Why research comes first
Imagine a team in Accra designs a farm advisory app for maize farmers in the Northern Region without ever leaving the office. They assume farmers have smartphones with data, read English comfortably and have time to browse. Then the app launches and almost nobody uses it. Many farmers share one phone in the household, buy small data bundles only when needed, and prefer to listen rather than read. A few days of research would have shown all of this.
User research is how designers replace assumptions with evidence. Employers ask for it in most design adverts, from fintech companies to NGOs, because building the wrong thing is expensive.
What user research is
User research means learning about the people who will use a product: their goals, their habits, their frustrations and the setting they live and work in. It answers questions like:
- Who are the users, really?
- What are they trying to get done?
- What do they do today, and what gets in the way?
- What devices, languages and connections do they have?
Research is not asking people what features they want. People are poor at predicting what they will use. They are much better at describing what they did last week and showing you how they do things now.
Research in the Ghanaian setting
Research here often looks different from the textbook picture of a quiet lab. You might sit beside a provisions seller in Aboabo market in Tamale, ride along with a motor king rider, or meet a women's savings group under a tree in a Damongo community. You may need to speak Dagbani, Gonja, Gurene, Dagaare or Twi, or work with someone who does. You will see shared phones, cracked screens and bright sun. All of this is valuable data, not noise.