As far as i can see… and i do wear glasses 🙂 if you are being asked this question many times, most probably you live in a place where most people don´t know what researchers do, probably don’t really care, and ultimately don’t want any value it might contribute.

If you work in a “engineering” environment one approach to this answer is “I work with a great tool…  research data”.

Data is made of facts that can be collected, synthesized, interpreted and analysed and this allows us to answer questions and most of all to communicate findings. Research collects data from field notes to transcripts, from metrics to analytics, from photos and screenshots to videos and audio.

When having a talk about the “value of user research” i always try to be careful with the “interpretation of data”… as this tends to freak out data driven audiences.

Raw data

These days on sailing boats you have lots of raw data… that you have to interpret and deal with the bias of your interpretation (everyone has it… you need to be aware of yours)

I find particular important to keep raw data and interpreted data as two worlds and use raw data to backup up interpretations.

But…

Raw data does not tell us “why users did what they did, what were there pain points, or their expectations… it only tells us that a fact happened”.

So…

We need to interpret raw data, an attempt that researchers do to understand it, to gather patterns and to find concepts.

User research is a way to see to world from the eyes of your costumer/employee/user and by doing so you have a base line to make your ideas and concepts better and more relevant to them and to whatever business you have or work for.