Generate market insights and understand users’ problems with Design Research

Before starting to build products, we conduct research to ensure that users' problems are worth solving. We’ll use the knowledge and understanding that we gain conducting research to fuel practical solutions. We want to solve problems that are going to make successful applications.

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Research Insights

Gain insights, build up team knowledge, and set the stage for innovative solutions.

Research provides insights that set up the team to produce practical solutions during a Design Sprint and beyond. The understanding we gained through research will narrow down the number of assumptions that we’re making while building. 

Hearing the perspective of several people allows us to solve for a group of people rather than focusing in on one or two specific use cases. Above all, we’ll be able to move to a successful solution faster.

Quote about thoughtbot process

The best part of the the experience with thoughtbot was learning their process. They have a method and focus, especially in the beginning of the project, that didn’t seem important to me on the surface. But when we got further into the engagement, we started building upon that work and it all made sense.

Trent Crow
Co-founder, Real Simple Energy

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Why research?

Conducting Research doesn’t need to take months of work and tons of money.

We believe that we can quickly learn about the problems we’re solving for by using generative research methods. We’ll conduct several qualitative interviews that are recorded and documented. With loads of interviews under our belt, we'll leverage the right methodology for the right task, and we'll teach this to your team as we do it.

While listening in on the conversation, you’ll writes down pain-points and opportunities with the team. After the interviews, we’ll all parse through the recordings to surface some of the reoccurring themes, new insights. You and the thoughtbot team will then roll your new understanding into a Design Sprint or workshop to start exploring solutions for these pain-points.

What we deliver

  • Recorded interviews with people who are experiencing pain point
  • Documented market insights from the whole team
  • A timeline for users from first thought to purchase
  • Validated problem and market opportunity through Jobs-to-be-done
  • Clear action plan and next steps to start solving the problem

On the blog

We openly share how we conduct our research and why it’s essential to building the right product.

Tips For Conducting User Research Interviews

You have an idea for a product but don’t know if it would be useful for your target audience. In fact, you’re also not sure if the audience you’re targeting is the correct one. Sounds like it’s time to go out and do some user research!

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Validated Learning with the Learn-Build-Measure Loop

Eric Ries’s Build-Measure-Learn is focused on facilitating sustainable innovation and lean product development. It aims to mitigate risk through validated learning.

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Before you MVP

At thoughtbot we want to reduce your risk of failure as much as possible. We need to know that you have done enough research on your business idea before you waste valuable time and money building something that people don’t want. Here are some of the questions we ask when talking with early stage entrepreneurs to see if they are MVP ready.

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Let's Talk

What does success look like for your Design Research project?