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How to persuade businesses to conduct UX research, or why “they” are unwilling to pay for it?

UX Design
April 13 2023 (aktualizacja: August 6 2024)

In business negotiations, there are frequently many issues that stem more from psychology than from the merits. It is the same while discussing UX research. All that is required to encounter a brick wall is a lack of imagination or the effort required to comprehend the processes controlling such services.

 

When the decision-maker is unable to recognise the potential benefits of such study, he begins to make excuses. You may encounter the claim that:

  • Testing is not appropriate at this time.
  • It is not budgeted for.
  • Users have only themselves to blame if there is a problem with the website.

Such organisations frequently rely on solutions developed pursuant to top-down directives. Typically, they are commissioned based on the intuition and subjective feelings of the management. The more this is true, the more difficult it is to get these individuals to examine their own thoughts critically. The mentioned inaccuracies are interpreted as personal attacks and are therefore automatically disregarded.

In such situations, it may take weeks, months, or even years to penetrate the mind of the individuals responsible for design. Time will pass that could have been used for, for instance, usability testing, and everyone will come to terms with the website’s flaws, dampening any desire for reform.

 

To maximise the likelihood of getting started, you might use the following bottom-up activities to enhance UX:

  • Employees indicate that the bug needs to be fixed.
  • You can observe, for instance, that apps are operating too slowly or that the interface is difficult to use by recording user interactions.
  • Presentation of losses in numbers: process completion time, subpage loading time, and abandonment of purchase operations at the time of error statistics.
  • Providing performance comparisons of various software that will surely demonstrate the weaknesses of the organization’s preferred solutions.
  • The live confrontation of decision-makers with a statistical user’s task.

Occasionally, only the management’s personal annoyance with the presented options and procedures will cause them to change their thoughts. Occasionally, management poses the question of how to repair errors. There is an opportunity to overcome the obstacle and take the initial step.

This step may involve a non-binding audit. If the organization’s system was extremely antiquated and “buggy,” the audit may open the proverbial Pandora’s box, justifying a request for a larger budget and expanded operations.

When using user assistance to acquire data, it is important to note the limitations of this option. Although opinions, contributions, and polls play a significant role in the change design process, their proposals should not be taken as divine revelations. Users are excellent at identifying issues, but they are not designers. Rather than relying on stories and visions, it will be easier to acquire trustworthy and helpful information if you observe them using the programme in real time and develop your own judgments. Thus, we will avoid informational clutter and contradictory recommendations.

On your route, you may encounter a manager who is generally receptive to change. However, regardless of the obstacles, it is worthwhile to make the effort to enhance the user experience. Especially if it is the company’s employees who must cope with the cumbersome CRM or ERP system every day. The irregularity of their operations results in delays and errors, which translate into increased working hours and duration of processes, and therefore, financial losses.

 

Author
Katarzyna Siwczak
Marketing Specialist
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