated methods in this guide .

The goal of market research is to determine what competing products already exist, to identify gaps and opportunities in the market, to understand market trends, and to explore how you might position your product. 

Everything you learn in the research phase will inform how your product takes shape.

With user and market research complete, you should have a clear understanding of the problem you’re aiming to solve. Now it’s time to come up with potential solutions. 

The ideation phase involves brainstorming solutions and exploring their validity. You might create customer journey maps and storyboards to visualise how a user would interact with your proposed solutions, and to uncover potential pitfalls. 

By the end of the ideation stage, you will hopefully have a shortlist of concepts—or even a single idea—that you want to carry through to prototyping and testing.

The prototyping phase allows you to simulate how the product would look and function, and to test it with your target users before getting it developed for real. 

Low-fidelity prototypes map out the structure and information architecture of the product, while high-fidelity prototypes include visual detail and interactivity. Depending on the size and setup of the team, prototyping might be carried out by the product designer, or it may be handed over to the UX and/or UI designer. 

With your prototypes at the ready, you can test your idea(s) with real (or representative) users. 

The goal of the testing phase is to evaluate how your product performs in an almost-real-world context. Does it function as intended? Is it easy to use and navigate? Does the design, in its current form, deliver a great user experience? Is the product meeting the intended user need?

It’s likely that user tests will highlight usability issues or uncover further opportunities for you to explore. Based on your findings, you’ll iterate on the design until it’s ready to go live.

You can learn more about product and UX testing in this guide .

Develop and launch

The product design process doesn’t end with the design of the product. Product designers collaborate closely with engineers and developers (or manufacturers, in the case of physical products) to carry the product through from prototype to launch. 

This involves conducting or overseeing the design-to-developer handoff , sharing product specifications and relevant documentation, reviewing the product at various stages throughout the development process, and solving any design issues that arise along the way.

Post-launch: Gather user feedback and make improvements 

The process doesn’t end once the product has been launched, either! Throughout the product’s lifetime, the product designer will continue to monitor its performance, to gather user feedback, and make changes and improvements. 

With ongoing feedback and iteration, product designers can ensure that their product remains competitive and continues to meet the end users’ needs. Whether it’s redesigning certain aspects of the product to improve usability, adding new features to enhance the product’s value, or removing features that become redundant over time—the product designer’s work is never done. 

Learn more: How to incorporate user feedback into the product design process (and why it matters) .

What does a product designer do? 

We’ve explored the product design process —but how does this translate into day-to-day tasks? The product designer role involves:

• Product strategy and vision;
• Research and testing;
• Cross-team collaboration;
• Hands-on design work;
• Processes and documentation. 

Here are some of the most common product designer duties based on real job ads:

Product strategy and vision:

• Partner with the product team to build and validate hypotheses about new opportunities, playing a significant role in shaping the product roadmap and direction.
• Work closely with engineers and product managers to devise long-term product strategy and short-term tactics.

Research and testing:

• Conduct user research and use insights to architect the UX of new product improvements and opportunities.
• Be a passionate advocate for the end users.
• Empathise with users by observing and analysing research labs.
• Perform usability testing and gather user feedback to inform design decisions.
• Stay updated with latest trends and competitor products.
• Build a deep understanding of users and their specific needs through qualitative and quantitative research.

Cross-team collaboration:

• Connect with internal partners to understand business goals. 
• Partake in resource gathering exercises such as design and content audits, competitive analysis, and business partner interviews.
• Participate in cross-functional workshops such as co-creation, empathy mapping, and journey mapping exercises.
• Collaborate with your fellow designers, UX writers , UX researchers , design managers, product owners, and engineers to translate product requirements into useful and usable experiences ensuring adherence to design best-practices and brand consistency.
• Foster design thinking and facilitate generative discussions with cross-functional partners, promoting a culture of innovation and collaboration.
• Work with product managers and engineers to form an empowered cross-functional product team.
• Collaborate closely with product and engineering teams to create easy-to-use and visually appealing experiences that align with business goals.
• Help the team balance product decisions through a tradeoff between value, usability, feasibility, and viability. As the product designer, you are the main person responsible for the usability.

Hands-on design work:

• Work closely with the product, engineering, and analytics departments to bring new opportunities to life through wireframes, mockups, and pixel-perfect designs.
• Synthesise user needs and business objectives to formulate testable prototypes and validate hypotheses.
• Ideate and prototype in both high- and low-fidelities using pen and paper and digital tools
• Build any required supporting documentation such as user flows, personas , service blueprints, etc. in accordance with UX standard processes.

Processes and documentation:

• Be an active participant in the design team’s continuous effort of consolidating our UI & UX design system.
• Develop and maintain design documentation.
• Participate in regular design reviews.

You can learn more about the role in this guide: What does a product designer do?

What are the most important product design tools?

Throughout the product design process, product designers use specialist tools. These include:

• Research tools such as Optimal Workshop, Lookback, Typeform, and Maze. Discover more research tools here .
• Design, wireframing, and prototyping tools such as Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma, and InVision. You’ll find a comprehensive guide to wireframing tools here and a comparison of the best prototyping tools here .
• Testing, feedback, and analytics tools like Hotjar, UsabilityHub, Productboard , and Optimizely.
• Collaboration, project management, and documentation tools such as Slack, Trello, Jira, Miro, Asana, and Notion.

Get started with product design

If you like what you’ve read about product design so far, you may be wondering how you can break into this exciting, multifaceted, and high-impact field. The first step is to learn the fundamentals of design and develop the practical skills that are critical to the product design process.

A Product Design course  is an excellent place to start. It’ll teach you many of the skills, tools, and methodologies you’ll need for a career in product design, from user research and analysis techniques to design principles and patterns, right through to prototyping and handover. 

Once you’ve got the design fundamentals in place, you can expand your skill set to incorporate market and competitor research, product strategy, and cross-functional collaboration. 

Want to learn more about product design before you take the leap? Check out these expert interviews:

• An interview with Sarah June Fox, Senior Product Designer at Etsy
• An interview with Margarida Botelho, Senior Product Designer at Revolut
• An interview with Sean Conlon, Digital Product Designer at ASOS

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Home » What Is Product Research? Definition & Process

What Is Product Research? Definition & Process

July 31, 2023 max 7min read.

This article contains,

What Is Product Research?

The dynamics of product research across product teams, how to do product research, the importance of data in product research, steps to make your product research successful.

Product Research Definition: Product research is a systematic process of gathering and analyzing information to gain insights into a product or idea. It involves studying the market, target audience, competitors, and relevant industry trends to make informed decisions about the product’s design, development, and marketing.

The main goal of product research is to understand potential customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points, ensuring that the final product meets their demands and expectations. 

By conducting product research, businesses can identify opportunities for improvement, uncover potential obstacles, and refine their product strategy to create a successful and competitive offering in the market.

Several methods are used in product research, such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, observational studies, and data analysis. The findings from these research activities are crucial in guiding product development, pricing, positioning, and marketing efforts, ultimately increasing the chances of creating a product that resonates with the target market and generates positive outcomes for the company.

Let’s dive deeper into the product research process for a better understanding.

Product research is a critical part of the product development process. It helps teams to understand their users, identify their needs, and validate their ideas. However, how product research is conducted can vary across different product teams.

In some teams, product research is conducted by a dedicated team of researchers. These researchers have the expertise and experience to collect and analyze data, and they work closely with product managers to ensure that the research findings are used to inform product decisions.

In other teams, product research is conducted by product managers themselves. These product managers may have some training in research methods. Still, they often rely on various other sources of information, such as user feedback, market data, and competitive analysis.

The way that product research is conducted can also vary depending on the product team’s methodology. Waterfall teams tend to conduct product research more linearly, clearly distinguishing between the research and development phases. Agile teams, on the other hand, are more likely to integrate research with the broader product development process using continuous discovery methods.

No matter how it is conducted, product research is an essential part of the product development process. Product teams can create more successful products by understanding their users and their needs.

Here are some additional factors that can influence the dynamics of product research across product teams:

• The size and maturity of the team. Larger teams with more resources may have dedicated research teams. In comparison, smaller groups may rely on product managers to conduct research.
• The industry that the team is in. Some industries, such as healthcare and finance, require a high degree of regulatory compliance, which can impact how product research is conducted.
• The company’s culture. Some companies have a strong culture of data-driven decision-making, while others rely on gut instinct. This can also influence the way that product research is conducted.

The dynamics of product research across product teams can be complex. However, by understanding these dynamics, product teams can ensure they use research effectively to create successful products.

To embark on a successful product research journey, follow these essential steps that prioritize understanding your target audience and meeting their needs:

• Define Your Target Audience: Clearly identify your potential customers’ specific demographic and psychographic characteristics. Understand their preferences, pain points, and behaviors to tailor your research accordingly.
• Conduct Market Research: Analyze the current market trends, industry dynamics, and potential opportunities for your product. Look into existing competitors and their offerings to uncover gaps your product could fill.
• Set Clear Objectives: Define the goals of your product research. Whether enhancing an existing product or developing a new one, having clear objectives will help focus your efforts and measure success.
• Choose Appropriate Research Methods: Utilize a mix of research techniques like online surveys, interviews, focus groups, and data analysis. Each method offers unique insights into your target audience’s preferences and expectations.
• Create Customer Personas: Based on your research findings, develop detailed customer personas that represent different segments of your target audience. These personas will serve as fictional representations of real customers and guide product development decisions.
• Analyze Competitor Offerings: Study your competitors’ products to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Identify opportunities for differentiation and improvement in your product.
• Gather Feedback Iteratively: Involve your target audience in product development by collecting Feedback at various stages. Iteratively refine your product based on this Feedback to ensure it aligns with customer expectations.
• Test Prototypes: Create prototypes or minimum viable products (MVPs) to gather user feedback early in development . Identifying potential issues before the final product launch can save time and resources.
• Consider Pricing and Positioning: Determine the appropriate pricing strategy and how you will position your product in the market. The perceived value of your product influences customers’ purchasing decisions.
• Stay Open to Adaptation: Be willing to adapt your product based on the insights gained throughout the research process. Consumer preferences and market dynamics can change, and flexibility will keep your product relevant.

Remember, product research is an ongoing process that should continuously inform your decision-making. Focusing on the needs and expectations of your target audience will increase the likelihood of creating a successful and well-received product in the market.

Data is essential for product research. It helps teams to understand their users, identify their needs, and validate their ideas. By collecting and analyzing data, product teams can better decide what features to build, how to improve the user experience, and how to market their products.

Many different types of data can be used for product research. Some familiar sources of data include:

• User feedback: This can be gathered through surveys, interviews, and user testing.
• Market data: This includes information about the target market size, the competition, and the trends in the industry.
• Product data: This includes information about how users are using the product, such as what features they use, how often they use them, and what problems they are having.

By collecting and analyzing this data, product teams can deeply understand their users and their needs. This information can then be used to make better decisions about the product, such as:

• Which features to build: By understanding what features are most important to users, product teams can prioritize their development efforts.
• How to improve the user experience: By understanding where users are having problems, product teams can make changes to the product to enhance the experience.
• How to market the product: By understanding the target market, product teams can create marketing campaigns that are more likely to be successful.

Data is an essential tool for product research. By collecting and analyzing data, product teams can make better decisions about the product, leading to increased user satisfaction and market success.

A study by the Harvard Business Review found that companies that use data-driven decision-making are 23 times more likely to be profitable than those that don’t. The study also found that these companies are more likely to be innovative and grow faster.

Making your product research successful involves a systematic and customer-centric approach. Follow these steps to ensure you gather valuable insights and develop a winning product:

• Clearly Define Objectives: Start by setting specific goals and objectives for your product research. Understand what you want to achieve and the questions you need answers to.
• Know Your Target Audience: Identify your target audience and their characteristics. Understand their needs, preferences, and pain points to tailor your research accordingly.
• Utilize Multiple Research Methods: Employ a mix of research techniques, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and data analysis. Each method provides unique insights into your target audience’s behavior and preferences.
• Create Detailed Customer Personas: Develop well-defined customer personas based on your research findings. These personas will represent your ideal customers and guide product development decisions.
• Analyze Market Trends and Competitors: Study the current market trends and analyze your competitors’ offerings. Identify gaps and opportunities to differentiate your product.
• Iterate and Gather Feedback: Involve your target audience throughout product development. Gather Feedback at different stages to iterate and refine your product based on real user insights.
• Test Prototypes and MVPs: Create prototypes or minimum viable products (MVPs) to obtain early user feedback. This helps identify potential issues and make necessary improvements.
• Consider Pricing and Positioning: Develop a pricing strategy that aligns with the perceived value of your product. Determine how to position your product in the market to stand out.
• Stay Agile and Adaptable: Be open to adapting your product based on the insights gained during the research process. Market dynamics can change, and staying agile ensures your product remains relevant.
• Involve Cross-Functional Teams: Collaborate with different departments, including marketing, design, and engineering, to gain diverse perspectives and expertise during the research and development phases.
• Stay Customer-Centric: Keep the needs and expectations of your target audience at the forefront of your decision-making. A customer-centric approach increases the chances of delivering a product that resonates with the market.
• Learn from Failures: Embrace failures and setbacks as opportunities for learning and improvement. Use Feedback from unsuccessful attempts to refine your product and strategy.

