How to Conduct User-Centric Analysis

Let's face it: most user interviews are a waste of time and resources. Teams conduct hours of interviews yet still build features nobody uses. Stakeholders sit through research readouts but continue to make decisions based on their gut instincts. Researchers themselves often struggle to extract actionable insights from their conversation transcripts. Here's why traditional user interviews so often fail to deliver value: 1. They're built on a faulty premise The conventional interview assumes users can accurately report their own behaviors, preferences, and needs. People are notoriously bad at understanding their own decision-making processes and predicting their future actions. 2. They collect opinions, not evidence "What do you think about this feature?" "Would you use this?" "How important is this to you?" These standard interview questions generate opinions, not evidence. Opinions (even from your target users) are not reliable predictors of actual behavior. 3. They're plagued by cognitive biases From social desirability bias to overweighting recent experiences to confirmation bias, interviews are a minefield of cognitive distortions. 4. They're often conducted too late Many teams turn to user interviews after the core product decisions have already been made. They become performative exercises to validate existing plans rather than tools for genuine discovery. 5. They're frequently disconnected from business metrics Even when interviews yield interesting insights, they often fail to connect directly to the metrics that drive business decisions, making it easy for stakeholders to dismiss the findings. 👉 Here's how to transform them from opinion-collection exercises into powerful insight generators: 1. Focus on behaviors, not preferences Instead of asking what users want, focus on what they actually do. Have users demonstrate their current workflows, complete tasks while thinking aloud, and walk through their existing solutions. 2. Use concrete artifacts and scenarios Abstract questions yield abstract answers. Ground your interviews in specific artifacts. Have users react to tangible options rather than imagining hypothetical features. 3. Triangulate across methods Pair qualitative insights with behavioral data, & other sources of evidence. When you find contradictions, dig deeper to understand why users' stated preferences don't match their actual behaviors. 4. Apply framework-based synthesis Move beyond simply highlighting interesting quotes. Apply structured frameworks to your analysis. 5. Directly connect findings to decisions For each research insight, explicitly identify what product decisions it should influence and how success will be measured. This makes it much harder for stakeholders to ignore your recommendations. What's your experience with user interviews? Have you found ways to make them more effective? Or have you discovered other methods that deliver deeper user insights?

You ran the sessions. You found the themes. The insights feel right. But before you present, a quiet question lingers, did I go deep enough? Did I check the right things? This is the part of qualitative UX research we don’t always emphasize. Not just doing the work with care, but supporting it with structure. Adding rigor isn’t about questioning your effort - it’s about strengthening your insights. It brings clarity, consistency, and confidence - for you, your team, and anyone who’ll act on what you’ve found. Here are eight practical ways to add that kind of rigor without slowing your work down. Start with triangulation. Don’t rely on just one type of data. Pair interviews with usability testing, behavior logs, or survey responses. Ask another researcher to take notes independently and compare interpretations. This builds confidence that your insights reflect more than one lens. Maintain an audit trail. Keep a record of key decisions, theme changes, or shifts in scope. Use a shared doc, spreadsheet, or even versioned codebooks. Others should be able to see how your findings evolved- not just the end product. Practice reflexivity. Before analysis, write down what you expect to find. During synthesis, notice when your background might be influencing what feels important. If you’re working in a team, make this a shared habit. You’re part of the instrument, and that’s worth tracking. Use member checking. Once your findings are drafted, send a summary to a few participants and ask if it reflects their experience. Their feedback will tell you where you’ve nailed it- and where you need to dig deeper. Use structured frameworks. Lincoln and Guba’s trustworthiness criteria are great for longer studies. The PARRQA checklist helps keep fast-paced projects grounded. Either way, frameworks give your work consistency and make your choices visible. Look for negative cases. Instead of just confirming patterns, search for outliers. Find the participant who doesn’t fit the theme. Revising your analysis to include their story makes your findings more durable. Make your insights transferable. Don’t stop at “users want X.” Add who those users were, what tools they used, and what constraints they faced. When findings are rich in context, teams can apply them more confidently. Document key decisions as they happen. Use a shared log or notes thread. Track sampling shifts, analysis changes, design pivots. Later, include this in your final report. It shows how you got from raw data to real insight- and helps others trust it. Rigor isn’t about adding more work - it’s about adding more strength. Even a few thoughtful checks, built into your workflow, can make your qualitative UX research clearer, more credible, and easier to stand behind when the pressure’s on.

