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User Research: What It Is and Why You Should Do It

User research is an essential part of UX design. Unless we understand who we are designing for and why, how can we even know what to create or where to begin? Depending on your project, requirements and constraints, you can choose different types of research methods, from surveys and tests to interviews and the most common method — usability testing. Here, we’ll look at what user research is, and the three most common reasons for doing user research — namely, to create designs that are truly relevant, to create designs that are easy and pleasurable to use, and to understand the return on investment of your user experience (UX) design .

What is User Research?

User research, or “design research,” as it’s sometimes called, covers a wide range of methods. It can mean anything from doing ethnographic interviews with your target group, to classical usability studies, to quantitative measurements of return on investment (ROI) on your user experience design. What all user research has in common is that it helps place people at the center of your design process and your products . You use user research to inspire your design, to evaluate your solutions, and to measure your impact. User research (and other kinds of research) is often divided into quantitative and qualitative methods.

Surveys and formal experiments such as A/B testing and tree testing are examples of quantitative research tools. Quantitative user research methods seek to measure user behavior in a way that can be quantified and used for statistical analysis.

Interviews and (to some degree) usability tests are examples of qualitative research tools. These are often more exploratory and seek to get an in-depth understanding of the experiences and everyday lives of individual users or user groups.

Each research method has benefits and drawbacks. As such, each can be used for achieving different goals. Which method you choose depends on what you want to achieve as well as a number of practical concerns, such as what type of project you are working on, your budget and your time constraints. With that in mind, let’s look at some different reasons for why you should involve users in your design process.

Three Good Reasons for Doing User Research

“ Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.” — Tim Brown, CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO

The type of user research you should do depends on your work process as well as your reason for doing user research in the first place. Here are three excellent reasons for doing user research:

1. To Create Designs That are Truly Relevant

If you understand your users, you can make designs that are relevant for them. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your users, you have no way of knowing whether your design will be relevant. A design that is not relevant to its target audience will never be a success .

The first step and core of the design thinking process is to empathize with your users. User research is one of the best ways to do that. Conducting different types of interviews and observing people in the contexts where they will use your design is a common method of doing this type of user research. We often place this type of research at the very beginning of a project to ensure that the overall direction for the project is relevant to potential customers and users. In order to ensure that your design continues to be relevant as your project progresses, validating your ideas with prospective users on a continuous basis is a vital habit to stick to. Talk to them about how they perceive your design and how they could imagine using it, or involve them directly in your design process, to ensure that you are still on the right track.

Let’s look at an example: In 2005, Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung did a number of ethnographic user studies that completely changed the way it thought about designing TVs. Together with the innovation and strategy consultancy ReD Associates, Samsung representatives visited people in different countries to observe how they live and to talk to them about their homes and the TV’s role in their homes. What they found surprised them. At the time, Samsung and most other TV manufacturers primarily designed their TVs with technical specs such as high-quality picture and sound in mind. The TVs were designed to show off their technical capabilities, but what Samsung found when visiting people was that they viewed a TV more like a piece of furniture . As a TV is turned off most of the time, people do not want it to dominate their living room. So, rather than show off their expensive TV with all its technological capabilities, they tried to hide it away as much as possible.

Following this insight, Samsung changed its design strategy radically, moving the inbuilt speakers to make the TV slimmer and creating a subtler, minimalistic design that would fit more seamlessly into people’s living rooms. Technical capabilities were still important, but they had to be balanced with design choices that made the TVs fit into people’s homes. “Home” was the watchword here, and Samsung got hard to work on the transformation. The challenge involved getting away from treating a living room like a showroom or sports bar, and going for “harmony” instead. By 2007, Samsung had doubled its share in the global TV market because it had proven to understand how to make its TVs relevant to its customers.

User research made Samsung change its TV design strategy to focus on making more minimalistic designs that fit into the customer’s home. Although TVs have not become smaller, everything extraneous has been removed. As we see here, the TV functions as a gallery-sized moving picture — with all the “bells and whistles” discreetly housed — light-years away from the old notion of “peacocking” its technical prowess as if it were a James Bond gadget.

