Anytime you aspire to create or optimise products, services and programs is a good time to reach out to your audience. When you need to do formal research depends on 1) how well you understand your audience in relation to your offering and 2) what design process you use.
The following stages are typically moments that highly benefit from research:
Exploring the market - to find direction, trends and support a business case.
Discovery research - to inform design around real needs of your target audience.
Concept testing - to test your ideas, concepts and prototypes with prospective users.
Communication research - to test your communication and marketing campaigns.
Evaluation - understanding how your offering is experienced and find room for improvement.
No matter what your process is to develop products and services, at any or all of the above moment you may wish to reach out to your target audience. To understand their behaviour, their needs, their desires, their opinions, their hopes and their fears. To know the way they experience the world in relation to what you (aspire to) offer. What excites them or scares them off.
Reach out to us if you need support in any of the research stages mentioned above and we will help you on your way.
In the next post we will be looking at choosing suitable research methods for the stages mentioned.