Here's a lil secret about “check in" or cadence calls with your customers. Many of us were taught that these touchpoints are to understand how the customer is using our product, address any issues, and identify expansion opportunities. Here's the fatal flaw in that theory. Your customer hasn't woken up thinking about your product today. They're not sitting around wondering how to use more of your features. And they certainly haven't assembled a list of needs for you to solve. They have a job, with a job description and priorities they need to execute. So, at best they think of your product maybe 40% of their. At worst its 0%. So, how could we approach customer discovery in a constant fashion? 1 - Build a hypothesis on what business objectives this account is trying to achieve this quarter/year, and seek to understand what you're missing as an outsider. Find this in their latest earnings call, leadership announcements, press releases about new initiatives. Bring it to the call, and frame it as, "This is what I can observe from my research - what did I miss?" 2 - Be curious about HOW your champion currently believes they will accomplish those goals, and seek to understand HOW they formed that opinion. Example: Company's goal is to reduce customer acquisition costs by 30%. Your champion believes they need better lead scoring. They believe this because Marketing keeps sending "bad leads" to Sales. 3 - Introduce evidence that contradicts those beliefs/assumptions. Our goal isn't to tell them they're wrong. It's to introduce an insight that reveals a crack in their thinking. "We analyzed 200 companies in your industry and found the ones with the lowest CAC actually focus first on conversion rate optimization, not lead scoring." 4 - Give them a formula to calculate the implications of continuing with their current approach. This is NOT about your ROI. This is about the cost of continuing down their current path. Always tie this back to a P&L impact: increased costs, decreased revenue, or missed growth opportunities that affect the bottom line. Make it concrete, not conceptual. 5 - If you've piqued their curiosity, suggest that they collect the inputs needed to calculate the size of the problem, and bring those to the next call. Don't jump to how your solution helps yet. Just agree that you'll explore the size of the opportunity together. Customer success calls shouldn't feel like a product usage review or a veiled sales pitch. They should feel like two colleagues looking at the business landscape together, with you bringing outside perspective they can't see from within. The most valuable CS teams don't just ensure adoption—they impact their customer's P&L. When your discovery connects directly to revenue growth, cost reduction, or margin improvement, you transform from a vendor contact to a strategic advisor. What would happen if your CS team approached discovery this way?

8 proven ways to deepen your product sense: 1️⃣ Engage Frequently with Users & Probe Deep No discovery mechanism can replace engaging in direct conversations with users as often as possible. Seek to understand your users on a deep level, "un-translate" their requests and identify the underlying problem. Regularly test your hypothesis and be open to updating your mental models. 2️⃣ Validate Your Assumptions Validate assumptions in areas such as why users choose your product, feature priority, investment they put in to learn how to use your product, impact of minor usability issues, feature discoverability, and inertia to start using your product. 3️⃣ Adopt a Beginner's Mindset As you become more familiar with your product, it's easy to forget the initial struggles of learning how to use it. Regularly walk through the product from the perspective of a novice and by observing new users interact with the product and identify patterns of struggle with certain features. 4️⃣ Align Product Choices with Customer Insights Make clear connections between customer insights and product decisions. Make sure your team understands the reasoning behind each product decision by relating it back to customer insights. 5️⃣ Strengthen Intuition via Pattern Recognition Develop user-focused intuition by observing numerous user research studies and identifying patterns. Regularly reflect on past mistakes and unexpected learnings to strengthen this intuition. 6️⃣ Category User Insights by Priority Value quality but also develop strong judgment about tradeoffs. Know the impact and opportunity cost and be disciplined about which insights are worth investing in and bring your team along the decision process. 7️⃣ Evangelize Customer Insights What distinguishes good vs. great PMs is how often they share relevant user insights. Whether it's a real-life story or a key data insight, spreading the voice of customers helps the entire team and company make better-informed customer-centric decisions. 8️⃣ Identify the Key Insight that Unlock the Problem See the connection between facts and know which pieces of info are actually relevant and deserve attention. Proactively think about the implications of each new insight and ask yourself: what past decisions would it change? What future decisions might it impact? *** 💬 What other ways to become a user-centric product builder? Share them below 👇 to inspire the LinkedIn community! #ProductManagement #Careers #UserCentricDesign #ProduceSense

