Throughout my work in product design teams, I’ve had the privilege of engaging with hundreds of users, learning from their diverse perspectives. Connecting with people outside my usual social circles and from all walks of life has not only been one of the most fascinating aspects of my role but has also enriched my life in unexpected and meaningful ways.

I’ve had the chance to interact & learn from customers in various cities and enviroments. From swanky bank buildings & high-tech usability labs to more humbler settings such as hawker centers, food courts, cafes, in vehicles, on Zoom and in customers’ living rooms.

Because I come from a visual design background in college, I had to learn user research skills pretty early on in my career. I’ve had incredible design managers who coached me in the theory and practice of user research. It’s one of those skills that requires a lot of hands-on practice.

As somewhat of an introvert, I remember feeling quite nervous before my first ever usability testing session in a usability lab I helped set up at our office in Suntec City, Singapore. I had to ask users I don’t know to interact with our design and observe whether they could use it seamlessly, looking for areas of improvement.

This brings me to my first major lesson learned from customer research:

A solid preparation prior to a user research session is absolutely key to having an insightful session. The objectives of the research have to be clear. The questions prepared beforehand. We even prepared what to say during that first few minutes of potential awkwardness to help break the ice & get the research participant to feel comfortable. Good preparation helped ease my nerves and within minutes, I started to relax & let my curiosity & preparation drive me through those sessions.

Curiosity is powerful. It often overrides any introversion I may feel. When you truly want to understand something, you’ll do whatever it takes to get the answer. User research is one of the methods to get those answers in an unbiased & reliable way.

Asking open-ended questions encourages users to share their thoughts, even if it diverges from your original topic. Their feedback may highlight problems you never considered.

Hands down, the most common issue I see in software products is lack of clarity. Confused customers don’t buy, and a lack of clarity erodes trust. In my experience, simple usability testing can quickly identify where exactly and why customers are confused.

Lack of clarity in product design can come from:

Here’s the thing though, lack of clarity is one of the easier types of customer problems to solve and is one of the lowest hanging fruits any software teams can prioritize to improve their conversion rate.

A usability testing session done in a day or two—but done well—can help you identify the majority, if not all of the issues around lack of clarity in your product design.

It’s very difficult for someone to fake interest for 45 minutes straight, which is the maximum duration I’d go for 1 user research session. Perhaps good, professional actors can but for most people, if they are not interested or care about something and they are too polite to tell you, you can still see it in their body language and the way they speak. Especially if you’re sitting right across from them.

Even if your product is clear, usable, and intuitive, if it lacks relevance to your target audience, you’re facing a major product-market fit problem.

It’s the kind of problem that requires a team to go back to the drawing board to find out what problems and value propositions your target customers actually do care about. The kinds that make their eyes widen and light up when it’s mentioned because they care about it. The kinds that make them want to take out their wallet to pay you to solve it, especially for B2B SaaS products.

When you show genuine curiosity and interest in a customer, you can get amazingly insightful information. Once in a blue moon, you may come across people who hate to talk about themselves but I find that most of the time, people love to talk about themselves. Through active listening and probing, you are able to gain valuable & actionable customer insights.

When you’re designing a product for a customer base that is different from you, you will have a lot of blindspots.

For example, if you’re a team with a mostly tech background launching products for real estate agents or dentists, your blindspot is going to be huge.

If you’re a techie launching products for other techies, your blindspots may not be as huge, but eventually you’re gonna come across situations where your product features are just not translating or resonating with your customers the way you want.

User research helps teams uncover their blindspots so that they can get unstuck & start to make more customer-centric product design decisions.

To sum up
User research isn’t just a box to check—it’s a powerful tool for building meaningful, customer-centric products. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that deep curiosity and genuine care for customers lead to better products and a stronger connection with your market.