Challenges of UX research and long-term UX: A multiple case study with software startups

UX work can provide crucial information that helps businesses gain a competitive edge and improve the quality of their products. In this context, UX research requires activities such as obtaining user feedback and extracting the differences in users’ experiences over the long term to update products and services. This paper aims to investigate the daily work of UX research and long-term UX in software development to uncover the challenges experienced by software teams. We conducted a multiple-case study involving five software startups because of their characteristics (i.e., small teams and time pressure). We interviewed ten practitioners and analyzed the data through open coding. As a result, we identified eight challenges, six of which were related to UX research and two of which were related to long-term UX. As a contribution, we suggest investigations to expand the state of the art and, consequently, support practitioners to overcome these challenges.