What is UX Research? (2024)

Hello, today we’ll talk about UX Research, as we get started, it’s important to keep in mind that the role of a UX designer can look very different at different companies. At a larger company, with thousands of employees, UX designers often have a dedicated user experience research partner so designers don’t have to do much research themselves. But at a smaller company, one UX designer might be responsible for both the UX research and the UX design. That’s why it’s so important for you to learn how to do both parts of the job.

Let’s start with the basics. UX research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation and feedback. The goal of user experience research is to prioritize the user. We also want to make sure business needs are met. UX research can help bridge the gap between what a business thinks the user needs and what the user actually needs, before an expensive and time-consuming product is made. You may remember that the product development life cycle is the process used to take a product from an idea to reality. User research is a continuous part of the product development life cycle and takes place before, during, and after phase 3: Design.

Research that takes place before anything is designed is usually called foundational research and answers the question like, “What should we build?” Additional questions you might ask during this research phase are, “What are the user problems?” “How can we solve them?” The goal of foundational research is to help define the problem you would like to design a solution for. This research includes talking with users and identifying their pain points when using a product. And sometimes foundational research reveals opportunities no one on the design team would have come up with.

Common foundational research methods include:

• Interviews: A research method used to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions, thoughts, experiences, and feelings. You’ll often conduct interviews of your target users themselves.
• Surveys: An activity where many people are asked the same questions in order to understand what most people think about a product.
• Focus groups: A small group of people whose reactions are studied. For example, your focus group might bring together eight users to discuss their perspectives about new features in your design. A focus group is usually run by a moderator who guides the group on a certain topic of conversation.
• Competitive audit: An overview of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. You’ll conduct your own competitive audit later in the course, so you will understand this research method well!
• Field studies: Research activities that take place in the user’s context or personal environment, rather than in an office or lab.
• Diary studies: A research method used to collect qualitative data about user behaviors, activities, and experiences over time. Often, a user will log, or diary, about their daily activities and provide information about their behaviors and needs, which can help inform your designs.

Research that takes place during the design phase, phase 3, of the product development life cycle, is called design research and answers the question, “How should we build it?” Here’s a list of things you might want to ask users about during this phase of research.

• How was your experience using the prototype today?
• How easy or difficult was it to use? Why? Did you encounter any challenges?

The goal of design research is to inform how the product should be built. Design research gives designers a chance to reduce the problems that occur as users interact with your prototype. You can conduct design research very early in the design process when you have paper sketches, or you can wait until you have a prototype to test with users. It just depends on what your key research goals are.

Research methods that might be used to conduct design research include:

• A/B testing: A research method that evaluates and compares two different aspects of a product to discover which of them is most effective. For example, you might have users evaluate two layouts for the homepage of your app to find out which layout is more effective.
• Cafe or guerrilla studies: A research method where user feedback is gathered by taking a design or prototype into the public domain and asking passersby for their thoughts. For example, you might sit in a restaurant and ask customers if they would be willing to test your app design for a couple of minutes and provide feedback.
• Card sorting: A research method that instructs study participants to sort individual labels written on notecards into categories that make sense to them. This type of research is largely used to figure out the information architecture of your project.
• Intercepts: A research method that gathers on-site feedback from users as they engage in the activities being researched. Intercepts are often conducted in the field, so this type of research is often considered a subset of field research. An intercept study can provide quick, high-level feedback.

The third type of user research is called post-launch research and can be used to evaluate how well a launch feature is meeting the needs of users. Post-launch research answers the question, “Did we succeed?” The goal of post-launch research is to understand how users experienced the product and whether it was a good or poor user experience. You might also want to check your product’s performance against the competition.

You should use research methods that give insight into what the user thinks of your product and if their experience using your product aligns with how you intended it to function. Research methods you might use to conduct post-launch research include:

• A/B testing
• Usability studies
• Surveys
• Logs analysis: A research method used to evaluate recordings of users while they interact with your design, tools, etc.

Next, let’s discuss some of the key qualities that UX researchers usually possess. Qualities of a good UX researcher include empathy, pragmatism, and collaboration.

Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s feelings or thoughts in a situation.

Pragmatism is a practical approach to problem-solving. Pragmatic people are focused on reaching goals.

Collaboration is the ability to work with a range of people, personalities, and work styles. You already have all of these qualities. All you need to do is learn how to apply them in your work. The more you develop these qualities, the more capable a researcher you can become over time.