By following these steps, you can ensure a comprehensive and compelling product research process, leading to the development of a successful product that meets customer needs and achieves business objectives.

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Google Trends can be used for product research by analyzing search trends to identify the popularity and interest in specific products over time. It helps businesses understand consumer preferences and anticipate market demands.

An example of product research would be conducting surveys and focus groups to gather Feedback on a new smartphone design. This research helps the company understand customer preferences, desired features, and potential improvements for the final product.

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The importance of product research (plus tips and tricks)

Georgina Guthrie

January 13, 2021

Whether you’re buying a bagel or booking a vacation, it’ll always be better if it’s been made with your needs, tastes, and goals in mind. The same goes for websites and apps. A product designed to meet a specific group’s requirements will always be more popular than one that isn’t.

This is what product research is. It’s the art of getting to know your users incredibly well so that when you design something, the finished product is exactly what your users want  and helps them accomplish their goals to a tee .

The alternative? Making a product or feature that no one needs or wants or not doing your research fully and getting the product half-right. You’ll also waste time and resources trying to fix things. Definitely not ideal!

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what, exactly, product research is. Then we’ll dive into how you can make it an integral part of your product design process — whether you’re creating something new or redesigning something that already exists. Let’s dive in.

What is product research?

Product research is a broad term that basically means ‘getting to know your users.’ Essentially, it places the user right at the center of your design universe. Every decision, solution, and evaluation is made with their needs in mind.

Product research encompasses a variety of methods, all of which fall into two categories: quantitative research and qualitative research. Let’s unpack these terms.

Quantitative research

Quantitative methods involve measuring user behavior in a way that can be used for statistical analysis. The results are usually numerical. For example, how many users like the color green or what percentage of respondents use a certain social media platform. User information is gathered indirectly, which makes it possible to gather large sample sizes instead of interviews, which require more hands-on facilitation. Here are some popular quantitative research methods:

• Surveys : These are structured questions sent out to your target audience. They’re often low cost and can be an effective way to gather large data sets relatively quickly.
• Web analytics : Website analytics sites, like Google Analytics , gather user data. This allows you to see how users interact with your website. They can provide valuable insights, including how users move through the site and where they drop off.
• A/B testing : This method lets you compare two different versions of a web page, so you can see which one has the higher conversion rate. Once you know that, you can see which design your users prefer. It’s a great way to test things like button placements, colors, and banners.
• First click testing : This is a test designed to help designers uncover which element on a web page a user clicks on first. This can be done on an existing site or at the wireframing stage.
• Eye-tracking: This tracks user gaze, so designers can see where their eyes go while interacting with the site. It can help with things like button placement and menu arranging.
• Heat Mapping : A cheaper alternative to eye tracking, heat mapping shows where users click on a site or prototype.

Qualitative research

Qualitative methods are more abstract and in-depth. Interviews are one type of qualitative research because answers are long and non-quantifiable. Usability testing is also considered a type of qualitative research because it’s explorative and gives deeper insight into the user’s behavior. Here are some popular methods:

• Interviews : One-on-one conversations that follow a set of predefined questions that encourage the user to open up about their thoughts and experiences about the product or service.
• Card sorting : Participants group cards into logical criteria that makes sense to them. This should, in turn, give designers insight into how their typical user will interact with the site and its hierarchy.
• Focus groups : Groups are led through an open discussion. During the session, participants can participate in activities or tasks, then share their thoughts with the leader and wider group.
• Guerrilla testing: This low-cost method involves asking strangers what they think. It’s often carried out on the street, in the field, or using online usability testing tools.
• Field Studies : This method involves recording observations while the user interacts with the product or service in their own environment.
• In-lab testing : Users are invited to interact with the product or service in a controlled lab setting where their thoughts and actions are recorded for later analysis.

There are pros and cons to all methods, so it’s best not to rely too heavily on just one. Obviously, the type of project, along with time and resource constraints, will define how much you can do, but generally speaking, the more, the better.

Why should you do product research?

Product research helps you design a product that answers your audience’s needs. The better it does that, the more they’ll use it. If you’re working in a commercial environment, then this could give you a competitive advantage . It also makes it easier for users to accomplish their goals without needing your support. According to the Interaction Design Foundation , user research (a part of product research) essentially does three things:

1. To create designs that are relevant to the user

The main reason for doing user research is so you can find out how to make designs your users want. If your design isn’t relevant, it will fail due to a lack of interest, and all your hard work will be for nothing. If it’s relevant, it’ll get plenty of use and help you stand out from the crowd.

2. To make designs that are easy and enjoyable to use

If your user experience isn’t good, people will move on to a different website or app (unless you work in a field with no competitors). Making sure you have a product that’s a pleasure to use will help ensure commercial success.

3. To understand the return on investment (ROI) of your design

Making sure your users love your product isn’t something you can easily prove before putting it out into the wild. And by that time, the die has already been rolled. If it’s not suitable, it’ll need to be brought back in and redesigned, costing the business money. Even so, stakeholders often don’t see the value in product research because the benefits aren’t immediately obvious, nor as initially crucial as something like bug fixing. Unfortunately, though, if budgets are cut, product research is often the first to go.

This is where being able to show value comes in handy. To do that, you need to measure your results. Any change you make, measure the metrics that show it worked. This feature reduced the bounce rate or increased visitors to the site (and the revenue this generates). You could also show improvements in efficiency to prove the effectiveness of product research.

Tips and tricks

Here’s how to get the most out of your product research.

Choose your testers carefully

Take care when choosing the people you run your tests on. Make sure they’re the right type of person (i.e., your intended audience) and can provide reliable, well-thought-out answers. Check out usability.gov for some advice on things like candidate screening.

When usability testing, you might want to use people on your team to save time and money. This is absolutely fine for initial tests, but it has major limitations. People who have worked on the project will know what it’s about and probably have the same blind spots you do. Using a person who’s never seen the product before will give you fresh insight. They’ll also be able to spot things you may have otherwise missed. Cognitive walkthroughs are a fast, straightforward way to put yourself in your user’s shoes and are definitely worth time investment.

Ask the right questions

To get good answers, you need to ask the right questions . Short, open-ended questions are best for eliciting detailed responses beyond a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

Watch out for groupthink.

When people get together, the opinions of some might influence others. Or you may find that more outspoken people dominate the group while the quieter voices go unheard. There are a few ways you can avoid this scenario from happening. The K-J Technique helps participants reach an objective group consensus while brainstorming games  — both in-person and run remotely — can yield good answers if carefully managed (and everyone’s allowed to speak).

Make research ongoing

Great product design should be iterative in its improvement, and never really be finished — even when the product’s been released into the world. Testing allows you to see whether your design worked and highlights areas for improvement. Once you’ve made those changes, testing again allows you to see whether they worked.

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Repeating this process means your product will continually improve — something that’s vital if you want to compete in a busy marketplace.

Use the right tools

From wireframing to user story mapping and collating quantitative data, cloud-based diagramming software can be a huge help.

Choose a tool that comes with pre-made templates that save you time, and look out for features like version control and shared commenting features that make it easier for the team to collaborate. The more organized you can keep all your user research data, the easier it’ll be for everyone to focus on the user and their goals.

Match the research to your project

Time and budget constraints will shape your choices to some extent, but in an ideal world, you’ll include a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. They work together as a pair: test your qualitative insights quantitatively.

Build on facts, not assumptions

You know what they say about assuming… Making assumptions is bad. If you build something on guesswork, the chances of it being wrong are high. It’s a gamble and one that rarely pays off. If you build something based on carefully researched insights provided by your audience, the chances of them liking the finished product are massively improved.

Make product research non-optional

Your user should be at the center of your design, so to skip the research part would be a huge mistake. Even a little research can yield far better results than a product built on guesswork.

Empathy sits at the center of good design. And combining well-researched evidence with thorough analysis is the surest way to see the world through the user’s eyes. Once you have this perspective, you’ll be well on the road to creating a winning product.

The importance of storytelling in UI/UX design

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What Is product research?

2021-08-30 Market Research

How does product research work?

Product research is the process of determining whether your idea for a new product or service might be successful and how best to develop and sell that product. This process begins by investigating the market to see if similar products exist. Once you know what’s already available to consumers, you can determine if there’s a demand for your idea.

Methods of product research

There are several types of product research, including:

Concept testing

Concept testing  is the process of surveying customers about your product idea to determine how they feel about it. Concept testing is very versatile and can be used to evaluate customer responses to many different aspects of your product.

Price testing

One of the most important features of a product is its price. With price testing, you survey groups with different pricing options to measure demand elasticity, or the correlation between product demand and price. Demand elasticity is a vital piece of information to help you determine which price point will produce the maximum profit.

Product tests

Before you release your product, you can test-market it in limited areas to study how it may perform. Use different marketing messages, price points and distribution methods to evaluate which tactics produce the best response.

Focus groups

Hold a focus group of people who use your type of product. You can ask them questions regarding how they feel about different aspects of your product, such as price, quality and user-friendliness. You may choose to use surveys or conduct third-party interviews to eliminate the chance of bias in your interviewing.

Product demos

After you’ve researched the market, competitive products and potential customers, create a test model of your product. You can present that model to a group of potential customers to get their feedback. If you’ve created a digital product, find beta testers who could be potential users.

Product surveys

A product  survey  is an effective way to learn how potential customers feel about your product. Your survey can include questions on what consumers think of different elements of your product and how your design compares to others on the market. These surveys can be done online, over the phone, in person or through the mail.

Importance of product research

Product research gives your product its best chance of success. By finding out what customers want and adjusting your product accordingly, you gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Product research also helps you develop goods that have a higher value and bring innovation to the market. With better products, you can meet or exceed your business goals.

Product research tools from Cint

Cint has products that allow you to find the survey respondents you need for your product research efforts. Get in touch with us   today to learn more.

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The Product Design Process Explained: The 2024 Guide

Great products fit seamlessly into our daily lives, but they don’t just happen by chance.

They’re the result of extensive research and problem-solving, creative ideation and innovation, and a ton of human empathy—otherwise known as the product design process. 

Are you curious about how awesome products are designed and made? Want to know how product designers come up with their ideas and bring them to life? 

Then, keep reading for a step-by-step breakdown of the product design process. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is product design?
• What is the product design process?

Step 1: Research

• Step 2:Ideation

Step 3: Design

Step 4: testing and iteration, step 5: development and launch.

• Beyond the product design process: What happens next?
• Key takeaways

Let’s begin!

1. What is product design?

Product design is both a technical and creative discipline with one main goal: to conceive and create successful products.  

In the context of product design, a successful product is one that fills a gap in the target market, helps to meet business objectives, and solves a specific problem for the people who will use it. 

The product in question might be a physical product—like a selfie stick, a kettle, or an electric toothbrush—or a digital product, like a mobile app, an e-learning platform, or a video game. Product design encompasses anything, tangible or intangible, that can be used, experienced, or interacted with in some way.

Product design is steeped in research, strategy, and business. It considers the end users’ needs and goals, as well as market trends and opportunities. It also factors in the big-picture vision for the business, considering how the product will help the company to drive revenue, attract new customers, and shape the brand identity. 

And, most importantly, it covers the design of the product itself—focusing on the form, function, and appearance of the product—as well as the user experience (UX) it provides. 

That’s product design in brief.

For a more in-depth definition, check out our beginner-friendly guide to product design —and explore how product design differs from UX design . 

You can also see great product design in practice in our list of the 9 best examples of product design.

2. What is the product design process?

The product design process is the general framework that product designers follow to create new products or improve existing ones.  

The process is not set in stone. Every product designer has their own approach depending on both the product and the industry. You can imagine how the process of designing a vacuum cleaner might differ from the process of designing a mobile app, for example. 

But, whatever the product, every product design process comprises thorough research, hands-on design, product testing, and continuous iteration. And most importantly, the product design process is always firmly rooted in design thinking. 

What is design thinking, and what’s it got to do with the product design process?

Design thinking is a problem-solving framework that centers on the end user.  

Despite the name, it’s not exclusively focused on design. Rather, it’s about coming up with solutions to real human problems. As such, design thinking can be applied in almost any context to address complex social issues, improve the human experience in educational or healthcare settings, devise business models and strategies, or resolve conflict and improve collaboration among teams. 

The design thinking process focuses on cultivating empathy for the end user, defining a specific ‘human’ problem you’ll seek to solve, brainstorming potential solutions, and prototyping and testing those solutions. 

The product design process closely mirrors this approach. It begins with extensive research to empathize with the target audience before moving on to ideation, design, and testing. 

Ultimately, design thinking fosters an empathetic, user-first approach. By adopting a design thinking mindset, product designers can ensure that they’re prioritizing their target users. The better they understand their users’ needs, goals, and challenges, the more effectively they can design products that appeal to a specific audience. 

In summary, design thinking and product design go firmly hand-in-hand! Now, let’s explore the product design process step by step. 

3. The 5 steps in the product design process

The product design process can be broken down into five key steps:

• Testing and iteration
• Development and launch 

Let’s zoom in to see what happens at each stage.

The first step in the product design process is research. 

The research phase is critical for understanding the context around the product: the market it’s competing in, the users it will serve, and the business goals it should fulfill. 

All of this context shapes the direction the product will take, ensuring that it’s something the target audience will actually want and need—and that it aligns with the business’s strategic objectives. 

