How to perform research for complex B2B product
By: Max Tsvetkov
Tags: Research, Answers, UX, B2B, Enterprise

My favorite thing to do is to observe B2C designers, who are shifting to B2B market and… fail as a specialist. We’ve all been here, am I right? I bet you do. Familiar pattern: «passion young designer» with a few B2C projects in portfolio decided to make the world better and go to B2B company. Them motto is: will add a lot of dead space, make fonts bigger and bolder, use only nice bright colors, more contrast. And more importantly, I find exact a few use cases and that’s it. It is going to be a good UX for a few users flows, our users will be happy. But after re-design, users don’t become happy, even more, they go to another product with an «ugly» interface. And the designer failed miserably. And was dismissed, of course.

No one will tell you about fails, but I will, and even more, I will explain. Why. Why customers love «ugly» B2B interfaces and how designers must work with a specific professional area.

I’m talking mostly about huge enterprises with complex products, like Excel, or Splunk. If you just sell something wholesale, it’s also B2b, but with rules from a B2C area. In complex B2B, we are providing a tool. Like Photoshop, AutoCAD, ATP, Splunk, and so on. It has thousands of instruments, and it uses ML for all routine work. So, users use our tool only for complex and untypical cases. There is no «golden route» and obvious user flow, just common and uncommon routs to perform a complex task.

The most important reason: in B2B we are not making a «golden route» for a customer, to keep them in a funnel from the main page to the check-out with the big blue button «Pay». Are you familiar with the next questions?

Why do I see the list and not the current task?

Where’s the big “make it good” button?

How did you define an employee’s workday using the UI?

Wrong questions for huge B2B product. Customers just want to complete their job, not just a task, that’s it. Another reason it’s habits. Our customers are specialists. They spend many years learning something complex. In this way, people’s expectations of the UX are changed. They have a very specific way to think and they earn money this way.

I don’t want you to create just a bad interface because of my words. No one should do work badly. I want you to create a good interface for particular groups of users, based on user research. Not just beautiful interfaces for B2C and Dribbble. You don’t need this, anyway, you will have an NDA in B2B and will not be able to show your work. So don’t try to make it looks pretty for an audience. Just go to your users, create CJM, perform dairy studies, usability-tests, Interviews, Co-creation, shadowing, and so on.

Mostly, a designer in B2B performs usability-tests and interviews. During an interview, don’t try to sell, left CustDev for Product Managers. We just ask our users about a context, context interviews. We just need to find out all pains and needs, that’s it. Observing and asking, don’t forget to re-watch how the respondent performed a task and ask him/her in detail about every step.

At usability-test need to realize, how qualified the respondent. Maybe, all specialists on the market mostly have low qualifications, and we need to shift for B2C tone-of-voice. Or vice versa! Our clients have their own professional vernacular and we need to add it into our product or documentation. Never forget about documentation, please. It’s an important part of B2B UX.

Also, don’t forget to use questionnaires. It’s plenty of them on the market, ASQ, ER, UME, SEQ, SMEQ, and a few dozens more. But I can recommend you SUPR-Q, and if you prefer the old-school approach, SUS.

And this data is totally enough to improve usability, marketability, findability, accessibility, customizability and other ability.

Does it really so important? Ok, let’s imagine, now we have an old-school native-windows-95-UI/UX application, what’s can be wrong with it? Why should businesses pay money to improve it instead of focusing on making more money? I have an answer. Do you know how works probability theory? If a meteorite is going to hit us once during 1 000 000 years, it will. And every year without of meteor, the chance is increasing. Some more relevant examples: if you don’t care about the information security of your assets, they will be stolen very soon. It’s not a question about will be or not, it’s just a question about the time. The same with the dentist or regular car checking. And if you Neglect your UI/UX, the result will be expensive and inevitable. Need proof? Here is a fresh one.

So, no one is allowed to ignore UI and UX part, it’s like cleaning up a supermarket before opening every morning. If it dirty and dark, no one customer will go and buy food. If you want more value and more money, so, the designer also can do and CX, and Service Design.