And what you can do about it.
I’m a big fan of user research. I like testing things with users. I love gathering data, analysing it and using it to justify design decisions. To paraphrase Taylor Swift: me and research vibe like that.
But not everyone vibes with user research.
Stakeholders can be particularly adverse. Not all of them, and not all of the time. But it constantly surprises me how often I’m told we need ‘revamp’ or ‘refresh’ a website or its content and there’s no thought of doing research; the expectation is you leap straight into designing.
Note: I’m mainly counting stakeholders as senior business/organisation figures and subject matter experts (SME), not end-users or other external groups.
The problem with that is by jumping immediately into design mode, you’re skipping the entire first two stages of the four pillars of content design (research and planning).
Why is that a problem?
Design without research is guessing: you have no idea what or whose problems you’re trying to solve.
No research means you have no personas. No evidence to justify design decisions. Nothing.
You’re operating completely in the dark.
Why can stakeholders be so anti-research?
It’s complicated. But here are several reasons.
They’re not user-centred
Ok, let’s do the obvious one first: stakeholders often think from their own perspective. Even though some of them interact with end-users more than designers, they often struggle to consider content and products from the user’s point of view. The result?
We end up with content based on what stakeholders want to put out into the world, rather than what users need to find.
Designers can challenge this, but without any research there are no powerful user voices to support our theory-based objections.
They don’t understand user research
UX research isn’t rocket science, but there is an art to it. It isn’t about asking people what they like and want. That’s marketing.
User research is about understanding what users need — what will solve their problems and help them achieve their goals.
This means we need to properly understand who our users are, how they interact with our content and products, and what their frustrations are. Stakeholders can find this mindset confusing, or simply be unaware of it.
Then there are UX research methods themselves, which stakeholders may be similarly unaware of, or find overwhelming and overly complicated.
They’re not in control of user research
Writing product specs, buying software and working with suppliers is relatively easy: everyone involved either works for you or with you, and everything is a known quantity you can control.
But user research is different.
User research requires you to adopt a position of uncertainty — you’re essentially saying ‘I don’t know what we need to do’.
This can be uncomfortable for some people, as you need to embrace a position of vulnerability where you’re not confident what the solution is.
User research in practice also contains a lot of unknowns: we can’t control what users will think or say, or whether they even engage with our research in the first place. If they do get involved, they’re under no obligation to behave professionally or be nice to us. They might tell us things we don’t want to hear, or give feedback that takes our requirements in a different direction than we planned.
It’s easier and simpler for stakeholders to lean into processes that they know and can control.
They can’t quantify the benefit of research
It can sometimes seem bizarre trying to justify spending time away from your desk talking to users when you could be cracking on with design and development.
When you’re ‘in the field’ as a UX researcher, you can burn a whole day on just one or two interviews. How can you prove that time and effort is going to be worth it?
Well, the honest answer is: you can’t.
The whole point of research is you don’t know what you’re going to find out. So you can’t quantify how beneficial it’ll be in advance.
You can only point to hypothetical or projected benefits, and how it’s worked in the past, on other projects. To stakeholders, this can make user research look like a ‘nice to do’ rather than an essential activity.
They’re not actually incentivised to improve UX
This is a systemic problem rather than the fault of individuals: it’s human nature for people to work towards the goals they’re incentivised to work towards.
When a stakeholder wants to Refresh The Content, it’s usually because a more senior stakeholder has decided in a high-level meeting that the content looks ‘outdated’ and vaguely directs an underling to fix that.
So you end up in a farcical situation where the junior stakeholder is incentivised not to improve the UX, but to satisfy the senior stakeholder by demonstrating arbitrary ‘improvements’. And it has to be done quickly. Which leads me to…
They don’t have time/money for research
Proper user research takes time. And I’m not even talking about the full bells-and-whistles approach of lengthy diary studies or lab-based eye-tracking; just running a well thought-through survey, carrying out usability testing and doing some user interviews takes time.
It’s not just the time to do the actual research; it’s the time to plan, recruit, analyse and report. This can all take weeks or longer.
UX research can also cost money, which there may be no budget for. Remember: it’s not just your time and effort we’re talking about, it’s end-users’ as well. They may — and perhaps should — have the incentive of being compensated for that time and effort financially.
This isn’t what stakeholders want to hear. They want to see tangible improvements in weeks, not research invoices or reports.
What can you do about any of this?