2. To Create Designs That are Easy and Pleasurable to Use

“If the user is having a problem, it’s our problem.” — Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers

All products should have a high level of usability (i.e., be easy to use ), and usability tests can be a big help in achieving that. The days when programmed technology was a tool only to be used by experts are long gone. People expect products to be easy to learn and easy to use. They expect to pick them up and do things with them while only thinking about what they hope to achieve, not having to think about the products themselves. If your user experience is not good, chances are that people will move on to another product . Unless you work in a field with no competitors, a high level of usability (and a matching high-quality user experience) is essential in making any product a commercial success. Not to mention that your users will love you for creating a great user experience. Even if you are designing products for — e.g. — a highly specialized work environment where the users have no alternatives, products with a high level of usability will make work processes faster, safer and more efficient.

Wikiwand is a good example of a company that operates solely on providing a great user experience. Their product is a browser plugin which changes the design of Wikipedia articles to make them more appealing and user-friendly. Wikiwand does not provide different content from the classic Wikipedia webpage, but the company has thousands of users who praise it for the awesome user experience it delivers.

To the left is the classic Wikipedia interface; to the right is the Wikiwand version of the same article. The content is the same, but the experience is different.

When you are designing or developing a product, you become the primary expert on how to use it and what functionalities it has. Because you know your own product so well, however, you can become blind to functionality in your product that is difficult to use. As designers, we need that level of understanding of our products, but it also means that we can all too easily shift far away from the same perspective as our users. The author has personally participated in many projects where the designers know the ideas behind the interface and functionality of a product so well that separating the understandable from the not-so understandable is really difficult for them. This tendency of seeing things from the point of view of one’s profession — what we call “déformation professionnelle” — and not stepping back to catch the reality of what’s going on from a fresh, generalist angle is a natural one, incidentally.

Happily, though, you can avoid a lot of usability issues by following various guidelines and rules of thumb, but there will always be situations that the guidelines don’t cover, or where different guidelines tell you different things. You might also be designing for a target group such as seniors or children where the regular guidelines do not apply. That means testing the user experience of your product is always a good idea. Usability tests work best when they are an integrated part of your work process so that you test your product iteratively and from an early stage of development onward. Early tests are what we can do on primitive prototypes — e.g., using paper; from there, we progress to more refined prototypes until we have something that resembles the final product. If you only start testing when you have an almost-finished product, you run a very serious risk in that your findings might come too late for you to make larger changes to the product. For instance, if all the software is done or if you can’t push your release date, you’ll have your back against the wall. So, stay fluid with your design until the very end of the process — it’s amazing what insights can come from an eleventh-hour test of the ‘last’ version you have planned for rollout.

3. To Understand the Return on Investment of Your UX Design

Although the importance of good design has become widely recognized, UX designers and researchers still experience having to fight for resources to enable them to do their work. Executives and shareholders sometimes fail to see the value in investing in user research and UX design. UX design and user research is not as tangible as new features or fixing software bugs; so, overlooking their value can happen all the more easily. If resources become scarce, UX is also often one of the first areas to experience cuts; the reason is that consequences are not as immediately felt as when you save on development or similar areas. If you make cuts in say, software development, you can immediately see that the consequences involve cutting back on features or having buggy software; however, if you make cuts in UX, you don’t experience the consequences until your product reaches your users, and when your competitors attract your users towards them.

We can easily argue for the value of great UX; it is much more effective if we can show it. This is where studies to show the return on investment (ROI) on UX efforts are worth their weight in gold (or the weight, at least, of the printouts). If you can show that the changes you made in the design generated more sales, resulted in a larger number of customers, or made work processes more efficient, you have a much stronger case for investing in UX. User studies to measure the effect of your design are mostly quantitative and can take different forms. You can do A/B tests during development that compare different versions of your design, or you can do studies after your product is released to measure differences in use patterns. With apps and webpages, you often build in different types of analytics to inform you of different user patterns.

