How to Conduct UX Research Without Users?

When creating or redesigning digital products, you cannot do without UX research. It helps you dive deeper into your customers' pain points, explore how they perceive your product, and take the user experience to the next level. Which, in turn, may raise your conversion rates by up to up to 400%. In other words, your design will perform much better if you talk to your target users and study their actual user needs.

But wait a minute. What if there are no users you could talk to? No interviews, no usability testing, no focus groups… Wouldn't it be worthless, then?

You might think there's no point in conducting user research if users don't participate in it. But it's not quite true. In fact, with the right approach, alternative methods of UX research without users can be no less beneficial for your business. While designing SaaS products, we at Eleken often turn to studying the target audience without involving users directly. In this article, we are going to share with you the most helpful tips to conduct UX research without direct access to customers.

But before getting closer to the point, let's start with a UX research definition and reveal the main reasons for conducting it.

What is UX research and why do you need one?

UX research is a comprehensive study of target users, their core user needs, and the challenges they face when interacting with a digital product. Most often, it relies on collecting and analyzing information about users, including qualitative and quantitative data. UX researchers may use different methods across the design process, depending on the goals and resources available.

Importantly, UX research can be conducted at any research phase. Moreover, it is worth repeating it regularly throughout the design process. With the help of a flexible research methodology, you will be able to track changes in your target audience’s requirements and improve your product.

Here are the most significant benefits of conducting UX research:

• Your design improvements are based on valuable data and users' feedback, not on assumptions.
• You can validate your ideas regarding the necessary improvements and shape design ideas with evidence.
• Exploring your customers' needs leads to better product value.
• Improved user experience leads to higher conversions.

These benefits explain why conducting UX research is a non-negotiable step in UX design. Normally, design teams turn to field studies, interviews, reviews, and usability testing. But when direct access to the target audience is impossible, you still have options to conduct UX research in alternative ways.

So the fair question pops up:

Is it possible to conduct UX research without users?

Nielsen Norman Group clearly states that UX without user research is not UX. And let's admit it, research findings are much more effective if you get feedback directly from your target users. However, many companies are still looking for a way out.

On popular forums like Reddit and Quora you can find product managers and UX researchers asking: “How to run UX research without users?” or “Can UX without interviews still be called UX research?” But why would a business want to avoid talking to real users? The most common reasons are:

1. Lack of time or budget (or both). UX research process may take up to three months and require significant investments. Not every startup can afford it.
2. Protection of confidential data. Strict NDAs and legal constraints in security-focused projects often limit the ability to recruit users or run interviews.
3. No clear idea about the target audience. At the earliest startup stages, you may not yet understand who your user group is. That makes it challenging to gather insights and run actual research.

Whatever the reason, testing your product without users directly is not the only possible approach.

Yes, from our experience, it's totally fine to analyze the current product and user journey research without involving participants in interviews. We at Eleken regularly help our clients evaluate features and information architecture to enhance consistency and remove UX flaws. And we’ve learned that UX research without users can still provide valuable insights.

And here's how our design team conducts UX research without users.Whatever the reason, testing your product directly on users is not the only possible approach.

Six methods to conduct UX research without users

So how do you actually do it? Here are six strategies we’ve used successfully in SaaS projects. Each one works on its own, but together they form a strong toolkit for understanding your product and its target audience when direct access to target users isn’t an option.

1. Study the available feedback

The first step is to see what users are already saying — it’s one of the simplest ways to gain valuable insights without running ad hoc research.

• App Store and social media reviews: These platforms are packed with candid opinions. Whether it’s Trustpilot and app stores, G2, or the App Store itself, you’ll find detailed accounts of what delights people and what frustrates them.
• Competitor reviews: Don’t limit yourself to your own product. Looking at reviews of your competitor’s product reveals what users expect from the category as a whole and helps you map key themes.

Case in point: When we redesigned SEO Crawl, we didn’t interview real users directly. Instead, we studied existing reviews of the product and analyzed competitor feedback. One pattern stood out — pain points around customization. Based on that insight, we created a configurable dashboard where users could add sections, choose layouts, and toggle between default and custom views. This approach let us conduct UX research without users and still uncover pain points critical to product success.

Feedback is one of the closest substitutes for interviews because it comes from users themselves. But when feedback is limited or inconsistent, the next step is to look outward at broader research findings and quantitative data.

2. Analyze key industry trends

If individual reviews give you a micro-level picture, industry reports give you the macro view. This type of UX research work complements customer feedback with structured quantitative data.

• Platforms like Statista, Gartner, Forrester, and eMarketer publish detailed research on markets, adoption rates, and user behaviors.
• You can also explore Google Trends and product related search queries to see how interest is shifting in your industry.

While you may need to pay for high-quality reports, they provide valuable data that balances out anecdotal feedback. For SaaS teams, this broader perspective ensures you’re not only solving current user needs but also preparing for emerging ones. Reports can also help you gather evidence to justify design decisions to stakeholders who may demand evidence before moving forward.