As part of product research, you might:

• Conduct user interviews, surveys, card sorting exercises, diary studies, and other forms of user research to get to know the target audience and empathize with their needs and pain-points.
• Create user personas (or user persona spectrums ) to summarize and represent the different types of users and / or needs you want to design for.
• Define the end user problem your product should address.
• Conduct market research to uncover trends and opportunities.
• Research existing products in order to understand the competitive landscape and identify opportunities for differentiation.
• Conduct stakeholder interviews to understand the business goals the product should help to fulfill, as well as the long-term product vision. 
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders to determine what resources are available, both technological and financial, for creating (or improving) the product.

The research phase is all about exploration, discovery, and understanding. Once you fully understand your target audience, your target market, and the business goals, you’re well-positioned to come up with a great product. 

Step 2: Ideation

Next up in the product design process: ideation. 

During the research phase, you defined the user problem you want to solve. Now the goal is to come up with potential solutions to that problem. 

This step is closely modeled on design thinking, which views ideation as a strictly judgment-free zone. Designers are encouraged to ideate collaboratively, to think outside the box, and to focus on quantity over quality. Who knows what awesome ideas you’ll come up with when you’re given full creative freedom?! 

Some popular ideation techniques used by product designers include:

• Group brainstorming sessions involving key stakeholders and fellow designers.
• Crazy 8s —a Design Sprint technique that involves sketching eight unique ideas in eight minutes, with the goal of rapid and diverse ideation.
• Mindmapping, a visual ideation technique that builds a map of interconnected ideas branching off from a central theme or concept. 
• Reverse thinking—a lateral thinking technique that focuses on the exact opposite of what you want to achieve. For example, if your goal is to design a product or feature that improves the online dating experience for millennials, a reverse thinking approach would be to consider: How can we ensure a terrible online dating experience for millennials? The ideas you come up with for the opposite challenge may bring you closer to what your users actually need.
• Concept sketching and storyboarding to visually capture how different solutions might look and function. This helps to identify potential flaws and validate or disqualify ideas early on. 

The ideation stage isn’t about coming up with a fully-fledged, entirely feasible concept—at least not to begin with. But, as you work through different ideas, you’ll naturally start narrowing it down to a handful of promising avenues that are worth exploring further. 

After ideation comes design—the part of the product design process where ideas are brought to life!

During the design phase, product ideas are developed into more refined concepts. The focus turns to how the product might look and function, as well as the materials and / or technologies that will be used to build the product. 

This step in the process varies considerably depending on the product in question. For digital products such as apps and websites, the design stage might include:

• Defining the product’s information architecture .
• Creating low-fidelity sketches and wireframes to map out the initial structure of the product.
• Applying UX design principles to ensure that the product is usable, user-friendly, and accessible.
• User interface (UI) design; creating all the visual and interactive elements that determine how the product looks and functions. This includes things like icons, colors, typography, buttons, animations, and images.
• Working with a UX writer to craft the messaging and microcopy that will feature throughout the product.
• Creating interactive, high-fidelity prototypes that replicate how the product will look and function once it’s developed.

For physical products, the design phase might include:

• Sketching and rendering—using computer software to create 2D or 3D digital mock-ups of the product’s form and features.
• CAD modeling—using CAD software to develop more detailed 3D product models.
• Determining which materials will be used to build the product and the various product components or features.
• Creating physical prototypes to replicate how the product will look and function in real life.

No matter what type of product you’re designing, the design phase focuses on the product’s form and function, as well as the overall user experience it provides. The end goal, of course, is to design a product that’s easy and enjoyable to use—and that effectively solves a specific user problem. 

The design phase doesn’t result in a market-ready product, though. Far from it! Usually, you’ll end up with an MVP—a minimum viable product—that you can take forward for product testing. 

The penultimate step in the product design process focuses on testing and iteration.

Before you send the product off to be built or developed, it’s essential to test your prototypes, gather feedback, and address any usability issues or general design flaws. 

The testing phase should involve real users (or test participants who closely represent your target users) and internal stakeholders. 

Product testing and iteration usually encompasses:

• Usability testing—asking users to complete certain tasks with the product prototype and evaluating through observation/usability metrics (such as task completion time or error rate) how easy it is to interact with the product in its current form.
• Conducting user interviews to gather qualitative feedback on the product and identify areas for improvement.
• Conducting stakeholder interviews and design reviews to gather internal feedback on the design and ensure that the product aligns with business goals.
• Improving and updating product prototypes based on both user and stakeholder feedback.

Note that the product may go through several rounds of testing and iteration before it’s ready to be built. Once you’re confident that the product is functional, usable, and desirable—and that it’s feasible from a business perspective—you can take it forward for development. 

In the final stage of the product design process, product prototypes are handed over for development.

This step requires close collaboration with developers or manufacturers, depending on the nature of the product. The product designer shares all the technical specifications, documentation, and design assets necessary for bringing the product to life.

This is known as the “design handoff”, and it typically involves:

• Presenting final designs to key stakeholders, including developers/manufacturers.
• Compiling and sharing relevant design assets such as prototypes, style guides, and technical specs.
• Establishing a feedback loop between the design, development, and product teams.

Once the product has been built and quality assurance checks are complete, it’s ready for launch! 

4. Beyond the product design process: What happens next?

We’ve set out a linear product design process with a seemingly clear-cut end point. But, in reality, the product design process is ongoing. Once the product has been built and launched, the product designer will continue to monitor and iterate on the product.

They might run A/B tests to compare different versions of certain features and conduct ongoing usability tests to improve the user experience. They will also monitor the target market to identify new opportunities to deliver additional end-user and business value.

A successful product isn’t static. It must evolve in line with the market and continuously adapt to the target users’ needs. As such, the product design process is never really finished. 

5. Key takeaways

The product design process is, at its core, a problem-solving endeavor. It’s about understanding the challenges your target users face and coming up with effective solutions—then designing those solutions to ensure that they’re desirable, usable, and accessible. 

At the same time, the product design process seeks to balance user needs against business goals. The most effective products don’t only deliver value to the end user; they also help to drive business growth and achieve strategic objectives. 

And, while the product design process is highly adaptable, every successful product is rooted in continuous research, ideation, design, testing, and iteration. You can’t build an effective product without those steps!

Looking to dive into the world of Product Design? Try our free short course or speak with a program advisor .

Want to learn more about how product designers create amazing products? Check out these guides:

• What Does a Product Designer Do?
• How To Become a Product Designer in 2024: Your Step-by-Step Guide
• UX Design vs. Product Design: What’s the Difference
• What Is Sustainable Product Design?

What is Product Development Research and how to do it?

Product Marketer at Zeda.io

Jacob Koshy

Created on:

May 15, 2024

Updated on:

Transform Insights into Impact

Build Products That Drive Revenue and Delight Customers!

66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs. But how do you understand the needs and demands of your customers? 

This is where product development research comes in. It not only helps the product managers to understand customer needs but also enables them to address these requirements in perfect ways. In return, product managers can drive higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and high revenue. 

Let us discuss everything you need to know about product development research.

What is Product Development Research?

Product development research is the process of crafting, developing, and selling a product. It includes the crucial steps of market research, user research, and also coming up with a marketing plan to market the product to prospects. It also refers to tracking the progress of a product you are currently working on, its appeal to the target audience, and identifying potential changes you need to make to make the product more attractive.

Development cannot take place in isolation from research. It is a crucial process that directs the development of a product. It helps you to identify, understand and analyze consumer needs so that you can cater to them accordingly and increase your desirability in the market. It includes the processes of concept testing, loyalty testing, and many other tests that validate the product.

Why is Product Development Research important?

Product development research lays the groundwork for all the important functions of product development, marketing, and sales. It makes sure all your activities are data-driven and not just based on assumptions, minimizing the chances of errors. 

Let us try to understand why product development research is important with the following points.

• It ensures you are giving your customers what they really want. Sometimes you may have a different idea of the benefits and features that you want to offer your customers, which they might not even need. Research saves you from committing errors like this and ensures you don’t waste resources.
• It helps you identify customers and market trends so that you can devise your strategies accordingly.
• It helps you to identify gaps and drawbacks in the current development plan and helps you brainstorm and analyze ways to improve.
• It enables you to forecast the demand for the product and develop unique ways to promote, market, and sell.
• It allows you to identify specific features that customers might be willing to pay more for and help you figure out ways for increasing customer loyalty.

How does the product development research process looks like?

There are primarily 3 broad stages of product development research. Let's discuss.

1. Exploratory research

This occurs in the earliest stage of product development research. During this time, you have no idea of what your product is going to look like, what features it will have, or what will be the pricing structure. In this stage, you explore ideas and dig into data around customers to understand their pain points and needs. 

Idea generation

When you are at the first stage of product development, you generally have no direction. The research will help you to lay the foundation of an idea and how to work around it. This process should focus on answering these vital questions.

• What type of product do you want to build?
• Who is the target audience?
• What do they really need?
• How can you address their need with your product?
• What segment of the market would you like to target?

Idea screening

This will help you evaluate potential ideas based on the criteria gained by market research. For example, if you have a new idea, the screening will help you test the feasibility by evaluating the budget requirements, relevance, constraints, risks, and challenges.

It starts with the generation of an ‘idea’ or ‘ideas’. It can come from you or your team members or anyone who is involved in the development process. Once you have the idea, you have to evaluate it against special criteria like benefits/value, target audience, complexity, profitability, and market situation. If the idea shows potential even after weighing against each criterion, you need to gather evidence-based resources to support that idea. You can start doing qualitative and quantitative research to understand prospects' points of view. After compiling all the important research data, you can now start refining your ideas into actual product concepts.

Evaluative research

Ideas that emerged during the previous stage will be scrutinized in this stage. This will help you identify the ones that are worth moving forward and discard the ones that aren’t promising enough. Data collection through surveys can be one of the methods used in this stage to gather details about your product concept.

Concept development and testing

It is the process of gathering information and insight about your product concept from the target audience. It helps you adjust your vision and ideas based on the results of the research.

Market research 

This process is essential to examine the different forces of the market that not only pertain to the customers but also competitors, economic stability, government policies, and all other factors that can influence the lifeline of the product. 

2. Iterative research

This stage is to analyze and refine your product to ensure it appeals to the customers. Iterative research is detailed and in-depth and focuses on developing the critical features of the product. It can start from testing the different versions of the product to finalizing the packaging.

Development

The development of the product initiates in this stage. From the technology stack to the product labels, everything is analyzed and planned in this step. All the team members pool in their ideas and start working on developing the product after it has been approved.

Before the product is launched in the market, tests are conducted to test its performance of the product. This may include evaluating the product’s performance, safety, quality, and compliance with standards. 

Commercialization

This is the final step when the product is introduced in the market.  Before launching the product into the market, all the important factors like pricing, packing labels, marketing, and sales channel are decided.

How to perform Product Development Research effectively?

As a product manager, you cannot afford to mess up product development research. All the steps should be carefully planned and executed to ensure success. Make sure to read the steps attentively to know all about conducting effective research.

Step 1: Ideation

Ideation is the process of identifying the type of product you want to build. Suppose you have recognized an opportunity for introducing a new product in the market, but are unsure about what type of product you want to create. This is when you can hold internal sessions with your team to discuss the idea and concept of the product. The processes of combining, adapting, substituting, eliminating, and rearranging will play a crucial role in creating the perfect product idea.

Step 2: Market research

Market research means collecting information and analyzing the crucial players in the market. From competitors, target audience, geographical location, and economic stability to government policies, you have to have a thorough understanding of the market landscape to develop a strong product strategy .

Step 3: Demand analysis

The demand for a product drives the financial decisions of a company. Knowing the demand for a particular product is essential to know the feasibility of a particular product. If a product has low demand, there is no use in investing in the product. Conducting demand analysis will give you information about how many units you need to produce, which are the geographical area you need to target, and forecast your revenue from the product.

Step 4: Concept testing and validation

After you have gathered all the best ideas for product development, it is time to test and validate it. This focuses on clarifying  the idea of the product by focusing on questions such as-

• Is the concept understood by the team?
• What pain points can be addressed by the product?
• Who will the product users be and how will they use them?
• What are the possible strengths and weaknesses of the product?

You can validate these questions by conducting qualitative research to test the viability of the product in front of your prospective customers in the form of surveys or interviews.

Step 5: User experience research

User research or UX research is the process of discovering user behavior, motivation, and need of your customers through analysis, observation, and other types of feedback . It will help you dismiss assumptions and find common information about target customers, and recognize their needs and requirements.

Step 6: MVP research or prototype research 

A minimum viable product or MVP is a model of the product with enough features to allow customers to use it to validate the product ideas.  Creating an MVP and letting early adopting customers use it will help you get an insight into the product experience from their feedback.

Step 7: Pricing research

Pricing research will help you determine an appropriate price for your product. A suitable price should neither be too low as it will impact your profit margin nor too high to make it unaffordable for the consumers. Research will help you come up with a suitable price that appeals to your consumers while ensuring profit. 

Step 8: Competitor research

Competitor research is one of the important steps you cannot miss at any cost. Researching your competitors thoroughly will give you a base for comparison so that you can develop your own unique strategy for product creation and promotion. You can research your competitors from various sources like social media, google search, software listing sites, etc.