The global online marketplace Etsy is a good example of a company that has built its success on a focus on customer experience throughout the entire customer journey and that continuously measures the user experience. 

For example , Etsy routinely tests different versions of user interfaces to constantly improve the platform’s usability as well as business metrics. Etsy's continued position as one of the largest online marketplaces is a result of its rigorous focus on usability, research and testing.

The world’s most successful companies continually test and iterate their products, as is evident in their A/B tests. Here is one of several that GoodUI has been tracking. You can see more such “leaked” tests from AirBnb, Amazon, Booking, Netflix and others on their website.

The Take Away

Here, we have shown three good reasons for doing user research and we have touched on when in your design process you can integrate user research. Here are the three reasons again:

Do user research to ensure that you create products that are truly relevant to your target group.

Do user research to ensure that your products deliver a great user experience.

Do user research to show the ROI of your design efforts.

You can — and should — do user studies at all stages of the design process. You do studies before you start designing so as to get an understanding of what your target group needs ; you carry out iterative tests during development to ensure that the user experience is on track, and you can measure the effect of your design after your product is released. This “holy trinity” approach can keep you three steps ahead as every dimension of your release will have been considered, analyzed, and tested before you sit down to see the results of the ultimate test (the ROI), more confident that you’ve got a winning design.

References and Where to Learn More

For an in-depth coverage of different user research methods, take the following courses:

User Research – Methods and Best Practices

Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX

In this interview, founder of Wikiwand, Lior Grossman explains the company’s approach to designing a more usable encyclopedia.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

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How to conduct user research: A step-by-step guide

This is part one of a guide to User research.

Continue with part two: How to conduct user research: A Step-by-step guide

Continue with part three: What is exploratory research and why is it so exciting?

What user research did you conduct to reveal your ideal user?

Uh-oh. Not this question again. We both know the most common answer and it’s not great.

“Uhm, we talked to some users and had a brainstorming session with our team. It’s not much, but we don’t have time to do anything more right now. It’s better than nothing.”

Let’s be brutally honest about the meaning of that answer and rephrase it:

“ We don’t have time to get to know our actual user and maximize our chances of success. We’ll just assume that we know what they want and then wonder why the product fails at a later stage.”

If that sounds super bad, it’s because IT IS. You don’t want to end up in this situation. And you won’t.

After reading this guide, you’ll know exactly how to carry out the user research that will become your guiding star during product development.

On this page

Why is user research so important?

Step #1: define research objectives.

Go ahead – create that fake persona

Step #2: Pick your methods

Qualitative methods – the why, quantitative methods – the what, behavioral and attitudinal methods, step #3: find your participants, how to recruit participants, how many participants, step #4: conduct user research.

Focus groups

Competitive analysis

Field studies

What’s next?

User research can be a scary word. It may sound like money you don’t have, time you can’t spare, and expertise you need to find. That’s why some people convince themselves that it’s not that important.

Which is a HUGE mistake.

User research is crucial – without it, you’ll spend your energy, time and money on a product that is based around false assumptions that won’t work in the real world.

Let’s take a look at Segway, a technologically brilliant product with incredible introductory publicity. Although it’s still around, it simply didn’t reach initial expectations. Here are some of the reasons why:

• It brought mockery, not admiration. The user was always “that guy”, who often felt fat or lazy.
• Cities were not prepared for it. Neither users nor policemen knew if it should be used on the road or on the sidewalk.
• A large segment of the target market comprised of postal and security workers. However, postal workers need both hands while walking, and security workers prefer bikes that don’t have a limited range.

Segway mainly fell short because of issues that could’ve been foreseen and solved by better user research.

Tim Brown, the CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO, sums it up nicely:

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

? Bonus material Download User research checklist and a comparison table

Never forget – you are not your user.

You require proper user research to understand your user’s problems, pain points, needs, desires, feelings and behaviours.

Let’s start with the process!

Before you get in touch with your target users, you need to define why you are doing the research in the first place. 

Establish clear objectives and agree with your team on your exact goals – this will make it much easier to gain valuable insights. Otherwise, your findings will be all over the place.

