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UX research without users isn’t research. We can shape design ideas with bias, assumptions, guesstimates, and even synthetic users, but it’s anything but UX research. Yet some of us might find ourselves in situations where we literally don’t have access to users — because of legal constraints, high costs, or perhaps users just don’t exist yet. What do we do then?
Luckily, there are some workarounds that help us better understand pain points and issues that users might have when using our products. This holds true even when stakeholders can’t give us time or resources to run actual research, or strict NDAs or privacy regulations prevent us from speaking to users.
Let’s explore how we can make UX research work when there is no or only limited access to users — and what we can do to make a strong case for UX research.