When you start a new business, sometimes there are things you need to sacrifice over others. But here’s what you should stick to — UX research. In this blog post, I’ll address major research objections that keep you from doing one, share real cases from our experience and the risks you can face when neglecting it.

Who needs that UX research? Is this UX research really necessary? If these are the kind of questions you asked at least once, you’ve opened the right tab.

When you start a business or aim to develop and launch a new product, you have millions of things to do and consider. So it’s often the case that you need to cut some things off to focus on aspects you think are more important. And sometimes, one of those things there are basic steps that seem to be not so relevant, like UX research.

And no, no, this isn’t yet another blog post where business owners are blamed for not doing it. Instead, in this article, I aim to try to change your perspective on the research and show you its value from a different angle. So let me walk you through some major misconceptions about the research and show you the risks you can face if neglecting it.

Sometimes one can put UX and market research into one melting pot. These two do have some common aspects — they both include the same methods like interviews, surveys, competitive analysis, etc., and ultimately they’re essential to understanding people. But there is a fine line that sets them apart. They come from different routes and set their focus on different objectives.

Market research allows us to analyze people as potential customers and aims to capture their attitude toward an offering, discover product-market fit, etc. On the other hand, UX research dives into users’ interaction with your product or service, their motivations, and their actions in it. Sometimes market research can be a part of UX. It depends on your end goal and the stage your product is on.

That we settled, let’s move on.

Wait a second: does UX research differ from market research?

Top objections you might (or even definitely) have against UX research. At Lazarev. we can't move on into the design process without conducting UX research first. And why is that? Well, to create something people will eagerly use, we have to understand at least:

• the product or service you offer;
• your goals as a business owner;
• the people who will benefit from your offer.

Yeah, it’s all done during the initial stages of UX research. But having worked with hundreds of projects over the past 7 years, we had cases when some of our clients initially didn't really understand the core meaning and value of such research. And that's completely fine — we consider it our job to show the benefits of UX research and address objections you and other business owners have against it.