A few years ago, a product team I worked with was excited about a new mobile app feature. Leadership had signed off, engineering had scoped it, design had polished it. Everyone was confident it would drive engagement.
They skipped research.
The feature launched, sat unused for months, and was quietly removed years later. The cost to the business? Entirely negative. Wasted engineering time, wasted design effort, wasted opportunity cost, all because no one thought to ask users what they actually needed.
This is why UX research matters. Not in theory. In practice. In dollars and cents. In the difference between building something people love and building something that quietly disappears.
After nearly a decade in UX research—most of it spent building and managing a research team from scratch at a startup—I've seen both sides of this story. I've watched research save companies millions of dollars, and I've watched the absence of research cost them just as much.
The mobile app feature I mentioned wasn't an isolated incident. It's a pattern that repeats itself in organizations everywhere: teams move fast, make assumptions, build confidently, and then wonder why adoption falls flat.
Research doesn't just prevent these failures. It actively creates success.
Let me tell you about a decision that almost went very wrong.
Leadership at my startup was considering a significant investment in a new business line. It was a big bet, the kind that could reshape the company's future or drain resources for years. The excitement was palpable. The business case looked solid on paper.
Before committing millions of dollars, we ran a survey. Nothing fancy. Just a well-designed questionnaire with a few key questions aimed at understanding actual market interest.
One question in particular cut through all the optimism: we received a signal of zero interest in this potential new line from our target customers.
Zero.
The company didn't pursue it further. That simple survey—probably completed in a few days—saved potentially millions of dollars in misallocated resources, engineering time, and market missteps.
This is the power of research at its most fundamental: asking questions before making expensive assumptions.
But research isn't just about avoiding mistakes. It's about finding opportunities hiding in plain sight.
Our data analytics team once noticed something troubling: B2B customers were buying less of our product. The trend was clear in the numbers, but the "why" was invisible. Without understanding the root cause, any solution would be a guess.
We dove into research. Through a combination of user interviews, behavioral analysis, and ecosystem mapping, we diagnosed the issue as a complex web of factors. But one stood out as both significant and solvable: people didn't understand the product well enough to see its full value.
Armed with this insight, we built a tool specifically designed to improve product comprehension. The result? A nearly 30% lift in purchases.
That's not just a win for UX. That's measurable business impact directly traced back to research insights.
I hear this objection constantly, especially from teams under pressure to ship fast. And I get it: timelines are real, stakeholders are impatient, and "let's do research" can sound like a delay tactic.
Here's what I tell people: it's possible to learn a lot in as little as a day.
Research doesn't always mean months of studies and hundreds of participants. Sometimes it's a rapid round of five user interviews. Sometimes it's a quick survey with a targeted question. Plus, researchers can gain efficiency by learning a variety of
techniques for qualitative data analysis.
The key is fitting the method to the question. If you're deciding whether to invest millions, yes, you might need more rigor. But if you're testing whether a button label makes sense? You can get signal incredibly fast.
Speed isn't the enemy of research. Skipping research entirely is.
Over the years, I've developed a philosophy that guides how I approach UX research: be creative in combining methods to make findings more concrete.
In the biz we call this triangulation: using multiple research methods to cross-verify insights and build confidence in your conclusions.
When qualitative interviews point in one direction, surveys validate it, and behavioral data confirms it, you've got something solid.
But triangulation only works when your methods are tightly connected to your research questions, and your research questions are logically tied to the core business objective.
This chain of reasoning is what transforms research from "nice to have" to "business critical."
It also means being creative. Not every problem fits neatly into "do five user interviews" or "run an A/B test." Sometimes you need to invent a hybrid approach. Sometimes you need to borrow from adjacent fields. The best researchers are methodologically flexible.
Here's the thing about UX research: most companies still don't do it well. Some skip it entirely.
Others do it performatively, running studies that gather dust in slide decks.
This creates an opportunity for those who take it seriously.
When you build a culture where research informs decisions, where insights drive strategy, where understanding users isn't optional—you gain a competitive edge. You build products people actually want. You avoid costly mistakes. You find revenue opportunities others miss.
You move faster, not slower, because you're moving in the right direction.
If you're a UX researcher—especially if you're mid-career and looking to sharpen your skills, expand your toolkit, or make a bigger impact in your organization—the field is constantly evolving. New methods emerge. Business contexts shift. The questions we need to answer get more complex.
The researchers who thrive are the ones who stay curious, keep learning, and continuously refine their craft.
That's why I'm passionate about research education. Whether you're looking to build foundational skills like
survey methodology, master advanced techniques, or simply connect with other practitioners navigating the same challenges, investing in your development pays dividends.
If you're interested in taking your research practice to the next level, I invite you to explore our courses and workshops, which include a number of
free UX research courses. They're designed by practitioners, for practitioners: built on real-world experience, not just theory.
Because at the end of the day, UX research isn't important because it's trendy or because it sounds good in a strategy deck.
It's important because it works.
It saves money. It drives revenue. It builds better products. And it gives you the confidence to make decisions that actually serve the people you're trying to reach.
That's worth investing in.
