User research

User research is finding out what people actually need rather than what they say they want, and it is the thing that separates a product designer from somebody who decorates interfaces.

What the work consists of

Deciding what you need to know, choosing a method that can actually tell you, recruiting people who are genuinely representative rather than available, and then — the hard part — reporting what you found rather than what the team hoped you would find.

What employers screen for

Whether you have ever changed your mind. A research case study where the findings confirmed the original plan is usually a case study about a badly designed study, and experienced reviewers read it exactly that way. The strongest thing you can show is a project where the research killed an idea.

• Writing a question that does not contain its own answer
• Interviewing without leading, including sitting through a silence instead of filling it
• Separating what someone did from what they report doing — different data, routinely conflated
• Sample honesty: saying "five people, all existing customers" rather than implying generality

The honest limit

Three to six months to competence, and in a market this size it is rarely a standalone job. In Botswana it is almost always a component of a product design role rather than a role of its own, so treat it as something that makes you hireable as a designer rather than as a career on its own.