Ensuring collaboration is central to a product's success during the UX strategy phase begins with uncertainty about where to start. ➡️ It's important to start by integrating resources and knowledge from various areas of expertise. Here's a combined approach on my experience to get a successful results and great user satisfaction rate 1️⃣ Get Smart Early in the Process: Involvement: Bring in PMs, Engineers, Designers, Researchers, and key stakeholders early to gain insights. Understanding: Focus on the "4W's" (Who, What, When, Where), technical impact, and project scope.
 2️⃣ Learn and Explore: Understanding Customer Needs: Identify customer pain points and their actual needs. Analysis and Metrics: Make assumptions, conduct competitive analysis, and define success metrics and current statistics.
 3️⃣ Define Problem: Validation and Conceptualization: Validate the problem, draft high-level concepts, and define hypotheses for testing.
 4️⃣ Design: Concept Creation: Develop low-fidelity (low-fi) concepts and involve researchers for testing. Collaboration: Show concepts to Tech and PMs, and address technical challenges.
 5️⃣ Re-iterate: Feedback and Refinement: Fix the main journey (happy path), take internal and external feedback, and implement changes. Testing: Conduct another round of testing.
 6️⃣ Hand off to Development: Finalization and QA: Design the final prototype, perform QA testing, and ensure all workflows are correct. Cross-Platform Check: Ensure designs are optimized for all viewports. Approval: Get sign-off from all parties before handing over to development.
 7️⃣ Launch and Monitor: Post-Launch Feedback: After launching, gather feedback through success metrics and third-party tools. Client and User Feedback: Seek feedback from real clients and conduct user interviews. Refinement: Address major feedback issues, prioritize, and monitor. Useful Resources ✅ Ux Vision — A vision is an aspirational view of the experience users will have with your product, service, or organization in the future. https://lnkd.in/gPPY-zPJ https://lnkd.in/g8Rc9pzp ✅ Outcome over Outputs — Work towards purposeful outcomes (problems solved, needs addressed, and real benefits) leads to better results. https://lnkd.in/gAFX_Wxw ✅ OKR in UX — Define objectives and measurable key results to guide and track UX work. https://lnkd.in/gDYvreN2 ✅ UX Goal Analytics — Focus on UX goals to drive analytics measurement plans, rather than tracking superficial metrics. https://lnkd.in/g3QmZqBd #UxStrategy #TransitionToUx #UxCoach #BeAvailable

Your competition is stealing your customers right now because they understand one thing you don't. Understanding your customers fully = building products people actually want to use. That's the goal. To get there, you can either: - Rely on your gut instinct and assumptions. - Actually learn what your customers need, think, and want. Just carry out these daily tasks: 1. Talk to your customers directly -  ↳ Give them easy ways to provide feedback through uninstall surveys, reviews, or customer support channels.  ↳ Reach out to power users and start conversations. Many customers actively want to help improve your product. 2. Make feedback frictionless -  ↳ Customers won't go out of their way to give feedback, so reduce friction with quick surveys after key interactions, in-app prompts for feature requests, open-ended responses in support tickets, and direct access to a real person. 3. Observe how customers actually use your product -  ↳ Data tells a different story than surveys.  ↳ Use analytics to see what features people use most, where they drop off during onboarding, and what actions lead to churn vs. retention. 4. Test and iterate based on customer input -  ↳ When feedback patterns emerge, act on them.  ↳ If feature requests keep coming up, prioritize them.  ↳ If customers are confused about a function, improve the UX. 5. Build relationships with your best customers -  ↳ Your most engaged users can become your best resource.  ↳ Keep in touch with them, get their input on new features, and make them feel heard. I had a user who loved our product so much that they actively shared feedback and even tested features before launch. They'll hop on a Zoom call with just 15 minutes notice. Now all you have to do is commit to customer research, and you'll build products people actually want to use. As you progress, incorporate: - Regular customer interviews - User testing sessions - Data analysis routines It's more effective than building in isolation based on assumptions. ♻️ Repost if you agree ➕ Follow me Blaine Vess for more

You should definitely make customer research the cornerstone of your B2B go-to-market strategy. The trick is leveraging insights to drive actionable sales and marketing decisions, not just product tweaks. Here are three ways: 1. Conduct regular customer interviews Set up weekly or monthly calls with a diverse set of customers to uncover evolving needs and decision-making processes. A professional services firm I worked with reshaped its entire sales pitch to talk less about itself and more about its ICP's job to be done. The result was a higher close rate. Sometimes, what you think is a strength might be holding you back. 2. Mine your sales calls regularly Implement a system to analyze and categorize key moments from your team's sales conversations that inform your GTM strategy. One of our B2B tech clients discovered that many prospects were using a manual competitive alternative that wasn't even on their radar. You can use these insights to refine your messaging and objection handling. 3. Deploy simple website visitor surveys Place short, targeted surveys on key pages to understand more about visitors, their challenges, and friction points in your conversion funnel. I know of a company that increased demo requests by 40% after learning that potential customers were confused about which product tier was right for them. Customer research isn't just about product development—it's about aligning every touchpoint of your go-to-market motion with what truly matters to your buyers. Pick one of these tactics and implement it this week. Your pipeline (and your bottom line) will thank you.

