Super question and thanks for asking it!

CX/UX is vital. When startups are failing 90% of the time (or more), something isn’t going right. And typically, it’s product-market fit. What are we building? Why? For whom? What does it replace? Will people change? Do we need them to change? What are their unmet needs? How do they do this now? What are the insights and opportunities?

This is the type of research we start with. You can guess. Guessing is cheap! But guessing is risky. People think it’s fast, but if you are going through cycles and cycles of guesses, that’s not fast. That’s not Lean or Agile. That’s slow motion, failure, and waste. Sure you could be learning, but you’re also dealing with risk and waste.

Let’s do a cost-benefit analysis here! What are these companies wasting in bad ideas, crappy product, MVPs that are too M or not V or barely P, unhappy users who abandon, unimpressed investors who won’t give you a second chance, etc. Versus what would it cost for someone to just do the research we need so that we KNOW? I wouldn’t be surprised if research were cheaper and faster than most “Agile” cycles of guesses.

Now let’s talk about hypothesis… very often in companies and on product teams, the hypothesis is “we think people want _____.” This is often based on little or no research. Sometimes only a survey, which is often the worst type of research you can do. We should switch from being feature-oriented (hey, let’s do this idea I have) to task-oriented (hey, we really understand target users and their unmet needs, and here are our opportunities, let’s prioritize them).

When people ask if CX/UX can be learned (quickly), the answer is no. It takes people years to be good at UX. This is reflected in how most companies right now don’t even want juniors. It’s sad and it’s a mess, but it’s true. Most companies won’t hire someone without 2 years of experience. They know that someone still learning UX or finding their sea legs might not be ready to get mission critical work done on their own.

So take a hint from that! If companies won’t even give a junior job to someone without often 2 years of experience, this isn’t something anybody can quickly learn or easily do.

The common mistake here — and I write and speak about this a lot- is that it’s an iceberg model. People see “someone talked to people” and “they made wireframes” and they think “anybody can do this.” Anybody can cut hair or perform surgery, but not everybody does it WELL. If we care about the quality of the work and the outcomes, then we have to care about the quality of who does the work.

This leads us back to Lean Startup since this is one of the big problems with it. YES it’s a good idea to “Get out of the building” and talk to people, but the book isn’t a how-to on planning, recruiting, executing, analyzing, or synthesizing research. You could read Lean Startup, get out of the building, and ask the wrong people the wrong questions. We see startups do it every day… questions like, “Would you like an app that helps you coordinate surfing with friends?” Oh yeah sure I do!

There is no replacement for qualified and experienced CX/UX researchers and architects, especially when you are at the hypoth stage. I like to say that hypothesis is Greek for guessing (it’s not). If the hypoth comes from zero or incorrect data or assumptions about users AND/OR if we don’t correctly research around that hypoth to replace assumptions with knowledge, then it’s a pile of crap.

CX/UX are your business intelligence and risk mitigation team. By learning more about target users and their needs, we can help reduce the risk and waste from guesses about people, guesses about products, guesses about features, and disaster projects. How many times have you seen a team build something that the users didn’t like or want, and everybody shrugged because they were sure they “knew the customer” or “we asked them what they wanted!” This is poor or no data.

That’s the short version. Let me know if I can help more.