I hear it all the time. Because product field research is expensive and time-consuming, most start-ups and smaller businesses can't afford to do it. Yep, it's a common assumption - and completely misguided. The question isn't whether can you afford it. Instead, if your business success hinges on a great product experience, you have to ask if you can afford not to conduct field research.

But hey...we all want to have our cake and eat it, too. The good news is it's possible to conduct time- and cost-effective field research. The key is to be selective in the research scope. We can't afford to spend weeks with users in their natural environments. So we embrace constraints and focus on uncovering just a few critical issues. That's important or else we take the chance of opening ourselves up to that pernicious problem of scope creep.

Now here's the rub: since we're condensing the field research, it's absolutely important to use researchers who know how to perform almost Sherlockian abilities for observation. Remember, we're not just trying to understand how a customer uses a product...we're trying to understand the customer herself. To this point, I like what Kantner and Kiernan write:

Field research is more than usability testing in the field. It is more than learning how someone uses a product. It is learning about the person: how she accomplishes tasks within her own environment, what motivates her to use a product a certain way, and what she naturally does to compensate for what the product does not help her accomplish. This research builds a deeper understanding of the relationship between users' work and their environment, resulting in designs that increase user satisfaction with products. (1)

What does your field research program look like? Does it go deeper than usability testing? What are you doing right now to understand the person who is using your products?

(1) Kantner, L., and Keirnan, T. (2003). Field research in commercial product development, In the Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the Usability Professionals' Association (2003). Scottsdale, AZ: UPA. [download PDF]