Step 9: Satisfaction and loyalty research

Satisfaction and loyalty research is vital to understanding the user experience of your product. Once you have launched your product, feedbacks are most likely to come in. You have to carefully analyze and address those feedback in a way that leaves the consumers content. 

Best Practices while doing Product Development Research

Here are some of the best practices you should follow to get the most effective results from your product development research.

1. Dig deeper into consumer needs

Just identifying the needs of your consumers based on a survey is not enough. You have to dig deeper into their needs to have a comprehensive understanding. 

What kind of challenges do they face? What are they looking for in a product? How much are they willing to pay? What section of consumers will use your product? All these questions will help you create a viable product. 

2. Involve customers in your development process

There is no one better than the customer to show you what and how they want in a product. They are the ultimate users of your product so involving them in the development process will only increase the chances of success. You can generate polls, surveys, and feedback sessions to ask prospective customers about their ideas and opinions. 

3. Expand your research horizon

Generally, you research only the targeted market and location while developing a product. It helps you get specific insights into the market you want to operate in. Broadening your research horizon is necessary to help you get a thorough understanding of the perceptions related to your product. Don’t limit your research to the target market, try to understand the national and international scenarios related to your product.

Product development research is not as complex as it sounds if you know how to do it correctly. If you know how to address their pain points in the most appropriate and innovative way, you already know you are way ahead of the competition. 

Zeda.io is there to support you in your product development research process. It is the ultimate product management tool to help you build the right product for your consumers. Check it out now!

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What is design research methodology and why is it important?

What is design research.

Design research is the process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting data and insights to inspire, guide and provide context for designs. It’s a research discipline that applies both quantitative and qualitative research methods to help make well-informed design decisions.

Not to be confused with user experience research – focused on the usability of primarily digital products and experiences – design research is a broader discipline that informs the entire design process across various design fields. Beyond focusing solely on researching with users, design research can also explore aesthetics, cultural trends, historical context and more.

Design research has become more important in business, as brands place greater emphasis on building high-quality customer experiences as a point of differentiation.

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Design research vs. market research

The two may seem like the same thing at face value, but really they use different methods, serve different purposes and produce different insights.

Design research focuses on understanding user needs, behaviors and experiences to inform and improve product or service design.  Market research , on the other hand, is more concerned with the broader market dynamics, identifying opportunities, and maximizing sales and profitability.

Both are essential for the success of a product or service, but cater to different aspects of its lifecycle.

Design research in action: A mini mock case study

A popular furniture brand, known for its sleek and simple designs, faced an unexpected challenge: dropping sales in some overseas markets. To address this, they turned to design research – using quantitative and qualitative methods – to build a holistic view of the issue.

Company researchers visited homes in these areas to interview members of their target audience and understand local living spaces and preferences. Through these visits, they realized that while the local customers appreciated quality, their choices in furniture were heavily influenced by traditions and regional aesthetics, which the company's portfolio wasn’t addressing.

To further their understanding, the company rolled out surveys, asking people about their favorite materials, colors and furniture functionalities. They discovered a consistent desire for versatile furniture pieces that could serve multiple purposes. Additionally, the preference leaned towards certain regional colors and patterns that echoed local culture.

Armed with these insights, the company took to the drawing board. They worked on combining their minimalist style with the elements people in those markets valued. The result was a refreshed furniture line that seamlessly blended the brand's signature simplicity with local tastes. As this new line hit the market, it resonated deeply with customers in the markets, leading to a notable recovery in sales and even attracting new buyers.

When to use design research

Like most forms of research, design research should be used whenever there are gaps in your understanding of your audience’s needs, behaviors or preferences. It’s most valuable when used throughout the product development and design process.

When differing opinions within a team can derail a design process, design research provides concrete data and evidence-based insights, preventing decisions based on assumptions.

Design research brings value to any product development and design process, but it’s especially important in larger, resource intensive projects to minimize risk and create better outcomes for all.

The benefits of design research

Design research may be perceived as time-consuming, but in reality it’s often a time – and money – saver that can. easily prove to be the difference between strong product-market fit and a product with no real audience.

Deeper customer knowledge

Understanding your audience on a granular level is paramount – without tapping into the nuances of their desires, preferences and pain points, you run the risk of misalignment.

Design research dives deep into these intricacies, ensuring that products and services don't just meet surface level demands. Instead, they can resonate and foster a bond between the user and the brand, building foundations for lasting loyalty .

Efficiency and cost savings

More often than not, designing products or services based on assumptions or gut feelings leads to costly revisions, underwhelming market reception and wasted resources.

Design research offers a safeguard against these pitfalls by grounding decisions in real, tangible insights directly from the target market – streamlining the development process and ensuring that every dollar spent yields maximum value.

New opportunities

Design research often brings to light overlooked customer needs and emerging trends. The insights generated can shift the trajectory of product development, open doors to new and novel solutions, and carve out fresh market niches.

Sometimes it's not just about avoiding mistakes – it can be about illuminating new paths of innovation.

Enhanced competitive edge

In today’s world, one of the most powerful ways to stand out as a business is to be relentlessly user focused. By ensuring that products and services are continuously refined based on user feedback, businesses can maintain a step ahead of competitors.

Whether it’s addressing pain points competitors might overlook, or creating user experiences that are not just satisfactory but delightful, design research can be the foundations for a sharpened competitive edge.

Design research methods

The broad scope of design research means it demands a variety of research tools, with both numbers-driven and people-driven methods coming into play. There are many methods to choose from, so we’ve outlined those that are most common and can have the biggest impact.

This stage is about gathering initial insights to set a clear direction.

Literature review

Simply put, this research method involves investigating existing secondary research, like studies and articles, in your design area. It's a foundational method that helps you understand current knowledge and identify any gaps – think of it like surveying the landscape before navigating through it.

Field observations

By observing people's interactions in real-world settings, we gather genuine insights. Field observations are about connecting the dots between observed behaviors and your design's intended purpose. This method proves invaluable as it can reveal how design choices can impact everyday experiences.

Stakeholder interviews

Talking to those invested in the design's outcome, be it users or experts, is key. These discussions provide first-hand feedback that can clarify user expectations and illuminate the path towards a design that resonates with its audience.

This stage is about delving deeper and starting to shape your design concepts based on what you’ve already discovered.

Design review

This is a closer look at existing designs in the market or other related areas. Design reviews are very valuable because they can provide an understanding of current design trends and standards – helping you see where there's room for innovation or improvement.

Without a design review, you could be at risk of reinventing the wheel.

Persona building

This involves creating detailed profiles representing different groups in your target audience using real data and insights.

Personas help bring to life potential users, ensuring your designs address actual needs and scenarios. By having these "stand-in" users, you can make more informed design choices tailored to specific user experiences.

Putting your evolving design ideas to the test and gauging their effectiveness in the real world.

Usability testing

This is about seeing how real users interact with a design.

In usability testing you observe this process, note where they face difficulties and moments of satisfaction. It's a hands-on way to ensure that the design is intuitive and meets user needs.

Benchmark testing

Benchmark testing is about comparing your design's performance against set standards or competitor products.

Doing this gives a clearer idea of where your design stands in the broader context and highlights areas for improvement or differentiation. With these insights you can make informed decisions to either meet or exceed those benchmarks.

This final stage is about gathering feedback once your design is out in the world, ensuring it stays relevant and effective.

Feedback surveys

After users have interacted with the design for some time, use feedback surveys to gather their thoughts. The results of these surveys will help to ensure that you have your finger on the pulse of user sentiment – enabling iterative improvements.

Remember, simple questions can reveal a lot about what's working and where improvements might be needed.

Focus groups

These are structured, moderator-led discussions with a small group of users . The aim is for the conversation to dive deep into their experiences with the design and extract rich insights – not only capturing what users think but also why.

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How to Design a Product: Steps, Best Practices and Tools

11 min read

Learning how to design a product is crucial for anyone aiming to bring an idea to life.

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned product manager, a UX designer , or simply curious about the process, this guide will walk you through the essential steps, best practices, and tools you need to create successful products.

Product design is the process of creating new products that solve problems or meet specific needs in a given market.

• The product design process extends beyond the product designer’s role, often requiring cross-functional collaboration among product designers , visual designers, UX designers, researchers, industrial design specialists, marketers, and engineers.

Design a product in 7 steps:

• Carry out market research and generate ideas to help you stand out.
• Conduct user research to understand your target audience.
• Define the product vision and strategy.
• Create your minimum viable product.
• Test your product prototype and note usability or UX design improvements.
• Finalize the product design and launch it on relevant channels.
• Continuously iterate your product based on data.

Best practices for the product design process:

• Prioritize product ideas that align with business goals.
• Foster cross-functional team collaboration and communication.
• Follow an agile mindset.

Best tools to use in your product development process:

• Userpilot – best tool for designing in-product experiences.
• Lucidchart – best tool for customer journey mapping.
• Figma – best tool for product designers to create interactive prototypes and user interfaces.
• Maze – best tool for user interviews and testing.
• Asana – best project management tools for teams.

Userpilot helps product teams understand user behavior and drive product adoption. Book a demo now to try it!

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What is product design?

It’s a multi-faceted discipline that involves understanding user needs , generating ideas, developing concepts, prototyping , testing, and iterating until a final product is ready for launch.

How to design a product in 7 steps

Product design cuts across almost every industry and applies to both physical and digital products .

However, the goal is always the same: create a functional and aesthetically pleasing product while meeting the target audience’s requirements.

Follow these steps to create designs that align with real user needs:

Carry out market research

Market research is a crucial first step in the product design process. It helps you better understand your industry, identify potential opportunities, and assess the viability of your product idea .

Begin by identifying your direct and indirect competitors. Analyze their strengths, weaknesses, pricing strategies , target markets, and unique selling propositions. If your product idea already exists in some form, determine how you can improve upon it or differentiate yourself.

Conduct user research to understand your target audience

User research helps you gain deep insights into your target audience’s needs, behaviors, and pain points. The data from this exercise will enable you to design a product that meets their needs and expectations.

Research can feel overwhelming, but a focused approach makes it manageable. Start by creating detailed user personas and mapping their pain points.

Then, build empathy maps to understand their emotions and motivations. Finally, craft user story maps to visualize their journeys and goals.

Don’t worry, we’ll discuss these steps in detail:

Map your user personas and their pain points

Create fictional characters ( personas ) that represent your target users and identify specific problems these users face when interacting with your product.

Clearly outline the outcomes of using your product to solve these challenges.

Here’s a persona template you can copy:

Create empathy maps to better connect with potential users

An empathy map is a step up from basic user personas This tool allows you to gain deeper insights into potential customer thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Create your empathy map by collecting data through targeted user surveys . If you’re building on an existing product, it also helps to involve customer-facing teams. For example, the support team regularly interacts with users, so they can tell you more about the attitudes of each customer group.

Split the map into four quadrants: Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels.

• Say : Direct quotes from the user.
• Think : User thoughts, beliefs, and opinions that may not be expressed verbally.
• Do: How you anticipate users will interact with your product.
• Feel : The user’s customer’s emotional state and reactions at key phases in the product journey .

Map user stories

User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature from the perspective of the end user. They are used in agile development to capture product functionality and serve as a basis for prioritization.

How to begin?

Use your personas and empathy maps to understand what users need , then craft stories that follow this format:

Example: “As a sales manager, I want to track the progress of each lead in the pipeline so that I can prioritize follow-ups and allocate resources effectively.”

Rank the stories based on importance and impact on the user, then use the information to decide which features to prioritize .

Define the product vision and strategy

After researching the market and figuring out user needs, it’s time to outline your product vision and strategy .

Create a compelling and concise statement that describes your product’s future state. This vision should inspire and guide the design team.

For example, “Our product will democratize data, empowering businesses of all sizes to make informed decisions based on actionable insights and real-time analytics.”

The next step is to develop a product roadmap —a high-level timeline that outlines the major milestones and phases of your product development . This roadmap should be flexible enough to accommodate changes based on resources, feedback, and market conditions.

Create your minimum viable product

An MVP is a stripped-down version of your product with just enough features to be usable and gather feedback from early adopters. It allows you to test your assumptions, validate your product concept, and iterate quickly.

There are different types. Here are a few:

• Landing page MVP : A simple, informative landing page that highlights your product’s key features and benefits and includes a CTA inviting users to try it.
• Email MVP : A detailed email (or email series) describing the product and its features. Like landing page MVPs, this also includes CTAs asking readers to sign up for a waitlist or test the product and provide feedback .
• Demo video MVP : This is a product tour that visually demonstrates the product’s value proposition and features, and then invites users to try it.

Test your product prototype with real users

Testing is a critical phase in the design process where you validate your product’s usability, functionality, and overall appeal before investing significant resources into further development.

The key is to gather feedback from beta users who represent your target audience.

Here’s how to approach it:

• Usability testing : Observe users interacting with your prototype, identifying any pain points , confusion, or areas where they get stuck. Gather feedback on the overall user experience.
• A/B testing : If you have multiple design variations, test them with key user groups to see which performs better in terms of engagement, conversion rates , or other key metrics.
• Feedback collection : Actively seek feedback from users through surveys, interviews, or feedback forms . Analyze the data to identify patterns and areas for improvement.

Finalize the product design and launch it on relevant channels

Based on the feedback from testing, iterate on your design and refine it until it meets your quality standards and addresses user concerns. Once you’re confident in your product, it’s time to launch it.

