Getting to know our users
user experience research + design
I already possessed a decent understanding of customers in the construction industry from my previous accounting role in another construction-tech company. It’s an industry that’s not very proficient with tech-heavy solutions and workflows. They prioritize reliability, ease of use and performance speed in their software solutions.
I was surprised when my first feature meeting consisted primarily of my team members debating back and forth on what they each personally thought the ‘right’ solution should be. After that meeting, I made it my personal goal to stress the importance of understanding our users needs, using data to validate our design decisions and to develop a design process that incorporates UX practices as much as possible.
After passionately bringing this up over and over, we gradually incorporated practices such as user interviews, user testing and user story mapping. These exercises have greatly helped to improve the quality of insights that we receive when making design changes and are now considered an integral part of our design process.