This sounds like a lot of problems. But don’t despair!
Here are some ways you can win stakeholders over and get some meaningful user research done.
Pick your battles
You don’t need to die on every hill. Pick and choose which content projects are worth pushing for user research.
Sometimes it’s okay to rely on some analytics and heuristics — there are often principles, patterns and precedents to fall back on for the work you’re doing.
And sometimes it’s ok to make simply some changes that make a stakeholder happy. In the real world, you need to find a balance between challenging requests and just getting things done. If you push back on everything, you become a problem rather than someone who’s adding value.
Explain how user research works
This includes the purpose of UX research, as well as the key research methods.
Don’t get bogged down in granular details or academic theory — explain things simply and clearly in plain language.
Stakeholders don’t need to know the trade-offs between moderated in-person versus unmoderated remote usability testing. They just need to know why you should do usability testing, how you’ll carry it out and what you need from them.
Remember: it’s not the stakeholder’s job to understand any of this stuff; it’s our job as designers to know it, and to make the case for it. Speaking of which…
Make the case for research
The obvious move here is to link user research to higher-quality requirements and ultimately a product that converts better and makes more money.
Research also save money, as it’s easier to fix a prototype rather than a fully coded solution. Spend 100 hours on research instead of 1,000 hours on development.
But what if you work in the public sector? In government, a better website or app isn’t going to persuade more customers to part with their cash. People mostly use our services because they have to. They don’t have a choice. There’s no alternative, no competitor. So play the cards you have:
User research should help you to meet accessibility regulations and reduce contact demand by making it easier to find information and access services online.
You can play the ‘time saved’ card too: knowing who you’re designing for and what problems you need to solve will save hours of emails, meetings and debates on what the content and design should be.
Use AI tools to speed up processes
If there are concerns about how long research will take, assure stakeholders you can accelerate things using technology.
AI is a game-changer when it comes to planning and analysing user research.
You can use tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot to:
- plan whole UX research strategies to meet your budget and timescales
- suggest usability tests and survey/user interview questions
- create user research recruitment emails and social media posts
- summarise your notes from tests and interviews
- analyse both qualitative and quantitative user research data
- draft a research report including themes and recommendations
Note: this comes with the caveat that you need to comply with privacy and data protection regulations/policies. Which basically amounts to: do not put sensitive data into AI interfaces — remove out any personal, identifying information from your data prior to using them.
Do what you can for free
User research doesn’t have to cost a fortune — or even any money at all. There’s plenty you can do for nothing.
It always pleasantly surprises me how often people volunteer to take part in research to “help us make the website simpler, quicker and more accessible for everyone”.
Surveys, usability tests, focus groups, user interviews… often you can bank a lot of insightful user research without a budget. (The trap to avoid here is putting too much weight on user insights from people who have the time and motivation to take part in your research — what about the people who are harder to reach and didn’t engage?)
Also, don’t forget your colleagues! There are a lot of internal testing nay-sayers. But in a large organisation, staff in one area might have no idea how another area works. For example, in local government staff working in the recycling service might have no bias or prior knowledge relating to the fostering service. That’s a wealth of potential insight right on your proverbial doorstep.
Adopt a lean UX approach
What if it’s genuinely not practical to do user research, but you still need to improve content or the overall websites/app? This is where Lean UX can be your friend.
The whole idea of Lean UX is that research can be expensive, time-consuming and high-effort, and it’s often out of date by the time you want to do something with it.
Lean UX says eliminate that waste: instead of research, make assumptions; then change something and measure it.
The crucial thing here is that you work in a methodical way, and actually measure things. If you don’t, you’re not doing Lean UX; you’re just designing on the fly making scattergun changes without knowing the impact.
Summary
Stakeholders aren’t always onboard the user research train. There are many reasons for this, and it isn’t always their ‘fault’. These include that they:
- aren’t thinking user-centred (yet!)
- don’t understand UX research
- aren’t in control of user research
- can’t quantify the benefits of research
- aren’t incentivised to improve UX
- don’t have time/money for research
As designers, we can mitigate the lack of research buy-in and get stakeholders flexing like a UX acrobat by:
- picking our battles
- explaining how user research works
- making the case for research
- using AI tools to speed up processes
- doing what we can for free
- adopting a Lean UX approach
And so, armed with this guidance, go forth and research!
Why stakeholders don’t vibe with user research was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.