What are user needs?

In this video, user researchers discuss user needs.

User needs are the requirements a product or service must meet to ensure the user achieves their desired outcome.

User researchers gain insights into what people need to live their lives and achieve their goals. These insights help the team build products and services that are both useful and usable. We use these insights to write summary statements that we call user needs.

For example, as our learners (our users, in other words) taking this course, you may need to:

• learn the basic principles of user research so you can work more effectively with the user researcher on your team
• learn the difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods and the basics of data analysis
• learn the basics of planning and conducting research

User needs tend to be high-level, broad in scope and stable over time. When properly used, they allow teams to:

• focus on users
• create consensus
• make design decisions
• develop user stories / epics
• shape the service

User needs describe a problem, not a solution.

In the context of the above examples, saying that you ‘need a course’ would be describing a solution, not a user need. The problem that we are trying to solve is that our learners need to learn about user research – this course is the solution that meets your needs.

Good user needs should be articulated in the words that users use, which means that they directly relate to real research findings and evidence, not assumptions. User needs should also relate to specific problems and not just restate obvious observations, such as ‘the user needs to get through the service easily.’

As people’s needs from a service tend to stay the same over time, statements of user needs should remain stable. This does not mean that they will not change at all. As the development progresses, user researchers use what they learn to continually validate and refine user needs.

These refinements should be small tweaks rather than complete changes – if there are significant changes or you find that you’re constantly writing new needs, then there is probably something fundamentally wrong and you are not listening to your users.

User needs in government

User needs can be slightly more difficult to understand in a government context.

People often only ‘need’ to do something that the government has made a legal requirement. Often this ‘need’ is something that they do not even ‘want’ to do, but are required to by law. This might be getting a passport or filling in a tax return, for example.

However, ‘needing to get a passport’ is not actually a user need – a passport is a solution that meets a user need.

The user need here is the problem that drives the need for a passport as a solution.

For example, the user might need to be able to travel internationally without breaking the law. This would be a user need that is met by getting a passport.

However, the importance of user research remains the same.

Researchers work with users and with their team members to gain an initial understanding of user behaviours, the goals of the team, and potential pain points or problem areas. These insights are then developed and refined into clear statements of user needs.

If your team can understand the user need, a solution that will meet that need can be developed. In these examples, the solutions are online government services such as Apply online for a UK passport and File your Self Assessment tax return online.

We will learn more about this in the next step.

Task

Can you think of any other needs that might be met by getting a passport? What about other forms of identification or licenses? What are the needs being met?

Share your thoughts with your fellow learners in the comments below.