Wondering how to design a Scaled Customer Success motion? Leverage your data and reverse engineer what your customers need. Take the customers that you already know are successful, and look at their data to identify what a successful customer journey looks like. We keep the customer at the center, and use the data we have available to better understand our customers en masse. As you look at the data, you might find information that surprises you. Doing a regression analysis across customer data will tell you surprising things around signals that indicate growth potential as well as risk. You might find that the feature you thought was most "sticky" isn't actually used all that much by your growing and successful customers. You might find that the data that correlates to successful business outcomes for customers isn't at all what you would have guessed. After you've looked at this data and put on your detective hat and asked it good questions, you're ready to begin mapping out how to achieve those results at Scale. Start with what channel you're going to use. You can decide what is best delivered via digital channels vs human channels so that customers can grow and better accomplish their goals. You can identify where your CSMs can best spend their time in strategic human intervention as risk mitigation or growth acceleration as they help customers achieve their desired outcomes. You keep customers at the center by listening to what they're telling you: both in what they say and what they DO. That's what data can help you understand: what it is that your customers are actually doing. And then as you build out this Scaled motion, constantly go back to the data and get a better understanding if what you're doing is accomplishing the goals you're looking for. Don't make assumptions, be willing to look at the data and see the results. Because the only thing worse than not having data you need, is ignoring the data you have because you're too comfortable with what you're already doing. #CustomerSuccess #SaaS #Data #DigitalCS

VOC is a lot more than case studies. Here are my slides from my session at Klue's Compete Week. Eric Holland 💀 and I may have spent a little too much time talking about fighting crime in the Q&A, so here are a few from the chat that we didn't cover: 🙋🏻♀️ How do you handle it if your customers are very reluctant to interview with you AND they keep things "close to their chest" during sales calls as well? 👉 Start by asking your customer-facing teams. Even check support logs, or if your company organizes events, the chat logs in those too. Second, hang out where your customers do. Online communities, social platforms, events -- anywhere you can hear them "in the wild." Review sites and industry analysts are also great sources for seeing what buyers care about. Thought leaders in their space are likely talking about things they care about as well. 🙋🏻♀️ Is there a format that you have found works to frame and store all inputs of VOC? There may be sales data, W/L interviews, and public info - what is the best way to store it all? 👉 My advice would be to not hang up on the tool and instead think about who needs to access the information. For personal notes, use whatever works for you. Some prefer spreadsheets, some swear by notion, some throw everything into a doc. For material that you'd like to be accessed by your peers and stakeholders, opt for whatever works for them already. If folks are used to accessing information in a certain way plug into it and make sure they know what's there. 🙋🏻♀️ People always ask for those feature-by-feature Harvey ball comparisons. How do you convince them that those are not effective? 👉 The thing about detailed comparison tables is that they tend to go stale very quickly. Features change constantly, and most of your buyers don't care about them as much as they care about what they can do with them. Instead, the capability table (in step 5) tends to have a longer longevity because it adds context. It's also simple, so folks from different functions at your company can align quickly on the essence rather than get a very long list of features they aren't sure what to do with or that is even accurate. 🙋🏻♀️ What do you do if VOC insights don't come across in your messaging? 👉 Short answer, change your messaging :) If your VOC insights and messaging are disconnected, I'm guessing your conversion rates, engagement, win /churn rates aren't looking great either. This is your cue to start experimenting with messaging that better aligns with your VOC insights. Don't look at it like a giant, overwhelming project to overhaul your entire messaging. Start experimenting where it hurts the most, or test new talk tracks in small settings (CAB, customer roundtables, select sales calls), and start expanding formally once you get positive signals. --- Special thanks to Katie and Adam for letting me be part of their incredible content house, and to Jam Khan for offering his sharp feedback. 🙏

Customer success has been overcomplicated. Here's what it actually is... An organizational skillset focused on measuring and improving customers' results with your product. (My friend Dave J. calls it an "organizational capability" which I love). Here are the six steps of a complete customer success motion: 1/ Analyze Gather and analyze customer results. Identify data points that are a proxy for the results your customers are getting. Hint: go check out your pricing page. What's the most prevalent "value metric" you can find? Start with that. 2/ Benchmark Compare results across groups of similar customers (cohorts). Yes, you'll need someone focused on this. Working closely with customer-facing experts (CSMs, Services, Support) to get it right. 3/ Communicate Communicate results and benchmarks to each customer. Not just to your champion and day-to-day users, send a brief summary to your economic sponsors, too. How high or low-touch this is depends on your unit economics. 4/ Consult Provide recommendations on how to improve results. Personalize this to the extent you can afford to. Customers too small to meet with each on individually? Build a dashboard in your product or send the customer an automated progress report email with their metrics. Facilitate recurring webinars to discuss and share best practices amongst customers. Again, adjust according to unit economics. 5/ Assist Help customers implement changes that will improve their results. Do it for them if you must. Charge them if you must. This might be a valuable professional service and a self-funding part of your business. 6/ Monitor Rinse and repeat this process. Keep measuring and monitoring customer results. -- Looks a lot like consulting, right? In a SaaS company our job is to do this at scale, for all of our customers. The implementation will be unique to your customers, user personas, go-to-market (price points, volume, etc.), team capabilities, and product and company maturity. But these are the core steps. Have you implemented something like this at scale? If so, tell me more👇 #customersuccess #saas Jay Nathan GrowthCurve