Create a launch strategy to build awareness and excitement for your product. Most early adopters hang around on Product Hunt , so you want to ensure you launch your new product there and drive traffic to the page through social media posts, emails, and paid advertising.

Continuously iterate your product based on data

Product design is an ongoing process. Once your product is launched, continue gathering data on user behavior , feedback, and performance metrics.

Use this data to identify areas for improvement and iterate on your design to enhance user satisfaction and drive business growth.

How to go about it:

Collect user feedback and act on it to improve your product

Trigger in-app CSAT and CES surveys when users interact with specific features for the first time.

Collect data about their satisfaction with the solution your tool provides and the ease of using it.

Analyze how users interact with the product with product analytics

Sometimes, user feedback isn’t enough to get the full picture. Use product analytics tools like Userpilot to track in-app user behavior and identify usage patterns , spot friction points , and measure the success of your product features .

With Userpilot, you can divide users into segments based on different characteristics and track how each user group interacts with key features and events. This allows you to gain granular insights and make more targeted improvements.

Best practices for the product design process

As you’ve seen so far, designing a successful product requires more than just innovative ideas; it demands a structured approach that integrates market demand and business objectives to create something users will love interacting with.

Here are some best practices to maximize your efforts throughout the design process:

Prioritize product ideas that align with business goals

Not all product ideas are created equal.

By focusing on ideas that directly contribute to the company’s strategic goals , you ensure that your efforts are aligned with the overall business vision. This maximizes the potential impact of your product and helps justify resource allocation.

Foster cross-functional team collaboration and communication

Product design isn’t just about the design team. It requires input and expertise from various departments like marketing, engineering, sales, and customer support .

Effective collaboration ensures that everyone’s perspectives are considered, leading to a more well-rounded and successful product.

Utilize tools like Slack, email, or project management software to facilitate easy information sharing. Depending on your company structure, you might need to have occasional meetups with key members from each of the cross-functional departments to discuss progress, challenges, and ideas.

Follow an agile mindset

An agile mindset emphasizes flexibility, adaptability, and iterative development. This allows you to respond quickly to changes, incorporate user feedback, and continuously improve your product over time.

How to do it:

• Work in sprints : Break down the project into smaller, manageable chunks with specific goals and deadlines.
• Frequent testing and feedback : Gather user feedback early and often to identify issues and make necessary adjustments.
• Embrace change : Be open to revising plans and pivoting strategies as new information emerges.

Best tools to use in your product development process

Integrating the following product design tools into your tech stack will simplify your development process, improve team collaboration, and accelerate your time to market.

Userpilot – best tool for designing in-product experiences

Userpilot is a product adoption and growth platform that helps you understand users and deliver engaging in-app experiences. It’s most useful after your product is launched.

Key features:

• Code-free builder : Userpilot is completely code-free and highly customizable, making it one of the best for creating in-app experiences. With access to user interface elements like modals, tooltips , banners, and slide-outs, you can easily trigger in-app messages to deliver contextual guidance to new users.

• Product experimentation : Not sure what users will love more? Userpilot allows you to run A/B and multivariate tests to find what works and improve your conversion rates .

• Funnel analysis : Use this feature to track how users progress through your adoption funnel . Identify where drop-offs occur and dig further to understand why.

• Path analysis : With this feature, you can choose a starting point (e.g., sign-up form) and see what steps users take from there. Path analysis allows you to understand the effectiveness of each path and discover your happy paths so you can put your users on it.
• In-app surveys : Lastly, Userpilot allows you to create and trigger in-app surveys code-free. From CSAT to NPS and CES , you have access to different survey templates you can customize as desired. Userpilot also lets you build from scratch if you want.

Lucidchart – best tool for customer journey mapping

Lucidchart is a visual workspace that empowers teams to collaborate and build comprehensive customer journey maps .

• Templates : The platform offers a wide range of pre-designed templates specifically for customer journey mapping. These templates provide a starting point with common journey stages and touchpoints , saving you time and effort in the initial setup.
• Drag-and-drop interface : The intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to add, arrange, and connect elements on your customer journey map. You can quickly visualize user interaction through different paths and spot where friction might happen.
• Presentation mode : Once your customer journey map is complete, Lucidchart offers a presentation mode that allows you to showcase your work in a clear and visually appealing format. This makes it easy to share with key stakeholders and gain fresh insights.

Figma – best tool for product designers to create interactive prototypes

Figma is a cloud-based design and prototyping tool that allows product designers to create interactive mockups and prototypes that simulate the user experience.

• Design tools : Figma offers a comprehensive set of design tools, including vector editing, shape creation, typography, and color management. Its component-based system is easy to use, even for a new product designer.
• Prototyping : Figma’s prototyping capabilities allow you to create interactive prototypes that simulate the user experience. You can add transitions, animations, and micro-interactions to bring your designs to life.
• Developer handoff : Figma simplifies the handoff process between product designers and developers. It can generate code snippets (CSS, iOS, Android) and design specs for developers to implement the design accurately. This reduces errors and streamlines the development process .

Maze – best tool for usability testing

Maze is a user research platform designed to make usability testing fast, easy, and insightful.

It allows you to create interactive tests directly from your prototypes (from tools like Figma, InVision, etc.), gather valuable feedback from real users, and analyze the results with quantitative and qualitative data.

• Usability testing templates : Maze offers a variety of pre-built templates for different types of usability tests, such as card sorting, tree testing, and first-click testing. This makes it easy for product and UX designers to gauge the simplicity of their designs.
• Task creation and scenarios : Easily create tasks and scenarios to guide users through your prototype. You can specify clear goals and objectives for each task, helping you gather focused feedback.
• Automated reports : After a test is completed, Maze generates automated reports that summarize the findings and highlight key insights.

Asana – best project management tools for teams

Asana is a versatile product management tool designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work.

• Task management : Asana allows you to create tasks, assign them to team members, set due dates, and add descriptions or instructions.
• Progress tracking : Asana provides tools for tracking project progress . You can see which tasks are completed, in progress, or overdue. This helps you stay on top of deadlines and identify potential bottlenecks.
• Reporting : The platform also offers customizable reports that summarize project status and team performance. You can use these reports to gain insights into how your product designers, UX designers, and other team members are working.

Understanding how to design a product is only the first step towards creating a successful product.

With Userpilot, you can take the next leap by understanding your users’ behavior and using that data to drive product adoption and engagement. Let us show you how— book a demo now .

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The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Trial Design and Research with Dr. ElZarrad

Q&A with FDA Podcast | Transcript

Dr. Roach: Welcome to “Q&A with FDA,” from the FDA’s Division of Drug Information, where we aim to answer some of the most frequently asked questions that we’ve received from the public.

My name is Dr. Sara Roach and today we will be discussing the role of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, in clinical trial design.

AI, including machine learning, is all gaining traction in clinical research, changing the clinical trial landscape, and is increasingly being integrated in areas where FDA is actively engaged, including clinical trial design, digital health technologies, and real-world data analytics.

Today we are joined by Dr. Khair ElZarrad, Director of the Office of Medical Policy within FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to discuss recent advances and use of technology in clinical trial design.

Dr. ElZarrad leads the development, coordination, and implementation of medical policy programs and strategic initiatives and works to enhance policies and improve drug development and regulatory review processes. He was also recently awarded the 2023 Arthur Flemming Award, which honors outstanding employees.

Good afternoon Dr. ElZarrad, congratulations on the award! We are so glad that you could join us!

Dr. ElZarrad: Good afternoon Sara, my pleasure. Great to be with you today!

Dr. Roach: Can you set the stage for our audience by describing AI and machine learning?

Dr. ElZarrad: Sure absolutely. So generally AI and machine learning can be described as machine-based systems that can, for a given set obviously, for human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions. Those AI systems use machine- and human-based inputs to perceive real and virtual environments. So they, they can abstract such perceptions into models in an automated manner. They use model inference typically to formulate options for information or action.

You know, machine learning, specifically, I would say, which is the most used form of AI that we’ve seen in drug development, is a subset of AI, and it employs a set of technologies or techniques that can be used to train AI algorithms to improve performance at the task, at the specific task, based on data that’s available.

Dr. Roach: It might not be well known that FDA has already received hundreds of submissions that reference use of AI. Can you talk more about that?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah sure absolutely, it’s a very exciting area actually! So over the last few years, FDA has seen a rapid growth in the number of submissions that reference AI. Obviously, when an application references AI that doesn’t tell you how deep or complex the use of AI. Nonetheless, we’ve seen a rapid rise in those applications. The last data I have, actually, from 2016 to today, approximately 300 submissions we’ve received that reference AI use. These submissions transverse the landscape of drug development, all the way from discovery to clinical research, you highlighted clinical trials for example in the beginning, but also to post-market safety surveillance and to even manufacturing, you know advanced manufacturing specifically.

We are also working to better understand how the use of AI in any one specific setting relates to participants safety and the reliability of study results. I call those like the two pillars that we have to pay attention to, the safety and the reliability of results.

The use of AI, including to facilitate data collection, this combined with robust information management, advanced computing abilities that we’ve been seeing increasingly in the recent year, are really transforming the way drugs are developed and used, so we are very excited about this area.

Dr. Roach: One of the most significant applications of AI in drug development is in efforts to streamline and advance clinical research. Can you tell us more about how these technologies are being applied in clinical trials?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah absolutely. Let me first say that one of our key objectives at the FDA is to really advance the modernization of clinical trials. Clinical trials themselves are cornerstone for evidence generation. We rely on them, and we must continue to make them more agile, inclusive, and innovative. You know and you can say multiple other areas where we can innovate around clinical trials.

So over the past few years, I hope everyone took note of our guidances, for example, on decentralized clinical trials or what we call DCTs, the digital health technologies or DHTs, and modern good clinical practice guidelines, among many other areas that hopefully will, will initiate a new generation if you would, of clinical trials both modernizing on the design front and the conduct front.

AI itself is being utilized – actually it’s being used to analyze a vast amount of data, and this is data from both clinical trials and observational studies. And its use is really to help make inferences regarding the safety and effectiveness of the drug being evaluated. AI also has the potential to inform the design and efficiency of clinical trials, including in decentralized clinical trials. And you see also a potential for AI use in trials incorporating the use of real-world data, another really main topic for us. For example, there is a great potential for AI uses in the extraction and organization of data from electronic health records and medical claims, as well as other data sources that tend to be valuable, sometimes unstructured. So, there’s a great potential for AI to assist us across the board here.

Dr. Roach: For those unfamiliar with DCTs - in these trials, some or all of the clinical trial’s activities occur at locations other than a traditional clinical trial site. These alternate locations can include the participant’s home, a local health care facility, or a nearby laboratory that incorporate DHTs, which are systems that capture health care information for the clinical trials directly from individuals. Can you elaborate on how decentralized clinical trials are currently incorporating digital health technologies?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah absolutely. It’s important to mention first, two points. Decentralized designs and the use of digital health technology hold a great potential in streamlining clinical trials in general, but also in expanding the reach of trials, and reducing the burden on participants. We really hope those designs and those tools can help us reach rural communities, for example.

That said, DCTs and DHTs are not silver bullets on themselves, and should be evaluated to see if they fit, if they are fit, for purpose, while considering the total context of the clinical trial, the type of the intervention, and the population involved among other factors. Take for example, that we should not really assume what patient’s preference would be. You know some patients may like to have a healthcare provider come to their homes. Others may not. So I think we should do our due diligence in understanding how those designs can and could be incorporated in the context of the trial.

Another point is that many DHTs are portable instruments obviously, such as you know activity trackers, glucose monitors, blood pressure monitors, spirometers, and they contain advances such as electronic sensors, computing platforms and information technology. So we have to consider all of that as we think about incorporating those tools.

DHTs are also, could include interactive mobile applications, where participants take for example, can rate their quality of life. They can rate pain, depression, daily function, or even perform tests of functional performance such as cognition, coordination, vision and among many other factors.

Many DHTs may be worn as you know, like implanted, ingested, or placed in the environment. And this is a really critical point because when we think of DHTs a lot of times we think of wearable trackers. This is, goes far beyond that. And placing those DHTs in a specific environment and allowing real time collection of data from trial participants in their homes and their locations, which, as you mentioned, remote to the clinical trial sites, can help gather real-world data relating to patient health status or the delivery of health care. You know, it’s practically, rather than getting a segmented view of patients behavior or input, you’re going to get a bit more of a holistic picture.

One area that I‘m keen on is how we can use technology to assist in the recruitment and retention of trial participants, as well as explaining trial processes to those participating in a more user-friendly and meaningful way. You know, one of the key reasons for failure in clinical trials is lack of recruitment. So can we utilize those tools to do better in this area is something we’re very much interested in.

Dr. Roach: This could really benefit clinical trials and drug development.

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah, absolutely. You know, like, there are many examples, you know. Take DHTs - may enable continuous or frequent measurements of clinical features, or measurements of novel clinical features even. Those could, not be captured usually in traditional study visit because you go to the site. Typically, you capture data at the point. DHTs can enable much more really, in capturing more comprehensive data in that sense.

Those are typically state-of-the-art digital health technologies that we’re seeing increasingly. They allow participants of themselves to partake in the clinical trial remotely, so you can for example see how they are a natural fit for decentralized clinical trials, you know. Like for example, you can really reach communities by utilizing those tools that have never been reached before any clinical trials. Typically, those communities also have a huge burden of the disease.

