at the start of a project, it encompasses different types of research
methodologies to gather valuable data and feedback.
When conducting user research, you’ll engage with and observe your target
users, getting to know their needs, behaviors, and pain points in relation to the
product or service you’re designing.
1. What is user research?
User experience research is the systematic investigation of your users in
order to gather insights that will inform the design process.
With the help of various user research techniques, you’ll set out to understand
your users’ needs, attitudes, pain points, and behaviors (processes like task
analyses look at how users actually navigate the product experience—not
just how they should or how they say they do).
it encompasses different types of research methodology to gather both
qualitative and quantitative data in relation to your product or service.
Qualitative vs. Quantitative data:
What’s the difference?
Qualitative UX research
descriptive data which looks more at how people think and feel. It helps to find
your users’ opinions, problems, reasons, and motivations.
Quantitative UX research
produces numerical data that can be measured and analyzed, looking more at
the statistics. Quantitative data is used to quantify the opinions and behaviors
of your users.
From the data gathered during your user research phase, you should be able
to understand the following areas within the context of your product or service:
● Who your users are
● What their needs are
● What they want
● How they currently do things
● How they’d like to do them
2. What is the purpose of user
research?
It helps you understand the problem you’re trying to solve; it tells you who
your users are, in what context they’ll be using your product or service, and
ultimately, what they need from you, the designer! UX research ensures that
you are designing with the user in mind, which is key if you want to create a
successful product.
t’ll help you identify problems and challenges, validate or invalidate your
assumptions, find patterns and commonalities across your target user groups,
and shed plenty of light on your users’ needs, goals, and mental models.
Why is it so important to conduct
user research?
Without UX research, you are essentially basing your designs on
assumptions.
If you don’t take the time to engage with real users, it’s virtually impossible to
know what needs and pain-points your design should address.
User research saves time and money!
If you (or your client) decide to skip the research phase altogether, the
chances are you’ll end up spending time and money developing a product
that, when launched, has loads of usability issues and design flaws, or simply
doesn’t meet a real user need. Through UX research, you’ll uncover such
issues early on—saving time, money, and lots of frustration!
User research can be done on a budget
There are ways that you can conduct faster and less costly user research,
utilizing Guerrilla research outlined later on in this article (also handy if budget
and time are an issue). Even the smallest amount of user research will save
time and money in the long run.
3. How to plan your user
research
value-action gap is a well-known psychology principle
what people say vs. what people do.
Part of being a great user researcher is to be an expert at setting up the right
questions and getting unbiased answers from your users.
To do this we need to think like the user.
Put yourself in your user’s shoes without your own preconceptions and
assumptions on how it should work and what it should be.
we need empathy (and good listening skills) allowing you to observe and
challenge assumptions of what you already think you know about your users.
Qualitative Methods:
● Guerrilla testing: Fast and low-cost testing methods such as
on-the-street videos, field observations, reviews of paper sketches, or
online tools for remote usability testing.
● Interviews: One-on-one interviews that follow a preset selection of
questions prompting the user to describe their interactions, thoughts,
and feelings in relation to a product or service, or even the environment
of the product/service.
● Focus groups: Participatory groups that are led through a discussion
and activities to gather data on a particular product or service. If you’ve
ever watched Mad Men you’ll be familiar with the Ponds’ cold cream
Focus Group!
● Field Studies: Heading into the user’s environment and observing while
taking notes (and photographs or videos if possible).
● In-lab testing: Observations of users completing particular tasks in a
controlled environment. Users are often asked to describe out loud their
actions, thoughts, and feelings and are videoed for later analysis
● Card sorting: Used to help understand Information Architecture and
naming conventions better. Can be really handy to sort large amounts of
content into logical groupings for users.
Quantitative Methods:
● User surveys: Questionnaires with a structured format, targeting your
specific user personas. These can be a great way to get a large amount
of data. Surveymonkey is a popular online tool.
● First click testing: A test set up to analyse what a user would click on
first in order to complete their intended task. This can be done with
paper prototypes, interactive wireframes or an existing website.
● Eye tracking: Measures the gaze of the eye, allowing the observer to
‘see’ what the user sees. This can be an expensive test and
heatmapping is a good cheaper alternative.
● Heatmapping: Visual mapping of data showing how users click and
scroll through your prototype or website. The most well-known online
tool to integrate would be Crazyegg.
● Web analytics: Data that is gathered from a website or prototype it is
integrated with, allowing you to see the demographics of users, page
views, and funnels of how users move through your site and where they
drop off. The most well-known online tool to integrate would be Google
Analytics.
● A/B testing: Comparing two versions of a web page to see which one
converts users more. This is a great way to test button placements,
colors, banners, and other elements in your UI.