Here are some sample questions that will help you to define your objectives:

• What do you want to uncover?
• What are the knowledge gaps that you need to fill?
• What is already working and what isn’t?
• Is there a problem that needs to be fixed? What is that problem?
• What will the research bring to the business and/or your customers?

Once you start answering questions like these, it’s time to make a list of objectives. These should be specific and concise .

Let’s say you are making a travel recommendation app. Your research goals could be:

• Understand the end-to-end process of how participants are currently making travel decisions.
• Uncover the different tools that participants are using to make travel decisions.
• Identify problems or barriers that they encounter when making travel decisions.

I suggest that you prioritize your objectives and create an Excel table. It will come in handy later.

Go ahead, create that fake persona

A useful exercise for you to do at this stage is to write down some hypotheses about your target users.

Ask yourself:

What do we think we understand about our users that is relevant to our business or product?

Yes, brainstorm the heck out of this persona, but keep it relevant to the topic at hand.

Here’s my empathy map and empathy map canvas to really help you flesh out your imaginary user.

Once you’re finished, research any and every statement , need and desire with real people.

It’s a simple yet effective way to create questions for some of the research methods that you’ll be using.

However, you need to be prepared to throw some of your assumptions out of the window. If you think this persona may affect your bias, don’t bother with hypotheses and dive straight into research with a completely open mind.

Alright, you have your research goals. Now let’s see how you can reach them.

Here’s the main question you should be asking yourself at this step in the process:

Based on our time and manpower, what methods should we select?

It’s essential to pick the right method at the right time . I’ll delve into more details on specific methods in Step #4. For now, let’s take a quick look at what categories you can choose from.

Qualitative research tells you ‘why’ something occurs. It tells you the reasons behind the behavior, the problem or the desire. It answers questions like: “ Why do you prefer using app X instead of other similar apps?” or “What’s the hardest part about being a sales manager? Why?” .

Qualitative data comes in the form of actual insights and it’s fairly easy to understand.

Most of the methods we’ll look at in Step #4 are qualitative methods.

Quantitative research helps you to understand what is happening by providing different metrics.

It answers questions such as “What percentage of users left their shopping cart without completing the purchase?” or “Is it better to have a big or small subscription button?”.

Most quantitative methods come in handy when testing your product, but not so much when you’re researching your users. This is because they don’t tell you why particular trends or patterns occur.

There is a big difference between “what people do” and “what people say”.

As their names imply, attitudinal research is used to understand or measure attitudes and beliefs, whereas behavioral research is used to measure and observe behaviors.

Here’s a practical landscape that will help you choose the best methods for you. If it doesn’t make sense now, return to it once you’ve finished the guide and you’ll have a much better understanding.

Source: Nielsen Norman Group

I’ll give you my own suggestions and tips about the most common and useful methods in Step #4 – Conducting research.

In general, if your objectives are specific enough, it shouldn’t be too hard to see which methods will help you achieve them.

Remember that Excel table? Choose a method or two that will fulfill each objective and type it in the column beside it.

It won’t always be possible to carry out everything you’ve written down. If this is the case, go with the method(s) that will give you most of the answers. With your table, it will be easy to pick and choose the most effective options for you.

Onto the next step!

This stage is all about channeling your inner Sherlock and finding the people with the secret intel for your product’s success.

Consider your niche, your objectives and your methods – this should give you a general idea of the group or groups you want to talk to and research further.

Here’s my advice for most cases.

If you’re building something from the ground up, the best participants might be:

• People you assume face the problem that your product aims to solve
• Your competitors’ customers

If you are developing something or solving a problem for an existing product, you should also take a look at:

• Advocates and super-users
• Customers who have recently churned
• Users who tried to sign up or buy but decided not to commit

There are plenty of ways to bring on participants, and you can get creative so long as you keep your desired target group in mind.

You can recruit them online – via social media, online forums or niche community sites.

You can publish an ad with requirements and offer some kind of incentive.

