417. User research 🍀
The five-question template I use to get feedback from customers
Hi there 👋
I spent more than five years working at Buffer, a social media management platform, and we saw some wild things happen in the social media space. But nothing as wild as Twitter in 2023! The latest drama is all about those blue checks. I wish I were back at Buffer so I could tell you all what it’s like to be part of the Twitter partner marketplace. Or whether the blue check is worth it. :)
Seems like more and more the marketing strategies I’m working on are actively trying to find contingency plans for when Twitter goes away. Maybe we’re already there (from a marketing strategy perspective). What do you think?
Wishing you a great week ahead,
Kevan
(ᵔᴥᵔ)
Thank you for being part of this newsletter. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world and my time at Oyster, Buffer, and more.
Say hi anytime at hello@kevanlee.com. I’d love to hear from you.
The art of user research (and my template)
I’ve had the opportunity to learn from some really great interviewers and question-askers over the years, people with a knack for getting other people to talk. Perhaps it’s my journalism background, but Q&A is near and dear to my heart.
That’s why I’ve always loved user research: surveys, focus groups, interviews, you name it.
There are a ton of great resources out there about user research. Here are a few favorites:
Cindy Alvarez and her book (THE book) on user research
Blog post: This is Exactly Why And How We Do Customer Research at Buffer
Blog post: The Essential Guide to User Research by Mona Yang
Blog post: A Step-by-Step Guide to User Research by Spencer Fry
(Roy Olende is one of the best research pros I know — I worked with him at Buffer, now he’s at Zapier.)
When I’m doing user research, there are typically three things I’m trying to accomplish:
Creating space for authentic answers — and not biasing them / assuming intent. A lot of this goes back to the way that you design your questions, making sure they are open-ended and not leading questions. It’s a tricky balance because you’re often doing user research because you’re trying to answer something specific — but I’ve been surprised many, many times at just how differently and helpfully users see problems.
For open-ended questions, I make sure that they start with “How, Why, What” and not “Do , Did, Have.”Guiding the questions to what I want :) That being said, at the end of the day I do need to get feedback in order to move ahead with a decision. If asking open-ended questions is Goal #1, then Goal #2 is bringing the conversation back to the topic at hand. I’ll typically have a couple tools in my toolbox for this: a set of follow-up questions if the first aren’t doing the trick, or an artifact / screenshot to share to get reactions to.
Leaving room for things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Spending time with users is hugely impactful, so I try to make the most of the time by creating space for them to share what’s top of mind. Often this will lead to even more questions from me or to ideas for future research studies
This graphic from Buffer’s research philosophy definitely resonates. The less I know, the more I need to research.
(Bonus NEW thing I do: Record the calls and have Chat-GPT summarize them!)
Here are the questions that I like to ask and the order that I like to ask them in. If you have any favorite questions, it’d be great to hear from you. I’d love to swap in some new ones!
What are you trying to solve by using our product?
What do you like about our product?
What can be improved?
[Specific question about the problem you’re trying to solve for with your research]
If you had a magic wand and you could conjure up your “ideal” version of our product, what would it look like?
Additional question options:
Why did you choose our product?
What do you need our product to do for you?
How does our product compare to others you’ve tried?
What do you value most in our product?
If you couldn’t choose our product, which alternative would you choose and why?
What is one thing we could do to improve our product?
Which features did we miss?
What kinds of things would you like to stay the same for future generations of the product?
Get this list of questions in a Notion template →
Get this list of questions in a GDocs template →
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Each week, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
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