Stop doing user research... well, unless you need to, of course.

I researched the History of User Research. My conclusion? Stop doing user research... well unless you need to of course. Here's what I mean:

At BuildBetter, we help 19,000 teams record product-related calls, many of which are user interviews. We get asked a lot about user research.

Why do we do user research? What is the point of user research? Should we do more or less user research? Why is user research important?

User research isn't senselessly gathering data; it's about diagnosing user problems—much like a doctor diagnoses a patient.

Dr.'s are actually where research started: real doctors diagnosing ergonomic pain from dealing with "artificial" devices.

User Research was born from the process of looking at humans (often in factories) dealing with inorganic machinery that often causes pain in our bodies after use.

These people would go to their doctors (sometimes hired by the company) complaining about pain, and they would conduct what we now call "user research" to diagnose those problems.

Wanna know who pioneered this type of research? Henry Ford, yes, that Henry Ford, the one who everyone quotes: "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."It turns out he wasn't against user research; he did extensive research, walking the factory frequently to figure out how to make a product reliably without people getting injured.

Why? Because the problem Henry Ford was trying to solve wasn't 'Do people want cars?' but, 'Can we make many cars for cheap?'

So, what he researched was the factory, not the desire for the solution.

His goal was simple: if we study how people use these machines, we can diagnose where the pain in the body is and how to reduce friction in using the device so they can do that job for longer.

That's why we use the words "pain points" and "friction," and honestly, I hope not the reason why we have the term "hair on fire problems."

These were actual physical pain points and natural mechanical friction.

So WHY do B2C products often do less "user research" while B2B and B2E companies do a lot? Why do founders often preach, "We never do user research," while others preach, "You need to talk to your user!"

It's all semantic.

As the solution is further away from your organic understanding of the problem, research is required to diagnose the problem.

Put another way: If you're the customer, research looks more inward than outward. If you aren't the customer, research looks outwards.

So, when do you do external research?

✅ If what you're building is unfamiliar or 'artificial' to you and your environment or customers, you need to do research to diagnose those problems.

❌ If, on the other hand, you are your customer, you are the end user ofnd you understand the problem (as an expert), your product, a then research isn't as critical (but can be helpful to challenge assumptions).

Last tidbit: The reason why research became external was largely because of "Wicked Problems." But that's a topic for another post.

We went over this and many other topics in our History of User Research podcast: A fundamental understanding of user research, where it started, what got us here, what was its goal, and how we can adapt that to what it's become.