UX Research Korea Meetup 2024 was held at Wanted on November 13th and 14th.
Several speakers presented on how startups are trying to understand their customers. Since studying customers is not the sole responsibility of a specific job, people from various job groups, including UX researchers, PMs, developers, business developers, and executives, gathered.
On the first day, C-Level speakers talked about their efforts and experiences in understanding customers from a management perspective.
Hong Joo-young, CEO of Lapo Labs, which provides Queenit services, shared her experience in the early days of her business, when she struggled to understand customers she did not know well.
Healing Paper’s CPO Jaehoon Park, who serves Gangnam Unnie, shared the system and principles for the organization to systematically understand customers. He also talked about the efforts to understand difficult global customers and the impact of the newly established UX research organization on the organization.
Kim Chae-won, founder of Authentic Intelligence, shared a story about the importance of meeting customers even for just 10 minutes, and focusing especially on ‘listening.’ He shared his experience of understanding customers by focusing on the North Star indicator that represents the final goal. The speakers commonly emphasized that observing customers and finding problems increases the probability of success.
On the second day, UX research speakers shared their experiences of researching customers and struggling to persuade organizations.
Kwon Hae-som, a UX researcher at Musinsa, shared her methods and impact cases of trying to persuade organizations in the field. She talked about how to inform people about UX research to achieve better results with numerous stakeholders and her own techniques to reduce doubts.
Sling’s Kang Gam-chan, UX Researcher, shared a case study of how UX research has influenced the growth of a company. He talked about how customer research contributed to the direction and growth of the business when it was time to offer premium features in a free service.
At the end of the event, Soro's CEO Seungjun Woo, Wooah Brothers' UX researcher Hyukmin Kwon, and Lapo Labs' UX researcher Eunhee Kim held a Q&A session. They were able to freely ask questions about UX research and share their honest thoughts. One of the most memorable questions was about the role of UX research in the AI era. To this, Lapo Labs' UX researcher Eunhee Kim said, "When navigation first came out, people said that it would prevent people from learning how to drive properly. However, it has now become a tool that helps everyone drive more conveniently. The same goes for AI. It could be a great tool that can help us understand our customers."
I strongly agree with the idea that a company must understand its customers in order to succeed. I also realized, for the first time in a long time, that so many people are struggling behind the scenes to spread these values throughout the organization. I hope that in the future, there will be more gatherings of makers who have the heart to design good experiences for customers.
