How SAP conducts user research studies to help create experiences that make users of SAP products more effective at their jobs.
Customer success is key
At SAP, user research helps product teams understand user needs and expectations. The insights derived from SAP product users help drive product planning as well as design and development process– ultimately leading to the creation of successful and user-friendly products and solutions.
One example: mining company and the leading salt producer in Europe K+S. User research and SAP Fiori have helped improve the user efficiency of their maintenance teams in a 61km² underground mining field in Zielitz, Eastern Germany. Due to unstable network connectivity, their teams earlier had to bridge long distances with paper documents leading to 1,000+ printouts per day.
This is just one example of the impact user research can have. Check out more exciting examples of the benefits of user research on our user research topic page on the SAP Community. But what is user research exactly and how can users help optimize SAP's product UX and development remotely?
What is user research – a short explanation
User research is a discipline used to understand and analyze the needs, preferences, and behaviors of users to design and develop products, services, or experiences to best meet their expectations. This involves conducting qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research emphasizes the exploration and interpretation of real-world problems to identify the meaning people bring to them. Quantitative research rather collects numerical data to conclude empirical findings and correlations. Common user research methods are interviews, surveys, observations, and usability testing to gather user insights and feedback (find a set of common methods on the below image).
Figure 1 ALT text: An overview of common user research methods
Product research in this context is the discipline of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a specific product or product category. This can include information about consumer preferences, market trends, competitors, potential features and benefits, and pricing strategies.
6 key benefits of user research
Quickly summarized, user research offers the following key benefits:
- Understand user behaviors and needs: User research helps companies gain insights into how users interact with their products or services as well as into their motivations and pain points. Reflecting the hybrid work environment, SAP has recently launched the SAP User Research Panel to simplify involving customer feedback. Joining the panel is easy (register here, read more). After receiving an invitation to a relevant research study or interview, users can easily share their open feedback in a remote setup, usually taking 30 to 60 minutes of time.
- Improve product usability: By understanding how users interact with a product, companies can identify areas for improvement and adjust usability.
- Reduce development risks: By getting feedback from users early in the development process, companies can identify potential issues or concerns and address them before launching a product.
- Increase customer satisfaction: By understanding the needs and preferences of users, companies can design user-centric products and services that better meet customers' expectations, ultimately leading to higher user satisfaction and empathy. Read more about our customer success stories, tools, and more on our user research topic page.
- Inclusive and meant for everyone: Inclusive research is not another method to apply. Instead, it enriches the methods already used today and helps to reduce unintentional biases within teams by involving people with diverse perspectives in the product development process. We at SAP Design created an Inclusive Research Handbook including best practices, guidance, knowledge, and templates for your daily work.
- Drive innovation: User research can inspire new ideas and innovations by identifying unmet needs or areas for improvement, including sustainability or AI.
SAP User Research Panel: How users can help optimize SAP's product UX and development
Your voice matters to us, and we love to hear your open feedback about the products you use in your daily work! With our SAP User Research Panel, we introduce another way for you to provide feedback directly to SAP product teams and actively influence user experiences for both unreleased and existing products. Participation is easy. To get started, follow these three steps:
- Register: Your information allows us to align you with relevant research studies.
- We’ll send an invite if a study fits your profile. You decide if you’re interested.
- Participate remotely and be heard.
Some research activities, such as surveys, can be completed in your own time. Usability testing sessions typically range from 30 to 60 minutes. We will always provide full information ahead of time.
More information about the panel is available here.