You can always use a recruitment agency, too. This can be costly, but it’s also efficient.

If you have a user database and are changing or improving your product, you can find your participants in there. Make sure that you contact plenty of your existing users, as most of them won’t respond.

You can even ask your friends to recommend the right kind of people who you wouldn’t otherwise know.

With that said, you should always be wary of including friends in your research . Sure, they’re the easiest people to reach, but your friendship can (and probably will) get in the way of obtaining honest answers. There are plenty of horror stories about people validating their “brilliant” ideas with their friends, only to lose a fortune in the future. Only consider them if you are 100% sure that they will speak their mind no matter what.

That depends on the method. If you’re not holding a massive online survey, you can usually start with 5 people in each segment . That’s enough to get the most important unique insights. You can then assess the situation and decide whether or not you need to expand your research.

Finally! Let’s go through some of the more common methods you’ll be using, including their pros and cons, some pro tips, and when you should use them.

Engaging in one-on-one discussions with users enables you to acquire detailed information about a user’s attitudes, desires, and experiences. Individual concerns and misunderstandings can be directly addressed and cleared up on the spot.

Interviews are time-consuming, especially on a per participant basis. You have to prepare for them, conduct them, analyze them and sometimes even transcribe them. They also limit your sample size, which can be problematic. The quality of your data will depend on the ability of your interviewer, and hiring an expert can be expensive.

• Prepare questions that stick to your main topics. Include follow-up questions for when you want to dig deeper into certain areas.
• Record the interview . Don’t rely on your notes. You don’t want to interrupt the flow of the interview by furiously scribbling down your answers, and you’ll need the recording for any potential in-depth analysis later on.
• Conduct at least one trial run of the interview to see if everything flows and feels right. Create a “playbook” on how the interview should move along and update it with your findings.
• If you are not comfortable with interviewing people, let someone else do it or hire an expert interviewer. You want to make people feel like they are talking to someone they know, rather than actually being interviewed. In my experience, psychologists are a great choice for an interviewer.

Interviews are not really time-sensitive, as long as you do them before the development process.

However, they can be a great supplement to online surveys and vice-versa. Conducting an interview beforehand helps you to create a more focused and relevant survey, while conducting an interview afterwards helps you to explain the survey answers.

Surveys are generally conducted online, which means that it’s possible to gather a lot of data in a very short time for a very low price . Surveys are usually anonymous, so users are often more honest in their responses.

It’s more difficult to get a representative sample because it’s tough to control who takes part in the survey – especially if you post it across social media channels or general forums. Surveys are quite rigid and if you don’t account for all possible answers, you might be missing out on valuable data. You have to be very careful when choosing your questions – poorly worded or leading ones can negatively influence how users respond. Length can also be an issue, as many people hate taking long surveys.

• Keep your surveys brief , particularly if participants won’t be compensated for their time. Only focus on what is truly important.
• Make sure that the questions can be easily understood. Unclear or ambiguous questions result in data on which you can’t depend. Keep the wording as simple as possible.
• Avoid using leading questions. Don’t ask questions that assume something, such as “What do you dislike about X?”. Replace this with “What’s your experience with X?”.
• Find engaged, niche online communities that fit your user profile. You’ll get more relevant data from these.

Similar to interviews. It depends on whether you want to use the survey as a preliminary method, or if you want a lot of answers to a few, very focused questions.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are moderated discussions with around 5 to 10 participants, the intention of which is to gain insight into the individuals’ attitudes, ideas and desires.

As focus groups include multiple people, they can quickly reveal the desires, experiences, and attitudes of your target audience . They are helpful when you require a lot of specific information in a short amount of time. When conducted correctly, they can act like interviews on steroids.

Focus groups can be tough to schedule and manage. If the moderator isn’t experienced, the discussion can quickly go off-topic. There might be an alpha participant that dictates the general opinion, and because it’s not one-on-one, people won’t always speak their mind.

