During Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), there are 6 major steps in order to create a working application. There’s planning, analysis, design, implementation, testing & integration, and maintenance. Among those steps, Planning and Analysis can be summarized into doing Research and Requirement gathering of the product to be implemented.

The process of gathering requirement varies throughout projects. Some common method are surveys, interviews, observations, web scraping, sensor data collection, etc. For example, there are method called competitor audit, in which the team compare products available on current market that has similar feature or function with current project’s product. There’s also user interview, in which the team interview several users to answer questions and ask for their opinion by various methods(questionnaire, surveys, direct interview) to get data about user needs. By doing this, the team can do improvement for their current requirements or add new requirements that will improve it’s end product quality.

Benefits of user research

One of the main benefits of user research is to make sure that client needs are in line with user needs. Usually at the beginning of a project, stakeholders are required to discuss the team about their visions and needs for the project. Gathering requirements ensures the stakeholders about their needs and other important things to note such as: risks, benefits, audiences, etc. while also prioritizing the user as consumer. It also ensures what are possible and not to implement so stakeholders didn’t need to check at the development cycle to make changes during development.

User research can also used to check the target market for the product. By reviewing stakeholders requirements and comparing it to the findings from research, the team can broaden or shrinking the scope of the market. With this, stakeholders will have a clear view of the target it trying to reach and the team can maximize the quality, thus improving efficiency and ensuring success.