User research's strategic value in digital product design

Abstract

This paper discusses how user research informed a large-scale industrial research project. Insights about users had a strong strategic influence, guiding the design process and affecting the software application's concept design. User research had an influence on design work too, but more indirectly. Actual design work on interfaces, mock-ups, and graphic design was mainly driven by subjective experiences, design skills, design know-how and design patterns. Furthermore, we experienced non-expert usability parlance to have a strong influence on interaction design work.