We still though, we have to need to avoid a little bit the flashiness of those new technologies. You know, that we call them this new tool. Everybody wants to be, you know, part of this innovation right? So, but we have to really avoid the flashiness behind this new technology and ask, first - Do they fit in the context of the trial. I can give you one example in a recent meeting with academic experts, they really highlighted to us that customization and incorporation of technologies may also lead to increased complexity. We tend to think of those tools as removing complexity. But we really have to think about the context in its totality.

Dr. Roach: Considering the tools, data, and analytics we have discussed so far, such as Digital Health Technologies and Real-World Data, how is AI being increasingly integrated in areas where FDA is actively engaged?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah, good question. Many DHTs are AI-enabled, either as you know, embedded algorithm within the DHT itself, or employed upon the data generated from the DHT after the data is collected. So the utility of AI can really be in multiple places here.

Take one example: AI has been used to predict the status of chronic disease and its response to treatment, or to identify novel characteristics of an underlying condition. AI can be utilized to analyze the large and diverse data sets. This is, can be generated from continuous monitoring for example, continuous monitoring of participants. And AI can also be used for a range of data cleaning and curation purposes, an area that’s really important in the context of real-world data. This could include, for example, identifying duplicate participation, imputation of missing data values, as well as the ability to harmonize controlled terminology across drug development program.

One other point is that AI has also been used to analyze high volumes of real-world data extracted from electronic health records, medical claims, and disease registries, among other sources. We are also seeing AI being used in creating EHR phenotype, or patient cohorts, based on health records and claims data.

Dr. Roach: Are there other applications of AI being actively explored that you can share?

Dr. ElZarrad: The use of AI in predictive modeling, or counterfactual simulation, and in silicone modeling, for example, to inform clinical trial designs is being actively explored, and we’re really excited about the potential there.

In addition, AI used to improve the conduct of clinical trials and augment operational efficiency is also being explored. As I mentioned, making clinical trials more agile is a critical aspect here.

We’ve seen AI being used to assist in recruitment, and is being really developed and used in, in, to more effectively connect individuals as part of the trials. This can be really, can involve mining vast amounts of data from diverse sources, as we mentioned before, but also including social media, medical literature, registries, and structured and unstructured data in electronic health records.

So I think key to all of this really is recognizing that the potential is huge, but context matters and thoughtfulness is really essential across the board.

Dr. Roach: It appears that AI may also help improve clinical trial diversity. Can you expand on how AI is impacting recruitment and the logistical aspects of clinical trial design?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah, absolutely. And diversity is a very critical aspect for us, and an important aspect. But it’s important to remember that diversity in clinical trials is really a complex issue and it will take multifaceted approach, multifaceted solutions, to help ensure that trial participants reflect the population that will ultimately take or use the intervention if approved.

AI can be used to help with site selection for example. Trial operational conduct could be optimized by utilizing AI algorithm, take, to help identify which sites have the greatest potential for successful recruitment to the trial.

Its use also can help enhance site selection, improve participant recruitment strategies, and support more targeted engagement initiatives.

AI has been explored already and used in part of a clinical investigation in the prediction of an individual participant’s clinical outcome based on baseline characteristics. This supports, for example, our enrichment strategy that we have a separate guidance on. And this enrichment strategy could aid in participant selection in clinical trials.

Dr. Roach: AI’s applications are quite transformational.

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah absolutely. You know, we do at the FDA, we discuss and we recognize the potential for AI to enhance drug development in so many ways. And across the spectrum of drug development, you know I mentioned even manufacturing, and informing post-market safety as well.

Dr. Roach: What are some specific ways you are seeing AI transform the way we have traditionally approached clinical trial design?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah, the advancements have been, as you said, substantial, and the potential is really massive. Today, AI can be used to characterize and predict pharmacokinetic profiles, for example, after drug administration. And these kinds of models can really be used to optimize the dose or dosing even regimen in any selected study, you know. And this is really an important part of drug development.

AI can be used to monitor and improve adherence during the clinical trial. This can be through tools such as smartphone alerts and reminders, electronic tracking of medications, tracking of missed clinical visits. This is all can trigger potential non-adherence alerts, and hopefully provide us with the basic information to address that.

AI has already been used in clinical research to improve medication adherence, actually. This is specifically through the use of applications, like digital biomarkers, facial and vocal expression for example, to monitor adherence, remotely. I recall specifically one specific tool that is in development by academia and industry to track adherence in that form.

This technology has the potential to improve retention and participants’ access to relevant trial information. This can be done by enabling AI chatbots, for example, voice assistance, and intelligent search. So really, the potential, like, you can run through so many modalities of where the potential is really great here.

The last one I want to mention is that data from digital health technology and other systems can be used to develop participants profiles to potentially predict dropouts as well, and this would, could help in participants retention. So, if you know, somebody is likely to drop out of the trial, you can try to employ some methods to prevent that from happening.

Dr. Roach: AI has a role in clinical trial safety monitoring too. Can you expand on safety?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah sure. AI-enabled algorithms have the ability to detect clusters of signs and symptoms to identify potential safety signals, and that can be done in real time, which is again one of the areas that is really powerful. AI can be used to predict also adverse events in clinical trial participants. And this is an area we are definitely interested in exploring.

Dr. Roach: There are clearly numerous benefits to using these technologies, but what are some of the drawbacks or challenges?

Dr. ElZarrad: Yeah this is a great question. In, in recent years the integration of AI in drug development has gained significant traction as we discussed already. But this integration, coupled with continuous advancements of AI, not only holds the potential to accelerate the development of safe and effective drugs and enhance patient care, which is an important point. It also has to be considered very carefully. We’ve seen, for example, concurrent with this technology advancement, the use of AI in regards to submissions, have already increased. However, AI and drug development present, I would say, some unique challenges.

Take first, the variability in the quality and size and representativeness of data sets for training AI models. This can introduce bias and raise questions about the reliability of AI driven results. Responsible use of AI demands, truly, that the data used to develop these models are fit for purpose and fit for use. This is our concept we try to highlight and clarify. The fit for use really means that the data should be both relevant. You know, the data could include key elements and sufficient number of representative participants, and also that the data is reliable. And, and what we mean by reliable are factors such as accuracy, completeness, traceability.

Another important factor is because of the complexity of those computational and statistical methodologies behind the AI model, understanding how AI models are developed and how they arrive at their conclusion can be really difficult at times. And this may necessitate, or require us, to start thinking of new approaches around transparency.

Another factor is that the uncertainty in employed model may be difficult to interpret and explain or quantify at times, so that would require us to in a way try to figure out how to employ a risk-based approach. To look under the hood if you would, and how, how to do that in a reasonable and effective way.

And then finally, the last thing I would like to mention is that another challenge with some of those AI models is that the performance of those AI models could degrade over time, especially if you think of learning systems, right, where the data inputs are introduced, new data is acquired. And then the outputs may differ over time. So how do we make sure that we do not see that lag and performance. You know, I think it’s called in a, a data drift concept here.

Dr. Roach: How is FDA preparing to educate industry and to overcome these challenges?

Dr. ElZarrad: So internally, FDA has established a steering committee to provide advice, and this is advice on the general use or feasibility of DHTs and the implementation of DCTs. DHTs again, digital health technology, DCTs decentralized clinical trials. And as I mentioned, AI has been utilized across the board here. So we’re trying to provide engagement and also meaningful input on the use of those technologies and designs. To engage the public and receive outside opinions, we also are hosting multiple workshops, announcing demonstration projects, and the goal here is really to push and encourage mutual learning.

FDA recently had published a discussion paper, I think the title was “ Using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and the Development of Drugs and Biological Products ,” and this is really aimed to spur discussion with the community. Obviously we have some expertise in the FDA. But we know a lot of the expertise lies outside of the FDA. We’re very interested in learning and making sure that whatever we develop when it comes to our regulations is responsive to the community where it encourages innovations, while at the same time safeguard, you know, patient safety.

This paper that I mentioned, we solicited specific feedback on specific challenges that we see. And it outlined that very nicely. And we’ve been receiving some great inputs from the community. So we’re very excited to really make sure we incorporate the thoughts and the, the future processes around, you know, policy development.

I just want to mention too, that we’re very interested in feedback, not only from pharmaceutical companies that are involved typically in drug development, but also on those who are developing AI algorithms from ethicists, from academia, from patients and patient groups, and also global counterparts. We realize this technology is really being developed across the world. And we want to, we want to do our due diligence by engaging globally in that sense.

Dr. Roach: In fact, our Small Business and Industry Assistance program, or SBIA program, recently discussed digital health technologies in our Clinical Investigator Training Course, and is always looking for ways to assist and educate industry, so this feedback is extremely important! A link to the presentations can be found by clicking on the episode webpage and navigating to the hyperlink.

Dr. ElZarrad, thank you so much for joining us today. Do you have any final thoughts that you would like to convey to our audience?

Dr. ElZarrad: Thanks again so much for the opportunity here. You know, as regulators, we’re really excited about the potential of AI and technological innovations in general. We do hope that such innovation will result in facilitating drug development and ultimately accelerating how safe and effective drugs get to those who need them in a quick fashion.

We plan on developing and adapting a flexible risk-based regulatory framework that will promote innovation and protect patient safety. You will see that not just for AI, but across our guidances and policies that will address technological innovations.

As we move further into integrating AI in drug development, we are committed to continuing to engage with all interested parties. We will share preliminary considerations, seek input, and encourage discussions on fostering the responsible use and deployment of these technologies.

As I mentioned the mutual learning is really critical for us, and we hope as we move forward collectively we shape this field in a responsible way. We do recognize that we need to learn from experts and experiences across sectors here. And as I mentioned, not just the standard traditional sectors. We really need to go beyond into the technology, into ethics and beyond. We are very excited to see how these innovations are being used and will continue to be used to accelerate the development of safe and effective drugs. And we definitely want to be part of the solution to continue this innovation as fast as we can. Thank you.

Dr. Roach: Thank you again, Dr. ElZarrad. As we’ve discussed today, and as with any innovation, AI creates opportunities along with new and unique challenges. Thanks for listening to “Q&A with FDA”. The full podcast and transcript of this recording is available at fda.gov/qawithfda . Many of our episodes offer continuing education credits for health care professionals, so be sure to visit the webpage for more details. If you are looking for additional learning or continuing education credit opportunities, including live and home study webinars, you’ll also want to check out fda.gov/CDERLearn and fda.gov/DDIWebinars . And if you have questions about this episode, or anything drug-related, email us at [email protected] .

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) for Drug Development
• Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) for Drug Development
• The Evolving Role of Decentralized Clinical Trials and Digital Health Technologies
• Using Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning in the Development of Drug & Biological Products – Discussion Paper and Request for Feedback
• Real-World Evidence
• FDA Clinical Investigator Training Course (CITC) 2022

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Market Research

Business planning, website development, product or service selection, marketing and promotion, is it a good idea to start an online business, can i start an online business with $100, what are different types of online marketing strategies, the bottom line.

• Small Business
• How to Start a Business

Starting an Online Business: A Step-by-Step Guide

Crafting a Winning Business Plan: Setting Goals and Strategies

Katie Miller is a consumer financial services expert. She worked for almost two decades as an executive, leading multi-billion dollar mortgage, credit card, and savings portfolios with operations worldwide and a unique focus on the consumer. Her mortgage expertise was honed post-2008 crisis as she implemented the significant changes resulting from Dodd-Frank required regulations.

• How to Start a Business: A Comprehensive Guide and Essential Steps
• How to Do Market Research, Types, and Example
• Marketing Strategy: What It Is, How It Works, How To Create One
• Marketing in Business: Strategies and Types Explained
• What Is a Marketing Plan? Types and How to Write One
• Business Development: Definition, Strategies, Steps & Skills
• Business Plan: What It Is, What's Included, and How to Write One
• Small Business Development Center (SBDC): Meaning, Types, Impact
• How to Write a Business Plan for a Loan
• Business Startup Costs: It’s in the Details
• Startup Capital Definition, Types, and Risks
• Bootstrapping Definition, Strategies, and Pros/Cons
• Crowdfunding: What It Is, How It Works, and Popular Websites
• Starting a Business with No Money: How to Begin
• A Comprehensive Guide to Establishing Business Credit
• Equity Financing: What It Is, How It Works, Pros and Cons
• Best Startup Business Loans
• Sole Proprietorship: What It Is, Pros & Cons, and Differences From an LLC
• Partnership: Definition, How It Works, Taxation, and Types
• What is an LLC? Limited Liability Company Structure and Benefits Defined
• Corporation: What It Is and How to Form One
• Starting a Small Business: Your Complete How-to Guide
• Starting an Online Business: A Step-by-Step Guide CURRENT ARTICLE
• How to Start Your Own Bookkeeping Business: Essential Tips
• How to Start a Successful Dropshipping Business: A Comprehensive Guide

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If you want to get into the online business game, it’s a good time to start. The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped online consumer spending, including how people shop online and how they research products.

Today, 76% of Americans buy products online. Furthermore, roughly a third of people purchase items online weekly. From setting up an ecommerce business to offering web design services, there are countless avenues to explore as an entrepreneur.

