3 signs it's time for human insight

If you’re part of an organization that has yet to implement a human insight solution, it’s easy to feel like your team is in a fog. You’re aware that things could be better, but it can be difficult to see the way forward.

You might be wondering to yourself whether there’s a better way for your team to make decisions. Maybe it feels like your product’s wins and losses are unpredictable. Or, maybe you’re feeling the need for a better way to understand your customers, but are unsure of how to do so. 

Whether you’re unsure of the next step or doubting whether a human insight platform is the solution you need, we want to provide you with some clarity. This article will look at some of the most common telltale signs that it’s time for organizations to implement a human insight solution. By the end, you should feel confident that now is the time to incorporate human insight, and be better prepared to bring others onboard with you. 

What is a human insight solution? 

Whether it’s called “Experience Research,” “Customer Experience” or a “Human Insight Platform”, human insight solutions are the digital tools and systems organizations use to connect with customers and prospects. 

Unlike other tools that specialize in quantitative data, human insight solutions tap directly into the why behind data sets. These tools help researchers unearth the qualitative, human insights that are driving a product’s success or failure. That qualitative data comes in the form of surveys, panels, remote interviews, think-out-loud studies, usability testing, card sorting and more. Human insight platforms help marketers, designers, researchers, product managers, and other leaders identify and eliminate points of friction in a user experience.

Signs it’s time for human insight

1. Your team's priorities aren’t clear

If you work in product management, marketing or design, and don’t understand why your team is working on a certain product or feature, it could be due to a lack of proper customer validation. When an organization is scattered or disjointed in their priorities or decision-making, human insight can act as a rallying cry and a single source of truth. 

There’s no better way to create alignment amongst departments than with clear insights straight from the mouths of real users. Knowing exactly what is preventing them from achieving their goals with your product can be extremely useful for getting crystal clear on which deliverables are most important, and which ones can wait. At first, it might feel like a human insight solution is causing your team to do less. And if it’s working correctly, you should be: less busy-work and more of what’s important. 

2. You don’t have time for research

It’s very easy for teams to feel like they have too much on their plate or like they’re constantly putting out fires. Maybe you’d love to validate every new idea the team comes up with. But from your perspective, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do that much research. While it can feel like your team is saving time by getting to market faster, experience has shown that a lack of customer validation actually leads to less productivity—not more. 

Ironically, the belief that an organization doesn’t have the time for research is often built on the assumption that research is overly time-consuming. But the whole purpose of a human insight platform is to dramatically reduce that time to insight—often taking it from weeks or months, to days and even hours, depending on the testing needed. 

When teams take the time to make research a key facet of their design and development processes, decision-making accelerates and research ends up saving teams more time than it ever took up.

3. Re-work has become the norm

In the realm of software development, it’s been estimated that rework due to requirement changes (alterations to design or code after work has already begun) can take up 30-50% of a development team’s work capacity. Combine that with the fact that re-coding is often more time-consuming than the initial code writing, and you’ve got a compelling case for getting product specifications right the first time. 

It’s easy for products or experiences to look great on paper and get pushed through, only to fall flat in front of customers. If teams can lessen their trips back to the drawing board, there’s massive ROI to be had for organizations. While it’s difficult to eliminate re-work entirely, it can be greatly reduced with proper research and testing throughout the discovery and design phases. Ideation is great. But those ideas should be clearly validated by users before any production work begins. 

If you and your team are experiencing any of the three aforementioned signs, there’s no better time than the present to start considering some of the ways a human insight platform might benefit your organization.