How to write valuable user insights

Why put effort into properly writing down insights about users when you could just quickly jot down the changes needed in your product and share them directly with the rest of the team? Simple. Because a good insight doesn’t only tell you what your users do, but also explains why they do what they do. It's only by understanding the 'why' behind the 'what' that you’ll be able to develop strong, lasting solutions. Nothing beats truly understanding the needs and expectations of your users and having these types of insights will play a major role in helping you create products nthat your users love. Really knowing your users and having an overview of key insights is the ultimate way to impact success metrics such as conversions, activation, loyalty and revenue.

What’s the difference between insights & findings?

Identifying lasting insights from a study amongst an overwhelming amount of research data can be hard. Distinguish real insights from momentary findings can be even harder. They look alike, but there are some important differences in content, reliability and durability. The decision tree below will help you figure out if you’re talking about an insight that will still hold value in a couple of months or even years or if it’s a perishable finding (i.e. a piece of data that has impact on today’s research questions, but won’t have value after serving that purpose).

1. Does it say something about the attitude, behaviour, needs or context of your users in general (i.e. is true, regardless of your product or solution)?
   E.g. Cat owners give their cat more food if they go away for a longer period of time than usual (= behaviour of cat owners)
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   Yes: you’ve uncovered an insight!
   No: go to the next question
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2. Is it a fundamental principle you’ve discovered, like a behavioural or design pattern?
   E.g. Users expect to find the price of the cat food near the product image (= proximity principle)
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   Yes: it’s an insight.
   No: don’t give up and go to the next question
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3. Does it say something about your brand, product or service in its entirety and not just a small part of it?
   E.g. Owners of cats and dogs used the search function to get an overview of all products for their pets, and not per product category (i.e. ‘Food’) (= structure of website)
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   Yes: you’ve got an insight.
   No: it’s a finding, but it still might be worth documenting…

When is a finding worth documenting?

Ok, so this thing you found is not something we consider an insight. That doesn’t always mean you shouldn't document it. You should always document findings if any of the following statements applies:

• If what you discovered is also relevant for other teams. For example when it’s related to a standardized design element and is used across the whole product.
• If what you found occurs more often or you think it will. Think about people having struggles with a particular part of the navigation, and observing that over and over in multiple consecutive studies.
• If you need the finding to support/argue a future (design) decision. For example, stakeholders have the assumption nobody likes the color pink in your new design but that’s never been proven.

Otherwise… you could still document the finding. But the question will be whether its value will outweigh the time and energy you invest while doing so. Spending more time on documenting real (lasting) insights that will impact future decisions will probably create more value.

The long term benefits of insights

You don’t waste time on data that is disposable
Spending your time on documenting findings instead of insights will generate lots of data. But most of the time those findings will lose their meaning when you finish your project or you finally capture enough to make sense of them. That’s because many findings are related to a specific feature or design solution and nowadays products and services change rapidly.

You’ll get the most out of your user research
Insights have the ability to be more lasting and shareable than a list of findings hidden in research reports. When the underlying principle is similar, insights can be relevant for other departments, products and services within your organization, allowing you to have more impact with less research.

You know how to make products that people love (and will keep on loving)
Only once the problem is clear, can you start to think of a viable solution. When you know why users behave the way they do and what they are looking for, formulating the right user requirements or recommendations becomes easy.
This will also help you define the right strategies to develop your product or service in a way that creates the most value to your users.

What makes a good insight?

Insights are the universal and comprehensive learnings distilled from several observations and/or pieces of data. They will allow you to make sense of more than just one use-case or situation.

A good insight describes:

• What you’ve learned
  Your key message: a problem, obstacle, challenge, need, attitude or behaviour you discovered through your research. One learning per insight; otherwise your key message will get cluttered.
• The context and/or situation
  When, where and for whom does this insight apply? Probably not in all cases. Be as specific as needed, but don’t overdo it.
• Root cause
  Make sure you know ‘why' people behave the way they do. The underlying reason or motive triggering an action is often more valuable to capture than the action itself.
• The consequences of the insight you gained
  Where does it lead to? What effect does it have on your brand, product or service for example? How will you actually use it?
• The goal/motivations of the user
  What do they want to achieve with your product/service or in their lives? What are their motivations? What’s the job they ask your product to do? And how does this insight relate to it?
• Bonus: recommendations & next steps
  Always follow up an insight with clear action points. Otherwise you risk having the insight fall through the cracks and not have the impac tit should or could have.

What does a valuable insight look like?

Let’s say you have done some research into people navigating your website. This research led to the following findings:

• Finding 1: Participants understood the labels of product categories
• Finding 2: Participants only clicked the menu item ‘Other’ after extensive browsing elsewhere on the site, and were unsure what to expect
• Finding 3: Most participants were able to find contact information
• Finding 4: More than half of the participants were unable to find “log in”

Also, you’ve done some digging into your analytics:

• Finding 5: Most visitors leave the website (bounce) from the index page ‘Other’
• Finding 6: 30% of all customers do have an account but aren’t logged in when they visit the website

And you did some desk research about logins:

• Finding 7: Most popular sites place their login button in the upper right corner of the menu

Combining these findings and questioning the ‘why’ behind them results in the following 2 insights:

• Insight 1: The category 'Other' is too broad and contains too many products which are hard to distinguish
  This insight includes findings 3 & 5.

• Insight 2: Some customers do not log in because they can not find the login button (hidden behind the label ‘Settings’)
  This insight includes findings 4, 6 & 7.

These insights are made tangible by formulating the next steps:

• Step 1: Get to know our customers by researching which words they use to describe products currently listed in ‘Other’. Might impact other product categories as well. Our proposal would be to conduct an open card sorting study.
• Step 2: Follow design conventions by offering a distinguishable login option in the upper right corner of each page.

How to tie it all together?

Everything in this article boils down to the simple fact that both findings and insights can play a critical role in developing a great product and user experience. However, tying it all together, keeping it all organized and sharing insights with others is still a challenge for most companies. Using a customer insights platform like Reveall can help you do exactly that.

Interested in trying Reveall for free? You can find out more and get a free trial by clicking here.

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