Sloppy user research is NOT better than NO user research.

No user research costs nothing and gets zero results.

Sloppy user research costs money and is biased towards negative outcomes (and you can’t tell).

With zero research, you’re creating UX debt at a much slower rate.

Sloppy is any research that relies more on inference than observation. (A/B tests, surveys, unmoderated sessions.)

I would rather see efforts into making quality research the path of least resistance instead of investing in any gatekeeping. https://twitter.com/sambambo_/status/1369281991825358848

In neither A/B tests nor unmoderated sessions, can you ask the participant why they just did something.

If we see people prefer A or B, we can only guess as to why. (And we often assume it’s all for the same reason we just made up.)

We’re not learning. https://twitter.com/eoraghallaigh/status/1369306140731973638

Without learning why people chose those behaviors, we’re not becoming more knowledgable about the problems we’re solving.

Without increasing our knowledge of the problem, we can’t tell if we’re solving it right.

When we’re not solving it right, we’re creating UX debt.