How to get user feedback before having a product or even UX and UI design

It takes work for the founder to gather authentic feedback about the idea.

Getting valuable opinions from the target audience on a scale is even more challenging. In this article, we will describe three techniques you can use (and we are using) to do this before investing in the UX/UI design or development of your product. Additionally, we will describe the decision process for applying the feedback to your roadmap.

But first, let’s discuss the costs of not listening to your audience from the beginning.

Why is it cheaper to gather feedback earlier in the process?

Gathering the audience around the product is one thing, but listening is a different story.

Even more critical for the founder is asking the right questions, doing it at scale, filtering the answers to match the product vision, and keeping all the participants feeling influential and listened to.

The rest is easy.

The earlier you start listing to the users, the cheaper you can apply the feedback to your product. When there is only a brief, adjusting it to the market needs is easy. Changing the application design is harder, but we still discuss hours of UI UX designer work.

Then, it’s much more costly for programmers to rebuild the already-developed application.

With each stage, the right decisions become more critical.

Talking to users one-on-one

At some point in the project development, you have to move from describing the idea in your head into the pitch deck presentation.

The pitch deck doesn’t have to be a complex document with much information. You can create a simple presentation, develop a business model canvas, or visualize it with tools like Canva or Figma. The point is to have a project description to discuss with potential users.

Ask proper questions and gather the answers. After talking to many users, you will start seeing the patterns and what is crucial for the users.

Talking to users on a scale

The approach above is practical when talking to less than a hundred users. But what if you have a mailing list with thousands of people?

Then, the surveys, discussion groups, and comments come into play. Not so long ago, we’d advise that with this approach, you’d have to use closed, targeted questions with a closed set of answers. But these days, in the time of Artificial intelligence, there is no problem asking open questions. Even if you gather a thousand answers to a given question, you can tell AI to collect, summarise, and describe the sentiment / most common answer.

It might not be possible to talk one-on-one with everyone, but the answers you get this way can be even more valuable.

How to put the feedback on the project roadmap

We are getting to a fundamental question.

You had your vision, idea, and project plan. Now, you have a couple of hundreds, maybe thousands, of other ideas, suggestions, and corrections. Here are a couple of valuable tips on how to decide which ones and how to apply them to the project roadmap:

1. Remember where you are with your project. If you are about to build a POC or MVP or adjust it to onboard an enterprise client, different aspects will be necessary at each stage.
2. Who gave the answer? This is important, especially during the one-on-one sessions. Your best friend, who will never use the app, might have strong opinions, e.g., on the branding. Still, a potential investor might say it’s ok and point out three entirely different things. Make sure to prioritize accordingly.
3. It’s ok to say no. I know it is not easy, especially initially, but users are not always right. They don’t have your knowledge, vision, and experience. You don’t have to apply everything.

If in doubt, remember it’s your vision, so keep going.

Summary

This process can be complex when talking to investors, pitching for funding, and working on different projects.

But performing it well will bring your project way closer to success and finding the product-market fit. Furthermore, you don’t have to do it alone. Although, especially at the beginning, the founder should talk to potential clients to get to know them as well as possible, when it comes to scale, you can outsource it.

Good luck!

P.S. How can a professional UI UX designer support you in the process?

Gathering and applying feedback to the web or mobile app can be an infinite task.

Without experience, it is very difficult to prioritize user requests, match them with the vision and incorporate them into the design. This problem can be addressed by including a professional UI UX designer in the process. This person can look a bit from the outside, calculate pros and cons, and help you adjust the project for the client’s needs.

The result of such cooperation will be updated requirements, backlog, and drafts of the designs, which will visualize the user’s feedback straight away.