Below, we’ll walk through each step to building an online business.

Key Takeaways

• When starting an online business, comprehensive market research is critical for identifying your target audience and learning how to resonate with your customers and understand their needs.
• Creating a business plan is an important step for outlining your business goals. It also includes your product description, target market, and financial projections, among other core components.
• Building your website involves setting up a domain name, finding a hosting company, and designing a strong website with consistent branding that allows your customers to navigate it intuitively.
• Choosing the right product or service to sell is essential. It’s important to think about how you’re addressing an unmet need.
• Several digital marketing strategies can be utilized, from content marketing to paid advertising, to help your business grow.

Successful online entrepreneurs study hard in order to have a thorough understanding of their market. This is important for knowing exactly how to reach your target market , because these are the people who will buy your products and drive your business growth.

At its core, market research is about understanding your customers’ needs, pain points, and solutions. It is designed to help your business better meet these needs.

Steps to Conduct Market Research

Market research involves understanding key aspects of your current and future customers. To get a clear sense of your target market, outline the characteristics of your audience—for example, age, location, gender, income, job title, and key pain points.

Once you have identified your target audience, conduct research on the following topics, which will tell you about how they make decisions and how you can better position your business:

• What are the challenges that your target market faces?
• Where do they research a given product or service?
• What are their views on pricing for this product or service?
• What factors influence their decision to make a purchase?
• Who are your competitors?

To put this market research into action, there are a number of different avenues you can take:

• Focus groups
• Competitive analysis
• Brand awareness research
• Market segmentation research

Consider the following questions that may be asked in an interview or focus group to learn more about your audience:

• “How do you search for that product?”
• “How useful was it?”
• “What words do you use when you search on Google?”

When you have completed your market research, identify what you have learned as well as your next steps based on these insights.

Creating a business plan is a key first step for all business owners . It is important for companies looking to secure funding resources. It also serves as a blueprint to summarize your key business objectives and goals.

To write a business plan , incorporate these eight main sections, which are often found in traditional templates:

• Executive summary : This is typically a one-page section that explains your objectives and includes your mission statement, core team, and why your company is positioned for success.
• Company description : This describes what you offer, your competitive advantages, and your business goals.
• Market analysis : This is where you explain your target market, market size, market trends, and competitive landscape.
• Organization and management : Explain who is working on your team and their professional background and experience.
• Service or product line : Describe the product or service you are offering, including any copyright or plans for patenting.
• Marketing and sales : Discuss your marketing and sales strategy. Discuss your pricing, key metrics, and sales plan.
• Funding request : If you are a company looking for funding, here is where you outline the capital you are requesting and where it will be allocated.
• Financial projections : Include projections for your company’s revenue and expenses. Consider including an income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in this section.

A business plan is important because it helps clarify your action points, who you are, and what you offer, all in a coherent template.

Getting your business online is the next key step. In an ever-changing environment, it is important to know the tools, trends, and strategies for building a strong online presence to allow your business to grow.

Registering Your Domain

The first step is registering your name, or your website address. This can be in the form of your business name “.com.” To purchase your domain name, you can go to sites like GoDaddy or Namecheap . If you decide to build your website using WordPress, you will need to use a site such as these to host your website.

Web Hosting Companies

Alternatively, you can buy your domain name at a hosting company. These are companies like Shopify , Wix , or Amazon Web Services , that may also offer tools to build your website and release content on them. 

Website Design

A well-designed website is important for many reasons. Using a website builder, such as Mailchimp or Squarespace , can allow you to choose a theme, customize your pages, create relevant content, and set up a payment page.

Other key aspects of your website design include its functionality, simplicity, and ease of use. Allowing your potential customers to navigate the site intuitively will be key to their experience. Brand consistency—in your logo, colors, and typeface, for example—is also key to creating a unified brand.

Another essential part of website design is its mobile application. You’ll want to ensure that your website runs smoothly on mobile, that images load properly, that the text is legible, and that buttons are intuitive to click.

This step focuses on how to choose the right product or service to sell. At the heart of this choice is the goal of solving a customer’s problem. But there are a number of strategies you can use to identify your product idea.

For example, you might consider analyzing companies with high-profit margins, products that align with your passion, burgeoning trends, items trending on online marketplaces, and/or customer reviews.

With this in mind, analyze how this product will get to your customers. Additionally, you may consider products that are not available in stores in your local market but are offered in communities such as Europe or Japan, for example.

Marketing strategy and promotion is an essential driver of business growth. As the digital landscape evolves, it’s important to have an effective marketing plan that resonates with changing consumer preferences and needs.

Here are questions that companies can consider as they create their marketing strategy, navigating today’s environment:

• Impact, value, and growth : What are the goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will measure success for your business? How will you explain the value that the business provides to its customers and/or society? Create an “elevator speech”—a 30-second description of what you offer and why it’s special.
• Customer need and brand promise : How does the brand meet a customer’s need through its products and services?
• Customer experience : How will the business deliver the best experiences at each stage of the customer journey?
• Organizational model : How will the business operate to serve the customer with the most impact?

These will help you understand what types of strategies can have real impact.

Types of Marketing Strategies

Consider the following digital marketing strategies that can be used for your online business:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Paid advertising
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Influencer marketing

Each of these presents a different way to reach your target audience, drive conversions, or build brand awareness, depending on your marketing goals.

You need to determine that for yourself. But before starting an online business, it’s important to assess the time, investment, and resources you’ll need to get it off the ground. While the barrier to entry can be quite low, it’s worth considering your goals and strategies for making it a reality.

However, compared with starting up a traditional brick-and-mortar business, the risks of launching an online business may be reduced due to lower upfront costs such as rent, staff, and materials, among others.

The short answer: yes. While it depends on the type of business you hope to pursue, there are many ways to set up an online business at very little cost. For example, you could offer your services doing freelance work, photography, bookkeeping, or personal training. The primary costs involved include setting up your business website, which can cost as little as $2 to $20 each year with companies such as GoDaddy.

There are a number of digital marketing strategies that online businesses can use, such as content marketing, email marketing, paid advertising, SEO, and influencer marketing. Each of these strategies can be useful, depending on your product and goals.

Starting an online business can be a powerful way to launch a new product or service while reaching a wider audience. With market research, a solid business plan, a strong website, and a digital marketing strategy, you can get started in growing your company effectively. As customers increasingly make decisions virtually, building an online business is vital to any business owner’s success.

Pew Research Center. “ For Shopping, Phones Are Common and Influencers Have Become a Factor—Especially for Young Adults .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Market Research and Competitive Analysis .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Write Your Business Plan .”

Ogilvy. “ Getting Future Ready with Marketing Transformation ,” Page 15.

GoDaddy. “ How Much Does a Domain Name Cost? Find Out! ”

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9 product research tools and software to add to your tech stack

Product research is a nuanced process that helps product teams understand users’ needs and build a product people will love. But the research process isn't as straightforward as interviewing a few potential customers and calling it a day.

Some of the challenges of product research are collecting unbiased data, implementing different research methods, and translating findings into actionable steps for product development. Enter: product research tools.

Building a  customer-centric  product isn't easy—you need every bit of help you can get.

Product research tools make  product management  more structured and your findings more accurate with data-backed user insights to help you uncover deep-rooted and intuitive information about  how to delight your customers .

Whether you’re a product manager struggling to handle different roles, or a product designer who wants to make the research process more practical, the right product research tools will be your best friends.

This article will help you determine which product research tools you need, and why you should add them to your tech stack today. We cover:

9 tools to include in your tech stack for effective product research

Factors to consider when choosing a product research tool

FAQs about product research tools

Product research is a thorough process that brings you closer to your customers and helps you make user-centric decisions about the direction and development of your product. The more you understand users, the better you can build a product that meets their needs.

The right research tools complement each stage of the product research journey—from understanding customer needs to getting product feedback on a recent iteration.

Here are nine tools to make your product research process easier, faster, and full of actionable insights: 

1. Hotjar: study user behavior and get VoC feedback

Hotjar (hi! 👋 ) gives you rich digital and product experience (PX) insights to help you understand user behavior and get product feedback in the voice of the customer (VoC). Hotjar is a great way to collect continual feedback throughout your entire product development process.

The best part? Hotjar combines some of the most useful product research tools in a single platform:

Heatmaps give you an aggregated view of how users interact with your website or product, and tell you which elements make users click or bounce off through color-coded graphic representations.

Session recordings offer a play-by-play of how each user interacts with your product. They show you where people click, how much time they spend on a page, and what issues they face along the way, leaving them to rage click or u-turn.

Hotjar Surveys provides an opportunity to collect users' thoughts and opinions while they’re in your product. You can ask open- or closed-ended questions and offer rating polls (using NPS and CSAT Surveys, or another of our many survey templates ) to understand how they feel about your product, and how you can improve the experience for them.

The Hotjar Feedback widget lets you collect customer feedback in context to better understand what users are thinking or feeling while they use your product. This reliable, fast, and easy-to-understand user feedback better equips you and your team to make user-centric decisions about the direction of your product, and helps you generate ways to delight your customers.

Hotjar Engage lets you automate the process of scheduling, analyzing, and sharing usability tests and interviews with your team. This essential product research tool makes it a breeze to:

Recruit participants from a panel of over 175,000 volunteers or bring in your own testers to the platform

Focus on spotting key insights, knowing that Engage generates an accurate video transcript with the time-stamped notes you’re taking

Sync with Hotjar Recordings and Heatmaps to provide deeper insights into how participants use your product and why

Pro tip: product teams can use Hotjar in every stage of the product research journey. 

Use Hotjar Heatmaps and Session Recordings to collect data on how users react to your product and pinpoint issues they’re facing as they experience each page and feature. You can then use this data to prioritize product iterations or introduce new features to meet user needs.

After you've made changes, use Hotjar Surveys and Feedback to get first-hand product experience feedback from your users and assess the impact of your product decisions.

Hotjar gives you the tools to magnify your product research efforts with user behavior insights. The deeper you know your customers, the more effective your product can be.

2. Zendesk: gather user feedback

Zendesk is a solution for collecting, understanding, and responding to customer feedback. It allows you to:

Connect with customers seamlessly across platforms, listen to their problems, and gather first-hand feedback

Analyze and monitor critical customer data with multiple integrations and functionalities

Create a response plan to address their concerns, and deliver solutions from a unified place 

In the product research journey, you want to understand what customers are feeling right now . And the best way to do that is to have a conversation with them to hear their feedback and concerns about your product.

Customer conversations are an integral part of product research because they give you direct insight into your customer’s thoughts and challenges. It’s how you learn who your customers are —and how to keep them happy.

Use what you learn from your customers to introduce new and better features, manage iterations, and provide a better product experience .

3. Make My Persona: define actionable user personas

Make My Persona is a handy (free) tool created by HubSpot to help you define your product personas . 

Understanding your users and their needs is key to creating or improving your product. Once you've gathered enough information about them, creating actionable user personas is an important part of the product research process . 

With Make My Persona, you can create handy fictional examples of your product users, including:

How they are using your product

What their goals are when using your product

What barriers prevent them from achieving what they want to do within your product

The default information you need to input to create personas in the tool are only more or less actionable, but you can easily create new sections based on the insights you gathered from the first stages of your product research, then download your personas and keep them handy in your project management software.

Tip: are you just getting started with user personas? Place a  user persona template  on your site and start learning who your users are.

4. Productboard: research, prioritize, and plan product updates

Productboard is a product management software that helps you get your product to market faster, and build a product you know your users need, by helping you:

Centralize user feedback and using AI to turn data into actionable insights

Build a product roadmap that your team aligns on

Prioritize the right features, based on data 

Centralized feedback management is a significant feature of Productboard that can one-up your product research process and make it more organized by collecting product insights and customer feedback (even negative feedback ) across all your channels. 

After completing this part of the research process, turn your actionable user insights into a plan to improve (or create) your product. Productboard’s roadmaps let you align your entire product team around what to do next, with built-in filters that display only necessary information to each audience in your team.

Tip: wondering which features to prioritize next? Let your customers tell you what more they wish they could do with your product with a feature prioritization survey .

5. Similarweb: determine market size and analyze the competitive landscape

Similarweb is a comprehensive web analytics tool that helps you with the next stage of the product research process: market research.

At this stage, you want to gauge the market size for your product, evaluate which competitors you’d be going up against, and evaluate the business potential for your product.

Similarweb allows you to:

Get a view of the industry, including current size and historical trends

Analyze the competitive landscape, including your rivals’ marketing mix strategies

Learn the keywords and terms that your competition uses to market their product, as well as their search volume

The data you get from Similarweb helps you determine whether there is a market for your product and the market demand trajectory so you can evaluate whether demand is going to last or not.

6. Airtable: manage your research data

Unless all your research material is neatly organized in one place, it's difficult to make informed product-related decisions, which can lead to delays or misalignment with visions and goals—dangerous territory.

If you want a dedicated place to keep your product research data neatly organized, Airtable can help: it’s like a spreadsheet on steroids, where you can manage your data in different cells that can expand into full-fledged databases.

Data management can make research analysis and implementation faster with detailed insights about your product, customer needs, challenges, and stakeholder concerns. Let Airtable make your life easier with:

A centralized space to discover previously conducted research, understand the status of existing work, and request resources

Build real-time visualizations and dashboards to help stakeholders understand timelines and project statuses

Build a repository that suits your workflow perfectly or pick from a variety of templates. You can structure and connect any type of data, not just projects and tasks, and connect use cases across the product development lifecycle.

7. Notion: manage your project and communicate your strategy in one place

Notion is the workspace from where you can manage the entire product research process. It’s a great place to keep your product research data, your wiki (and all other documentation), your product roadmap, and… well, anything and everything useful, really.

Where Notion truly shines is with project management, though. To bring your product vision to life and act on your product roadmap:

Organize and view your project’s tasks into multiple views (timeline, table, calendar, and more), and assign owners, statuses, and due dates to each of them

Create dependencies and visualize how each task is tracking with a progress bar

Integrate with third-party tools to centralize all your work

8. Figma: prototype and wireframe product and feature releases

Building a product is not a ready-to-serve recipe. After research, you can’t build a full-fledged product and release it straight to the market—you need customer validation and feedback at every stage of product development.

So instead, you build a prototype or a minimum viable product ( MVP ) with only basic features, so you can test the waters and see if your product vision will meet the needs of your customers. 

Figma is an all-in-one design platform that helps you bring your ideas to life with prototypes and wireframes: 

Design the UI of the products and/or features you want to test based on the initial stages of your product research

Add animations to your designs to simulate clicks, hovers, and more

Switch from design to prototype and share your prototype in an instant

Tip: product research continues even after the product launch. A continuous feedback loop ensures your product keeps satisfying users, or better yet, keeps improving based on their feedback. Product development, and therefore research, is not a one-time process, but rather, a cycle.

9. Optimizely: run A/B tests to keep improving your product

Whether you’ve already launched your product, released a new feature, or are still working on an MVP, consider running A/B tests (or multivariate tests) to gauge which version of your product or feature users prefer and/or converts more.

Optimizely is an A/B test tool that lets you test and optimize every touchpoint:

Run tests, uncover insights, and continuously refine users’ interactions with your product

Validate new features and deploy high-quality releases, safely and quickly

Design, implement, and analyze low/no-code experiments based on powerful customer insights without requiring a developer

Building a culture of experimentation within your research process ensures that you either keep improving your product or learn from failed experiments how to do it, the customer-centric way.

Tip: the Hotjar and Optimizely integration gives you deep insights from your A/B tests to optimize your users’ experience. The integration lets you combine your Optimizely tests with the Hotjar Session Recordings and Feedback tools to understand how users engage with and react to different versions of your product.

What factors should you consider when choosing a product research tool?

Every business has a unique product with different requirements, and investing in the wrong tools might end up costing you more time and creating more work than you signed up for.

But, how do you choose the best tool for your product and business? To ensure you choose the right tool for your product team, consider the following factors:

Size and stage of your company and products : a new startup with one product manager might just go for a single multi-purpose tool. However, an enterprise with an extensive product team may require a highly specialized tech stack. Consider the size of your company and where you stand in your product's lifecycle before you make your pick.

Features and functionality : understand your product team’s needs and identify gaps and potential problem areas—then find a tool that addresses these gaps and assists time-consuming processes. For example, an easy-to-setup tool (like Hotjar) helps the team collect customer feedback about your product and directly send it to stakeholders for discussion—cutting down time spent on approvals.

Usability and integrations : some tools are highly specialized and require a lot of technical prowess to navigate. When performing usability testing , consider who will use the tool and the degree of support they might need if the solution you choose is too complicated. Also, think about the time it’ll take to onboard new and existing team members .

Budget : your budget matters no matter how much you need a product research tool or how good it is. Before you even begin your research, understand the budget you have to work with, and prepare a business case for any additional costs.

Find the best product research tool for your team 

Product research is a long and often exhausting process. Product research tools unleash the full potential of product management and empower you with the necessary resources to create a product your customers truly love .

Tired of carrying out ineffective manual research?

Hotjar supports your product research efforts with user behavior insights. The better you understand your customers, the more effective your product can be.

What are the benefits of using product research tools?

Product research tools help product teams:

Organize processes for efficiency and speed

Conduct qualitative and quantitative product research

Use data-backed customer insights to guide product decisions

Get validation and buy-in for your ideas and decisions

Ensure you don’t miss out on something crucial

Which tools can you use for product research?

Product research tools make data collection, understanding, and analysis quicker and more accurate with AI capabilities and advanced processes. Here are some tools you can use:

Hotjar Ask and Observe

Make My Persona

Productboard

Hotjar Engage

How do product managers conduct research?

Product managers use qualitative and quantitative data collection methods like surveys, interviews, heatmaps, and session recordings to study user experience and solicit feedback about their product.

The product research process includes competitive analysis, market analysis, customer understanding, segmentation, and beta testing.

What are the objectives of product research?

The primary objective of product research is to understand the customer’s perception and response to your product and its features.  

The product team identifies bugs and improvement areas through customer feedback and user data and uses what it learns to build a winning product with an incredible product experience.

Size and stage of your company and products

Features and functionality

Usability and integrations

How do product research tools help product teams?

Product research is a key element of product success—it helps you understand your customer and come up with better ideas and initiatives for your products. Research tools help you do all that faster, more efficiently, and with better accuracy. 

Product research tools help you:

Organize processes for efficiency and speed : product research is an ongoing process without a definite end date. Product research software helps organize the process and neatly stack and organize research findings for easy analysis, so you can get to know your customers , and put those insights to use.

Conduct qualitative and quantitative product research : it’s important to make the most of both qualitative—subjective and opinion-based—and quantitative—hard, numerical—data as much as possible in your research. This gives you both the bigger picture and the ability to dive in for deeper insights. Traditionally, combining both has been expensive and complex, but today’s tools make it easier to get a complete picture of your users. 

Use data-backed customer insights to guide product decisions : instead of making assumptions and guesses, product research tools provide actionable information about user needs to help you validate assumptions and make smart product decisions.

Get validation and buy-in for your ideas and decisions : use rich product analytics to support your research and findings. It’s easier to secure buy-in from stakeholders with data than to convince them to trust your gut. 

Ensure you don’t miss out on something crucial : product research is just one part of product management. However, miss one critical step and your entire research process could be compromised. Research tools help you create workflows, set reminders, and build strategies to ensure you always follow best practices.

Product research basics

Previous chapter

Prioritize product features

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'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?

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ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form .

ChatGPT vs. Copilot: Which AI chatbot is better for you?

Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, AI chatbots have been the talk of the internet. ChatGPT's abilities to generate text , talk conversationally, write code , and do so much more have driven huge demand for the chatbot. 

Naturally, seeing ChatGPT's massive success, other companies rushed to compete in the generative AI space . 

Also: The best AI chatbots: ChatGPT and other noteworthy alternatives

Shortly after ChatGPT's launch, Microsoft announced its Bing search engine  was getting an AI chatbot, known at the time as Bing Chat but later renamed to Copilot . Despite being designed for the same purpose, Copilot had some major advantages over ChatGPT, with the biggest perk being access to the internet for free.

In May 2024, however, OpenAI leveled the playing field, unveiling upgrades to the free version of ChatGPT that matched Copilot's features and then some. So, which chatbot should you use? To help make your decision easier, we compared ChatGPT (the free version) and Copilot.

You should use ChatGPT if...

1. you want to experience the hype for yourself.

Since its launch, ChatGPT has been the leading AI chatbot and has served as the blueprint for the many AI chatbot alternatives that have entered the space.

Also:  AI business is booming: ChatGPT Enterprise now boasts 600,000+ users

As a result, it has the most name recognition and popularity, and the hype is well deserved. ChatGPT is a capable chatbot that can provide insight and assistance on various topics, including technical areas such as  writing  and  coding . 

ChatGPT is currently free to use and open to everyone. Therefore, if you are curious about how an AI chatbot could benefit you, you might as well try the one that started the boom -- and find out what you like and need in a chatbot assistant. 

2. You want free access to OpenAI's latest model, GPT-4o

The most compelling reason to try ChatGPT is to experience GPT-4o. In May 2024, OpenAI unveiled its latest and most advanced flagship model -- GPT-4o. As the name implies, the model has the same intelligence as GPT-4, which is impressive because GPT-4 outperformed its predecessor on nearly every benchmark, including reasoning, coding, English, and more. 

Additionally, the "o" in the new model's title is a nod to its multimodal capabilities, which allow it to understand text, audio, image, and video inputs, and output text, audio, and images.

Also:  6 ways OpenAI just supercharged ChatGPT for free users

With the upgrade, free users can take advantage of features previously limited to paid users, such as getting responses from the web, uploading files and images, and accessing Memory and the GPT Store. 

Eventually, free ChatGPT users will also be able to use the new Voice Mode, supercharged with GPT-4o's video and audio capabilities, to provide a more conversational experience and use the context from their environment to provide voice answers. 

You should use Copilot if...

1. you want footnotes automatically added.

One of the biggest problems with ChatGPT is the inability to confirm the accuracy of its responses, as the tool does not provide sources. Even though the May update to ChatGPT made it possible for the chatbot to browse the internet, ChatGPT still only provides links in some instances.

Also:  AI taking on more work doesn't mean it replaces you. Here are 12 reasons to worry less

When you ask a question in Copilot, the chatbot automatically includes footnotes in its generated answers that lead you back to the source of its response. Click the footnote, and you will be sent directly to the web article in another tab. 

This capability is useful when you use the chatbot to learn more about a subject. It's easy to explore further by clicking the provided links, especially if you want to learn more about certain parts of the answer.

2. You want more visual responses 

Copilot resembles a search engine. The chatbot's responses include plenty of links and, in many instances, photos. The visual components add to the answers by providing context and making the user experience more engaging. The graphics the tool creates also often include additional information.

Alternatives to consider

Generative AI tools on the market offer different strengths. Here are others you can try:

Artificial Intelligence

Copilot pro vs. chatgpt plus: which is ai chatbot is worth your $20 a month, chatgpt vs. microsoft copilot vs. gemini: which is the best ai chatbot, what is copilot (formerly bing chat) here's everything you need to know.

Trends to Watch: How Media Workplace Priorities Have Evolved in 2024

Gensler’s latest research and project work has uncovered new ways the design of the media workplace can deliver what employees want and need in an office experience..

Last year, I wrote a blog about how our research and project work had uncovered four foundational ideas driving the design of the media workplace. With our new 2024 Global Workplace Survey just released, I went back to compare the findings to see what has changed and what has stayed the same when it comes to priorities for the media workplace.

A Renewed Emphasis on Individual Work

Over the past few years, our research has shown work is becoming more collaborative and less focus-oriented in the media industry. This year, we saw the percentage of time dedicated to focus work increase for the first time to 43%. While this is still well below what we saw in years past, it highlights a more balanced workstyle and reinforces a need to deliver spaces that are great for teamwork, socializing, and learning — but also must be expertly honed for individual work.

Spaces for working with others are still underrepresented in most workplaces — especially those that are more than five years old — but we also can’t swing the pendulum too far. In order to be successful, open plan spaces — which can in fact be conducive to individual work — must be complemented by an abundance of phone and huddle spaces. And while we still see media workplaces embracing open plan and often having some unassigned seating, we have seen demand for these small, enclosed spaces double in many new projects.

Moving Beyond Return to the Office

Media companies have shifted back to the office. For many, four days a week is the norm, whether a guideline or a strict requirement. This year, media employees report being in the office for 52% of a typical work week, up from 35% last year. This doesn’t include the time many media employees spend at non-office ‘work spaces,’ such as studios and editing facilities. What’s particularly instructive is that media employees report that to maximize their productivity, they’d ideally be in the office 15% more than they are today (67% of a typical week). So, why the gap between what they are doing and the ideal? It helps to assess whether the workplace is delivering what media employees have reported is most important in their office environments.

According to media employees surveyed, the four things the office needs to deliver on are:

• To Focus on My Work – Having the spaces and tools that enable an employee to effectively get their core tasks accomplished. (Note: this may include, but is not necessarily limited to, focus work.)
• Team Meetings – Providing a variety of spaces to meet with colleagues seamlessly. Easy-to-use, predictable technology is a given.
• Socializing With My Colleagues – Being able to access spaces that are conducive to connecting and building relationships. And, a culture that encourages personal connection and recognizes the importance of strong networks and friendships as key contributors to employee satisfaction.
• To Sit With My Team – The ability — whether in an assigned or unassigned environment — to sit next to the people you need to work with. Coming in and sitting anywhere and next to anyone defeats the purpose for many.

An Opportunity to Enhance the Media Workplace Experience

Media organizations captivate their fans through books, games, park experiences, film, and TV/streaming. When done right, the best media workplaces have that same impact — they deliver something their employees crave in an experience and the things they need to be effective.

Our most recent survey shows that many media workplaces — from the perspective of employees — are average when ranked on two critical factors: #1 Effectiveness — do they provide a platform for employees to deliver great work? and #2 Experience — do they provide an experience that employees, visitors, and clients value and want to be a part of?

According to our 2024 Global Workplace Survey, the media industry’s performance is close to the global average. This isn’t a negative finding. But it is definitely an opportunity to look at the mix of spaces and the representation of brand, services, and technology together. This is something the tech industry — arguably media’s most direct peer industry — has excelled at. I may be biased, but I believe that media workplaces have more potential than any other industry. They should have the most passionate fans — their employees.

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