• Find an experienced moderator who will lead the discussion. Having another person observing and taking notes is also highly recommended, as he or she can emphasize actionable insights and catch non-verbal clues that would otherwise be missed.
• Define the scope of your research . What questions will you ask? How in-depth do you want to go with the answers? How long do you want each discussion to last? This will determine how many people and groups should be tested.
• If possible, recruit potential or existing users who are likely to provide good feedback, yet will still allow others to speak their mind. You won’t know the participants most of the time, so having an experienced moderator is crucial.

Focus groups work best when you have a few clear topics that you want to focus on.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of existing products . It explores how successful competitors act on the market. It gives you a solid basis for other user research methods and can also uncover business opportunities. It helps you to define your competitive advantage , as well as identify different user types.

A competitive analysis can tell you what exists, but not why it exists. You may collect a long feature list, but you won’t know which features are valued most by users and which they don’t use at all. In many cases, it’s impossible to tell how well a product is doing, which makes the data less useful. It also has limited use if you’re creating something that’s relatively new to the market.

• Create a list or table of information that you want to gather – market share, prices, features, visual design language, content, etc.
• Don’t let it go stale. Update it as the market changes so that you include new competitors.
• If you find something really interesting but don’t know the reason behind it, conduct research among your competitor’s users .
• After concluding your initial user research, go over the findings of your competitive analysis to see if you’ve discovered anything that’s missing on the market .

It can be a great first method, especially if you’re likely to talk to users of your competitors’ products

Field Studies

Field studies are research activities that take place in the user’s context, rather than at your company or office. Some are purely observational (the researcher is a “fly on the wall”), others are field interviews, and some act as a demonstration of pain points in existing systems.

You really get to see the big picture –  field studies allow you to gain insights that will fundamentally change your product design . You see what people actually do instead of what they say they do. A field study can explain problems and behaviours that you don’t understand better than any other method.

It’s the most time-consuming and expensive method. The results rely on the observer more than any of the other options. It’s not appropriate for products that are used in rare and specific situations.

• Establish clear objectives. Always remember why you are doing the research. Field studies can provide a variety of insights and sometimes it can be hard to stay focused. This is especially true if you are participating in the observed activity.
• Be patient. Observation might take some time. If you rush, you might end up with biased results.
• Keep an open mind and don’t ask leading questions. Be prepared to abandon your preconceptions, assumptions and beliefs. When interviewing people, try to leave any predispositions or biases at the door.
• Be warm but professional. If you conduct interviews or participate in an activity, you won’t want people around you to feel awkward or tense. Instead, you’ll want to observe how they act naturally.

Use a field study when no other method will do or if it becomes clear that you don’t really understand your user. If needed, you should conduct this as soon as possible – it can lead to monumental changes.

We started with a user persona and we’ll finish on this topic, too. But yours will be backed by research 😉

A persona outlines your ideal user in a concise and understandable way. It includes the most important insights that you’ve discovered. It makes it easier to design products around your actual users and speak their language. It’s a great way to familiarize new people on your team with your target market.

A persona is only as good as the user research behind it. Many companies create a “should be” persona instead of an actual one. Not only can such a persona be useless, it can also be misleading.

• Keep personas brief. Avoid adding unnecessary details and omit information that does not aid your decision making. If a persona document is too long, it simply won’t be used.
• Make personas specific and realistic. Avoid exaggerating and include enough detail to help you find real people that represent your ideal user.

Create these after you’ve carried out all of the initial user research. Compile your findings and create a persona that will guide your development process.

Now you know who you are creating your product for – you’ve identified their problems, needs and desires. You’ve laid the groundwork, so now it’s time to design a product that will blow your target user away! But that’s a topic for a whole separate guide, one that will take you through the process of product development and testing 😉

PS. Don’t forget -> Here is your ? User Research Checklist and comparison table

About the author

Oh hey, I’m Romina Kavcic

I am a Design Strategist who holds a Master of Business Administration. I have 14+ years of career experience in design work and consulting across both tech startups and several marquee tech unicorns such as Stellar.org, Outfit7, Databox, Xamarin, Chipolo, Singularity.NET, etc. I currently advise, coach and consult with companies on design strategy & management, visual design and user experience. My work has been published on Forbes, Hackernoon, Blockgeeks, Newsbtc, Bizjournals, and featured on Apple iTunes Store.

