Mia Krysa

User Requirements

User requirements are the features a product should have to ensure satisfaction from the user (Baxter et al., 2015). In design, it’s important that the products being created are properly serving the targeted users, because that’s what deems a product useful. For example, when I log onto a website to shop for clothes, it’s crucial that the website functions properly. I don’t want a cluttered landing page with flashing headlines. I want the navigation center to be clear and organized. I want the checkout process to go seamlessly. It may even be nice to browse a section where the website puts together outfits for me. I want to order a new outfit (or two!) and leave as a satisfied customer.

In order to find out what’s important to users in the design process, we must conduct user experience research. Different methods can be used to collect data–– such as surveys, focus groups, field studies, card sorts, and more. Once we collect and analyze the data, we can create a user-centered design.

Business Requirements

When designing a useful product, we need to make sure that it also makes sense in business. Believe it or not, business requirements are often confused with user requirements, but these requirements apply to two different groups involved in the design process. “You cannot assume that what the salesperson wants to see in the sales product is the same as what the user wants to see in the product” (Baxter et al., 2015).

Business requirements may be things like features that the marketing or sales team wants to add to a product to help it sell… even if those features aren’t what the actual user wants. A salesperson or marketer might want the product to be #1 on the market, or a tool to give the fastest results, but that isn’t always what’s most important to the user.

Often times, business requirements revolve around money. Think about it this way: you’ve designed a product, with user requirements in mind, but you also want to make sure it sells, right?

Does one come before the other?

I decided to do some of my own research on the relationship between user requirements and business requirements, because I found myself wondering which should be prioritized. They’re both important, but how do you decide which requirements to favor if they differ?

I found a YouTube short that summed it up perfectly. The key is to favor the user requirements. Since business requirements often revolve around money, the product or service needs to sell. So, in order to sell, the product needs to appeal to the user first. Think of the user requirements as augmenting the business requirements.

Knowing this allows the designer to focus on satisfying the user requirements first, thus fulfilling the business requirements of the product or service. But remember—they aren’t one in the same!

References: Baxter, K., Courage, C., & Caine, K. (2015). Understanding your users : a practical guide to user research methods. Elsevier, Morgan Kaufmann.