What is an insight in UX Research?
Insights are pieces of information obtained by analyzing the results of UX Research, such as user interviews.
Insights are not direct solutions to problems, but serve as a basis for later devising solutions to those problems. They are the starting point for finding a solution based on the actual needs of the users.
If you are interested in learning UX Research don’t miss our UX Learn training (in Spanish):
Differences between findings and insights
There is often confusion between the concept of findings and insights, but although they are related, they are not exactly the same.
A finding is simply the description of a fact, and serves to establish patterns of behavior and attitude. Two examples of findings are:
- If support is needed in online purchasing, most users prefer to contact via telephone.
- Users prefer to buy expensive products in the physical store rather than online.
These sentences only describe facts. In short, findings indicate what users do. Therefore, to identify a finding, it is enough to organize the information and observe it carefully during the analysis phase.
On the other hand, an insight explains why. They provide information about why users behave as they do. And, in addition, they allow us to discover a new vision, perception, and understanding of the problem. Two examples of insights are:
- Users prefer to contact via telephone because they feel uncomfortable dealing with machines, and they feel more understood and better served by a human.
- Users mistrust buying expensive products online because they feel insecure about the security of the bank app, and are afraid of being robbed of such a large amount of money from their bank account.
As for how to identify an insight, we must know that this is more complicated than identifying findings since it is a much deeper knowledge that cannot be seen at a glance. The way to obtain them is by carrying out a detailed analysis of the information collected, trying to delve deeper and not just stay on the surface.
In short, a finding indicates what behavior users exhibit, while insights indicate why they behave that way.
Characteristics of an insight
Insights are the hidden motivations of people, and represent information that has been analyzed and cannot be seen at first glance. The word insight could be separated as “in” meaning within, and “sight” meaning vision. That is, internal vision. What we try to achieve is to see the user from within to obtain the underlying causes of their behavior, to understand their motivations, and to know their emotions and feelings.
There are 3 basic criteria that indicate that we are facing an insight:
- The insight is NOT obvious: insights are not superficial, and reaching them requires effort and deep analysis. Therefore, if extracting an insight is extremely easy, we are probably not facing an insight, but a finding.
- The insight is relevant: an insight should help us understand the design and propose new ideas, improvements, and solutions. The nature of an insight is that it is useful, so that we can later decide whether it is a priority or not. Therefore, if the insight is not useful to us, we are probably not facing an insight.
- The insight is actionable: insights should be the engine that inspires and triggers new ideas and proposals. If the insight is not executable, then we are probably not facing an insight.
On the other hand, we must know that insights are written in the form of an affirmation or declaration, never in the form of a question or other formats. This is because they are something we are sure of. After the research and analysis carried out, we are certain that it is so.
How can we identify insights in the journey map?
The journey map is a tool to identify and understand the touchpoints and experiences that occur between users and the product or service. All the information obtained helps us understand and empathize with the users, and this helps us find insights.
When analyzing the journey map, there are several critical points that we have to identify, which, after analyzing them, will help extract insights. These points are:
- The moments when the user’s expectations are not met: this will help us understand the main problems of users and thus be able to devise solutions for them.
- The moments when the user’s expectations are met: the opposite of the previous case. We want to identify those moments that have been most satisfying for users, in order to propose ideas to further enhance them.
- Unnecessary touchpoints or interactions: this will allow us to devise solutions to eliminate unnecessary interactions and thus reduce the cost of effort for users.
- The biggest point of friction: a single negative experience can overshadow the rest of positive experiences, so it is essential to pay attention to the lowest point of the Journey Map in order to devise a solution.
- The moments of truth: these are the most important moments for users, the ones that cause them the most emotions. Therefore, they are a fundamental aspect to which we must pay attention.
By identifying all these issues, we can collect all the most relevant information from the journey map, and this will allow us to find insights.
How to prioritize insights?
Prioritizing insights is a very important topic because we can obtain a series of valuable insights but not be able to implement all of them due to lack of resources (time, money). In this case, it is essential that we are able to decide which insight should be actioned first or if there is any insight that should not be actioned.
To prioritize insights, we must evaluate each one of them based on a set of criteria that we define. These criteria may vary between companies and projects, as they do not always have the same needs. But, for example, some of the criteria we can evaluate are:
- What is the global impact of the insight on the product or service? That is, what is the magnitude of the insight we are dealing with, whether it affects the entire product or service as a whole or only a small part.
- What is the impact on the number of users? That is, if it affects many users or only a few. Logically, an insight extracted from a small part of the sample will not have the same priority as an insight extracted from the entire sample.
- What is the impact on the use of the product? That is, if it directly affects the use of the product, if it is a considerable impediment to its use.
In this way, we could assign a value to each insight according to its degree of severity in each of these defined criteria, and thus establish a map of prioritized insights.
However, at a more global and strategic level, it will be the insights that justify decisions and establish opportunities to develop new solutions for our product or service. For example, going back to the previous example we saw about how users mistrust buying expensive products online because they feel insecure about the security of the bank’s app, we could consider solutions to minimize this insecurity.
In conclusion, insights offer an understanding within a specific context and help us explain observations. They are also the starting point for deciding which UX design solutions to implement and develop.
This is a translation of the following article from our corporate website:
