How to really understand your users’ motivations

Eleken.
Prototypr
Published in
5 min readMay 26, 2017

Quettra’s research found most Android apps’ users leave within the first 3 days, and up to 90% by the first month. That’s why it’s important to understand your users well. Place yourself in their shoes. To develop a useful website, you need to know users and how to improve user motivation. It allows you to address customers’ needs and expectations, solve their problems. Your product may be very useful for them but they need to try it. Great understanding of users helps to handle challenges much better.

There are 3 effective ways to dive deeper into it: analytics, usability testing, and customer support. Jason Sasso, an owner at Swell, says the relevant way to improve conversions is to positively affect the user’s behavior.

“We worked on the project Topvet — software for clinics and patients. Our goal was to align the entire design according to key goals of users. We placed the most important information on the main page. Big buttons help to see key functions. Bright colors lead users’ attention and make call to action buttons more visible”, Yehor Kolchyba, UI and UX Designer at Eleken.

User feedback

The company Mobile Majority believes in the value of user feedback. Their satisfaction brings an idea whether your product is useful. They receive feedback through service request tickets, email, phone calls. Salespeople and account managers capture feedback as well.

Also, not to design what people want. Give them what clients need. For instance, one user wanted to receive an email when something is happening for one of his campaigns. This was too overwhelming. To solve this issue, they built automated notifications. They allow emphasizing any changes.

Sketch drawing

Recognize the emotions you want to attract. Determine how your product influences human’s feelings and mood.

Use sketch drawing to capture useful information about how users feel about some stuff. It involves drawing maps about their habits, relationships and so on. For instance, Sian Townsend, Director of Research at Intercom, says user’s study for Google mobile search brought valuable insight. People prefer the same places they used to visit. So, Google made a feature helps users to keep home and work locations.

Another example is research that figured out people have a different group of friends. According to it, Google designed G+ Circles. Also, this had a huge influence on privacy, social products, and sharing models. Facebook changed its Groups product to maintain more categorization of friends.

Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation

You may use extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to attract new visitors. The first one type comes from external resources. For example, they may get some reward for performing an action. The encouragement through rewards has been popular in different games. Now, it’s used for educational goals and stimulates users to achieve goals.

Networking supplements motivational competition. It launches the power of external user motivation as well. The second type connects to the inner values and desires.

The kind of user motivation will allow you identifying the type of users will be engaged. It’s important to motivate these two types of users. Refine the positive perception of brand.

Provide a survey

Use it to figure out opinions and the preferences. Survey delivers useful analysis to develop products people love and desire to buy.

Generative research brings out the deeper level of users’ understanding. It helps to capture solutions to align the product with users’ preferences. Indi Young, a UX consultant, advises gathering information about your target audience. Provide it before a research.

You may ask potential users to record their common activities. For example, to see their behaviors while shopping. It brings insights and provides context to recognize a problem you’d like to develop a solution for. Also, you can encourage them to share their needs, maybe dreams and feelings. For instance, identify what activities children prefer to create an online game. Game producers dive deeper to capture a knowledge what things attract young people. They recognize how online game may develop their skills to be useful.

Apply Kano model

Be informed about what clients want from the product. IBM researchers believe these features are table stakes. They figured out testing more than 20 features isn’t effective. Experts suggest focusing on 15–20 to free up clients and to provide useful research.

Martin Eriksson, the product leader, says there is a challenge with key expectations. For example, if you ask people about the great hotel. Possibly, users will describe the nice view, comfortable beds, good restaurant. Nobody will mention hot shower early in the morning. This is a compulsory element of good service and founders need to take them into account.

Also, when the users start using a delightful feature, it becomes a basic feature for them. Now, the absence of it will be a frustration. For instance, cookies became not so special as they were earlier. So, when you got all the must-haves fulfilled, think about delighters. Add them to improve customer satisfaction.

Explore your customers

  • Know your users’ environment. Try to figure out where they access the website. It helps to understand what clients need for successful interaction with product. For example, if your user is hurrying up, your design needs to respond to that: decrease load and help to save the time.
  • Dive deeper to visualize users’ mentality. You have to know their values and preferences. Your visitors are on the website, and you have to emphasize why.
  • The successful products are developed with the target audience in mind. They come from deep insight about the people are ready to buy it. Design real-world solutions address their needs as well.

Conclusion

Use sketching to capture useful information about how users feel about some stuff. It involves drawing maps about their habits, relationships and so on.

Apply Kano model. It helps to figure out what key expectations the users have.

Generative research needs to understand activities of your target audience. You will notice their habits to fulfill their desires.

Let’s make your product awesome together — work@eleken.co

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