Column: Insights from Research

Both qualitative and quantitative methods of user research play important roles in product development. Data from quantitative research—such as market size, demographics, and user preferences—provides important information for business decisions. Qualitative research provides valuable data for use in the design of a product—including data about user needs, behavior patterns, and use cases. Each of these approaches has strengths and weaknesses, and each can benefit from our combining them with one another. This month, we’ll take a look at these two approaches to user research and discuss how and when to apply them. Read More

Last month, we talked about ways that user research can go wrong. This month, we’ll discuss how research planning can reduce costs and decrease the time it takes to perform user research. One of the biggest challenges in performing user research is determining which research approaches to apply and when to apply them. The research methods you choose are dependent upon a variety of factors, including budget, schedule, development phase, business goals, and research questions.

If you are familiar with various research methods and their applications, your organization’s business goals, and product development constraints such as schedule, budget, and the development process, you can create an end-to-end user research plan to cover an entire product development cycle. Having a user research plan helps you to establish and communicate research goals and expectations regarding logistics and set research milestones for a product development effort. Read More

Freemium business models seem to be gaining in popularity and rapidly becoming a dominant factor in the success of Web startups. Massively successful social-gaming companies like Zynga and Playdom have had a role in driving their adoption. These companies have been able to grow quickly and make substantial revenues through a combination of ad sales and charging small amounts of money for additional game items and features.

Freemium is a business model that provides users with free access to a service’s core functionality, but charges for additional or improved features. In social gaming, this often takes the form of letting players purchase special, limited-edition virtual goods using an in-game, virtual currency. Other Web services allow users to purchase a premium user experience. For example, Pandora lets users listen to music without ads. In each of these cases, there are opportunities to enhance the appeal of premium services.

In this month’s column, we’ll discuss methods of getting the most out of the freemium model and maximizing the likelihood that users of basic, free services will start paying for premium features. Read More