Industry reports help you understand the big picture, but they don’t always capture the day-to-day user frustrations or raw user sentiment. That’s where forums and online communities come in — they let you zoom back into conversations happening in real time.

3. Explore forums and communities

Forums and online communities are a goldmine for UX researchers trying to conduct UX research without users. Skilled teams can gather insights from real conversations without needing to recruit users or run expensive focus groups.

On Reddit, you can join niche user groups to see which pain points come up again and again. Posts often reveal unfiltered user frustrations, giving a more authentic look at what people really think.

On Quora, you can explore recurring product related search queries and track the key themes in answers. By analyzing the profiles of those answering, you can discover patterns in how different segments of your target audience behave.

This type of indirect research helps UX designers understand raw user sentiment and identify opportunities. Unlike polished reviews, these posts reveal the rough edges, allowing you to map key themes and uncover pain points in ways surveys sometimes miss.

While community posts give deep qualitative insights, they need to be balanced with quantitative data from product analytics to avoid drawing big conclusions based only on a handful of anecdotes.

4. Use analytical tools

Analytics tools provide the quantitative data you need to validate assumptions and support research findings. This is one of the fastest ways to run UX research when you have limited access to target users.

• Google Analytics shows you which pages or flows are most popular, where people drop off, and which segments need help.
• Session replay tools like Smartlook and Mixpanel give you the technical detail of how users directly interact with your product. You can see funnel drop-offs, session heatmaps, or call center logs integration to combine qualitative notes with behavior data.

This evidence lets you conduct UX research in a structured way. For instance, if analytics shows that onboarding drop-off is unusually high, your customer success team may confirm this pattern through customer calls. Together, this combined methodology gives you a deeper insight into actual product performance and helps your marketing team prioritize improvements.

Analytics may not explain the “why,” but it gives valuable data that, when combined with community feedback, books, and internal knowledge, can help you understand pain points and gain valuable insights without talking to real users.

5. Read niche books and publications

Sometimes the best way to conduct UX research without users is to lean on the expertise of others. Books, case studies, and white papers often summarize years of UX research work and can save you from repeating mistakes.

• Books on UX and user centered design explain how to shape design ideas using both qualitative and quantitative data.
• Articles and industry reports help you map key themes and avoid ad hoc research by showing patterns that have already been tested.

At Eleken, we encourage every UX designer to build a library of resources. This habit provides profound understanding of user needs and equips teams with vocabulary to align stakeholders. Reading isn’t a substitute for research findings from real users, but it provides valuable insights into patterns, psychology, and smart interface design patterns that can inspire the design process.

Reading equips you with theory and perspective, but the most practical insights may already be sitting inside your own company. Your customer support team is in constant contact with users and can often highlight recurring pain points faster than external research ever could.

6. Ask your support team for help

Your customer success and support staff are in daily contact with customers regularly, making them an underused goldmine of information.

• They can share recurring user frustrations, pain points, and the exact words users use in customer calls or support tickets.
• They can surface crm reports, chat transcripts, and even call center logs that highlight research findings missed by analytics.

When you interview call center staff, you gain deeper insight into user needs without having to grant access to sensitive target users. This is especially valuable in industries with strict legal constraints where limited access to data makes it hard to conduct UX research in traditional ways.

We’ve seen cases where a small but steady commitment to gathering knowledge from the customer success team gave more clarity in one week than months of time-consuming external studies. This approach helps maintain relationships with your users by ensuring their voices are represented, even if indirectly.

Benefits of UX research without end-users' feedback

As you can see, UX research without users is absolutely possible. Moreover, it has some advantages. With indirect feedback methods, you can achieve:

• A deeper insight into the market. With the help of UX research without users, young startups can explore their audience and market specifics at the earliest design stages. In particular, a competitor analysis delivers many helpful insights into the niche and discovers users' needs.
  
• Collect valuable data. Quantitative data gathered during UX research is no less important than qualitative surveys, tests, and interviews. Our team often analyzes the existing reports and UX statistics to better understand the target audience.
  
• Prepare your team for primary research. ”Secondary research” takes less time and is based on the available data. It can help your team and stakeholders be on the same page. This is also an excellent way to prepare for more detailed surveys in the future.

How to Conduct UX Research Without Users Effectively

UX research is vital for building products people love. And while direct interviews and usability tests remain the gold standard, they aren’t always possible. In those cases, adapting your research methodology ensures you can still make evidence-based decisions.

Six methods at a glance:

• Study available feedback (your own and competitors’).
• Analyze key industry trends for macro-level insight.
• Explore forums and communities to hear unfiltered user voices.
• Use analytics tools for quantitative validation.
• Read books and publications to deepen understanding.
• Ask your support team for internal perspective.

Together, these approaches allow you to conduct UX research without users and still deliver designs that meet your target audience’s needs.

Even if you don’t have direct access to users, you don’t have to skip research or rely on guesswork. At Eleken, we help SaaS companies uncover insights and design products that people love. Contact us to discuss your project and see how we can help.

And if you want to dive deeper into the UX research topic, you should definitely read about fourteen crucial UX research methods.