LSUsers in UX: Complete Guide to Audience Research

Many companies start making a product with a great idea, a business plan, and money. But they often forget the most important thing — the people who will use this product. Users are not just numbers in a marketing report. They are real people with their own goals, habits, and problems.
Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic and a pioneer of interaction design, says that the best way to make many people happy is to design for specific people with specific needs. The idea of “making a product for everyone” doesn’t work. It creates an average solution that nobody really likes.
In this article, we will learn how to move from guessing to knowing facts. We will use proven research methods from leading world experts.

Why Don’t We Know Our Users?

First, accept an uncomfortable truth: you are not your user. Even if you use the product yourself, your experience is different because you know too much about it. Steve Krug, in his book “Don’t Make Me Think,” says that developers and designers often create websites thinking about themselves, not about real users.

The Myth of the “Average” Person

When companies try to please everyone, they often create a “plasticine user.” This is a fake image that changes shape depending on what the developer needs at the moment.
So, designing for the “average” user leads to failure. Donald Norman says that dividing people by age or income is not always important. What matters more is what activity they do. Users in different parts of the world can be very similar in their actions, even if they come from different cultures.

Research: From Guessing to Facts

To learn who your users are, you need to leave your office. Cindy Alvarez, an expert in Customer Development, says: “Learning how consumers behave means understanding the main problem they need to solve.”

Qualitative Data vs. Quantitative

Many companies use market analytics and focus groups. But Alan Cooper warns: quantitative research is good for selling products, but it doesn’t tell you how people use products.

For a UX designer, qualitative research is very important:

Observation. Norman suggests watching people in their natural environment: at home, in the office, in a bar. You need to understand real situations, not perfect ones.
Ethnographic interviews. This combines observation and conversation. You don’t just ask questions. You also watch how a person solves their problems.
Guerrilla research. Jamie Levy offers a quick and cheap way: go to a café where your target audience goes and show them a prototype.

Case Study: How Research Saved the Budget

Alan Cooper gives a good example. One client asked his team to do research for an amateur video editing program. Marketing data showed a great opportunity: people buy cameras and computers, but don’t connect them.
However, after just four days of qualitative research, Cooper’s team learned that users simply didn’t want to do editing — it was too difficult and took too much time for them. As a result, the client saved millions of dollars by stopping the development of a product that nobody would use.

Modeling: Personas as a Tool of Empathy

After collecting data, you will have hundreds of pages of notes. How do you turn this chaos into design decisions? The answer is creating Personas.
Characters (or Personas) are not stereotypes. They are behavior models based on real data. They help the team focus. As Cooper writes, you must choose a key character and meet their needs first. If you try to make everyone happy at once, you will get “cognitive load” and a complicated interface.

How to Create a Working Persona?

Find behavioral variables. Frequency of use, motivation, technical skills.
Look for patterns. Group people with similar behavior.
Add context. Describe the environment where users work with the product.

Jamie Levy also recommends using “proto-personas” if you don’t have money for big research projects. This is better than having no model at all.

Testing: Reality Check

Even the best personas are just ideas. You need to test them. Steve Krug says: “Testing with one user is 100% better than no testing at all.”
You don’t need an expensive laboratory. In fact, “guerrilla” testing in a café or office hallway can give you very valuable information. The main rule: watch what users do, not what they say. People often can’t describe their behavior correctly or try to be polite and hide interface problems.

Key Success Metrics

Jamie Levy suggests using a funnel matrix to track customer behavior. It’s important to understand not only who visited the site, but also who did the target action. If users don’t move to the next step of the funnel, your idea about the product’s value might be wrong.

Conclusion

Understanding who your users are is not a one-time event. It’s a continuous process. Technologies change, and people’s behavior changes with them.
As experts say, product success depends on empathy. A designer must be able to feel what other people feel. Use qualitative research, create accurate persona models, and test your decisions all the time. Only this way can you create a product that people will not just buy, but love.

Key Takeaways

Forget the “average user.” Design for specific behavior patterns, not for demographic statistics.
Go into the field. Qualitative research (observations, interviews) gives insights that you can’t see in big data.
Use Personas. They turn dry data into a decision-making tool and help the team focus on main goals.
Test early and often. Guerrilla research with 5 participants will help you find 85% of usability problems.
Watch actions. People often make mistakes when describing their behavior. Observation is more reliable than surveys.

Related Resources

Learn more about UX basics and related topics:

Resources for more information

If you want to learn more about some top reasons why user research is important to the field of UX design, check out the article “Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users” on Nielsen Norman Group (https://www.nngroup.com/).
If you want to learn more about personas, check out the book “About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design” by Alan Cooper.
If you want to learn more about usability testing, check out the book “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug.

Who Are My Users? Complete Guide to Users Research in UX