Understanding user comments in user testing

When conducting user research and user testing, one pitfall to avoid is taking user suggestions and solutions at face value. It’s one thing for users to say they want a certain feature on your product. It’s quite another, though, to understand why they want that feature added. It is often the understanding of what resides behind the user requests and comments that is the most valuable to UI designers. Without that knowledge, you may end up simply having users design the product and user interface for you and your client.

User Interface design firms are the experts of taking user research and bridging that data over to information architecture and design concepts that make products and user experiences successful. Even if the suggestions by test users seems to make sense, it’s always best to follow up these comments to find out what users are hoping to achieve by having these recommended features implemented.