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What Is User Research, and What Is Its Purpose?

User research, or UX research, is an absolutely vital part of the  user experience design process.

Typically done 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.

Ultimately, user research means the difference between designing based on guesswork and assumptions, and actually creating something that solves a real user problem. In other words: Do not skip the research phase!

If you’re new to user research, fear not. We’re going to explain exactly what UX research is and why it’s so important. We’ll also show you how to plan your user research and introduce you to some key user research methods .

We’ve divided this rather comprehensive guide into the following sections. Feel free to skip ahead using the menu below:

• What is user research?
• What is the purpose of user research?
• How to plan your user research.
• An introduction to different research methods—and when to use them.

Ready? Let’s jump in.

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). 

Typically done at the start of a project—but also extremely valuable throughout—it encompasses different types of research methodology to gather both qualitative and quantitative data in relation to your product or service.

Before we continue, let’s consider the difference between qualitative and quantitative data .

Qualitative vs. Quantitative data: What’s the difference?

Qualitative UX research results in descriptive data which looks more at how people think and feel. It helps to find your users’ opinions, problems, reasons, and motivations. You can learn all about in-depth in this video by professional UX designer Maureen Herben:

Quantitative UX research , on the other hand, generally 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.

User research rarely relies on just one form of data collection and often uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods together to form a bigger picture. The data can be applied to an existing product to gain insight to help improve the product experiences, or it can be applied to an entirely new product or service, providing a baseline for UX, design, and development.

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

As you consider the  why  of user research, remember that it’s easier than you might realize to overlook entire groups of users. It’s important to ensure that you’re conducting inclusive UX research and that starts in the earliest stages!

2. What is the purpose of user research?

The purpose of user research is to put your design project into context. 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.

Throughout the design process, your UX research will aid you in many ways. It’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 this so important? Let’s find out.

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.

Here’s why conducting user research is absolutely crucial:

User research helps you to design better products!

There’s a misconception that it’s ok to just do a bit of research and testing at the end of your project. The truth is that you need UX research first, followed by usability testing and iteration throughout.

This is because research makes the design better. The end goal is to create products and services that people want to use. The mantra in UX design is that some user research is always better than none .

It’s likely at some point in your UX career that you will come across the first challenge of any UX designer—convincing a client or your team to include user research in a project.

User research keeps user stories at the center of your design process.

All too often, the user research phase is seen as optional or merely “nice-to-have”—but in reality, it’s crucial from both a design and a business perspective. This brings us to our next point…

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!

The research phase ensures you’re designing with real insights and facts — not guesswork! Imagine you release a product that has the potential to fill a gap in the market but, due to a lack of user research, is full of bugs and usability issues. At best, you’ll have a lot of unnecessary work to do to get the product up to scratch. At worst, the brand’s reputation will suffer.

UX research gives the product a competitive edge. Research shows you how your product will perform in a real-world context, highlighting any issues that need to be ironed out before you go ahead and develop it.

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.

The second challenge is how often businesses think they know their users without having done any research. You’ll be surprised at how often a client will tell you that user research is not necessary because they know their users!

In a 2005 survey completed by Bain, a large global management consulting firm, they found some startling results. 80% of businesses thought they knew best about what they were delivering. Only 8% of those businesses’ customers agreed.

The survey may be getting old, but the principle and misperception still persist.

In some cases, businesses genuinely do know their customers and there may be previous data on hand to utilize. However, more often than not, ‘knowing the users’ comes down to personal assumptions and opinions.

“It’s only natural to assume that everyone uses the Web the same way we do, and—like everyone else—we tend to think that our own behavior is much more orderly and sensible than it really is.” (Don’t Make Me Think ‘Revisited’, Steve Krug, 2014.) A must on every UX Designer’s bookshelf!

