Jelena Racković · · 2 min read · Product & discovery
Research once, build for months: breaking the habit
Many projects begin with a burst of research: interviews, workshops, a thick report full of insights. Then the team builds, for months, and the report sits in a folder. By the time the product launches, the assumptions behind it are half a year old, and some of them have quietly expired.
Research as a phase
Treating research as a phase at the start is understandable. It fits neatly into a plan and a budget, and it produces a deliverable everyone can point to. The trouble is that the world doesn’t stop while the team builds. Users change their habits, the market shifts, clients reorganise, and the decisions made in month five rest on what was true in month one.
A small conversation every week
What works better is far less dramatic: a short conversation with a real user or client every week. Thirty minutes, a few questions, a prototype to click through. It doesn’t replace deeper research when a big question arises, but it keeps the team connected to reality and catches wrong assumptions while they are still cheap to fix.
Decisions on fresh evidence
The habit changes how decisions are made. Instead of arguing about what users probably want, the team can say what someone told them on Tuesday. Debates get shorter, priorities sharper and the product stays close to the people it serves. Over a few months, those small conversations add up to more insight than any single research phase could provide.
Breaking the habit
The hardest part is starting, because weekly contact with users feels like a luxury when deadlines press. In my experience, it is the opposite. It is what keeps a team from spending months building the wrong thing, and that is the most expensive delay of all.
Is your design system starting to fade?
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