How to Position Your Idea With User Research

After quick-and-dirty validation of your idea, now what? How do you know when to prioritize user feedback, iterate, or completely pivot? In this Tech Talk, Colleen Diez, Lead User Researcher at DigitalOcean, presents some easy and effective research tools that help you use research to guide product development and customer satisfaction.

What You’ll Learn

• Research methods to prioritize the right potential new features to build
• How to target customers based on their internal motivations
• How to use quality metrics to iterate for launch
• Tips for synthesizing and making sense of your research data
• When to know if you have found the right audience, or if it’s time to change strategy

This Talk is Designed For

• Entrepreneurs
• Startups
• Small-to-medium sized businesses

Colleen Diez is currently the Lead User Researcher for DigitalOcean. A former XML/XSLT developer, she loves making connections, finding patterns in information, and telling stories about people and technology.

• Presentation slides

###Further Reading###

• Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience, by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
• Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, by Jeffrey Rubin and Dana Chisnell
• Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, by Indi Young
• The Field Study Handbook, by Jan Chipchase
• The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries
• Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research, by Jeff Sauro and James R Lewis
• Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams, by James Kalbach
• Jobs-to-be-Done, The Handbook, by Chris Spiek and Bob Moesta
• When Coffee & Kale Compete, by Alan Klement
• Nielsen Norman Group, a UX research and consulting firm
• Occam’s Razor, a blog by Avinash Kaushik