Entrepreneurship, technology, building a business.
Do you need any user research help?
Hi everyone,
Let me know if your team need any help with user research. I love geeking out on ways to understand users' needs, behavior, experiences, etc. with startups. I often grab coffee with startups just to chat about their research goals and how to create a study around those objectives.
I know that most early startups focus on forming a team with engineers, designs, PMs first and then (maybe) look at bringing a user researcher onboard around ~50 - 100 employees. If you're in this situation where you don't have a user researcher but need a thought partner, comment on this post or tag me in your post in this group.
Hopefully I can help out with this community with my knowledge and experience in this area.




This is a super awesome offer! You should also put together some guides/suggestions for best tips/practices for user testing for this community and maybe /marketing as well. :)
I know I've had to learn a lot about that with this job that I had no idea about before. Even just sites that are good resources to use to be able to get people to do user tests online are super helpful for complete noobs. You can find general guides about what questions to ask to get good feedback, etc., but sometimes just knowing where to start can be really helpful!
Sure thing. I can definitely find some resources for people starting out in user research. Off the top of my head, I've heard Just Enough Research by Erika Hall is good. I haven't read it myself, but colleagues who aren't user researchers mentioned that it was a good intro to this field. Also, there's a [design-user-research] Google group is a good resource. Anyone who would like to join the mailing list, let me know and I'll add you. It's a great place to ask questions. For online tests, I use https://www.usertesting.com/.
As for creating user studies, my process include 3 broad stages: 1) Establish research goals and needs (i.e. scope) and target audience are the foundation of any research study 2) Determine the method and questions that will help achieve the research goals 3) Develop the protocol and script for the study
Each stage will include other tasks, but that's how I work through research requests from PMs and designers.
Is there something specific you want to understand about the users in the community (e.g. behavior, usage, churn, engagement)? Do you want to dig into some foundational questions? Or to identify usability issues (e.g. in the sign-up flow, starting a community, creating a profile, etc.)?
@Kaela - Here's some good information on user research :)
Interviewing tips from GV : https://library.gv.com/how-to-hack-your-body-language-for-better-interviews-2b28b99ece6d#.v5qzyylfm
https://library.gv.com/get-better-data-from-user-studies-16-interviewing-tips-328d305c3e37#.nsi7wo7qh
Usability testing video from GV: https://library.gv.com/user-research-quick-and-dirty-1fcfa54c91c4#.m4rqyem0d