What we think a user wants is not the same as what a user thinks they want. Without research, we inadvertently make decisions for ourselves instead of for our target audience. To summarize, the purpose of user research is to help us design to fulfill the user’s actual needs, rather than our own assumptions of their needs.

In a nutshell, UX research informs and opens up the realm of design possibilities. It saves time and money, ensures a competitive edge, and helps you to be a more effective, efficient, user-centric designer.

3. How to plan your user research

When planning your user research , it’s good to have a mix of both qualitative and quantitative data to draw from so you don’t run into issues from the value-action gap, which can at times make qualitative data unreliable.

The value-action gap is a well-known psychology principle outlining that people genuinely don’t do what they say they would do, and is commonly referred to as what people say vs. what people do.

More than 60% of participants said they were “likely” or “very likely” to buy a kitchen appliance in the next 3 months. 8 months later, only 12% had. How Customers Think, Gerald Zaltman, 2003

When planning your user research, you need to do more than just User Focus Groups—observation of your users really is the key. You need to watch what your users 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. For this, we need empathy (and good listening skills) allowing you to observe and challenge assumptions of what you already think you know about your users.

Be open to some surprises!

4. When to use different user research methods

There’s a variety of different qualitative and quantitative research methods out there. If you’ve been doing the CareerFoundry UX Design course , you may have already covered some of the list below in your course.

It isn’t an exhaustive list, but covers some of the more popular methods of research. Our student team lead runs through many of them in the video below.

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.

Further reading

Now you know what user research is and why it’s so important. If you’re looking for a way to get trained in this particular discipline, there’s good news—owing to demand and popularity, there’s a growing number of UX research bootcamps out there.

If you’d like to learn more about UX research, you may find the following articles useful:

• What Does A UX Researcher Actually Do? The Ultimate Career Guide
• How to Conduct User Research Like a Professional
• How to Build a UX Research Portfolio (Step-by-Step Guide)

User research is the process of understanding the needs, behaviors, and attitudes of users to inform the design and development of products or services. It involves collecting and analyzing data about users through various methods such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing.

2. How to conduct user research?

User research can be conducted through various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, and usability testing. The method chosen depends on the research goals and the resources available. Typically, user research involves defining research objectives, recruiting participants, creating research protocols, conducting research activities, analyzing data, and reporting findings.

3. Is user research the same as UX?

User research is a part of the broader UX (User Experience) field, but they are not the same. UX encompasses a wide range of activities such as design, testing, and evaluation, while user research specifically focuses on understanding user needs and behaviors to inform UX decisions.

4. What makes good user research?

Good user research is characterized by clear research goals, well-defined research protocols, appropriate sampling methods, unbiased data collection, and rigorous data analysis. It also involves effective communication of research findings to stakeholders, as well as using the findings to inform design and development decisions.

5. Is user research a good career?

User research is a growing field with many opportunities for career growth and development. With the increasing importance of user-centered design, there is a high demand for skilled user researchers in various industries such as tech, healthcare, and finance. A career in user research can be fulfilling for those interested in understanding human behavior and designing products that meet user needs.

Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Research Methods

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Introduction to User Research

• First Online: 21 July 2020

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This introductory chapter defines user research and aims to give you some background information on the origins of the term to put it in better context. We’ll then review the roles and skill sets of user researchers, taking into consideration their level of experience, followed by an overview of how to become a user researcher today and the training available for that role. Finally, we’ll look at the benefits of user research and why and when companies should integrate it into their product development life cycle.

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• Winning The Game with UX Design and CRO
• How to get started with CRO: Workbook

User Research: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Customers and Making Better UX Decisions

User research is an integral part of the UX design process. It provides insight into your users’ needs and behaviors, so that you can create better products and experiences for them.

There are many types of user research, but it’s important to know what they are and how they’re used to make better UX decisions. In this article, I will discuss different types of user research that I like to conduct, and their pros and cons, so that you can choose which one is best for your project!

This article is a continuation of my last article about the importance of proper UX and user research and an excerpt from my upcoming book about CRO and UX design !

Different types of UX research methods

The importance of conducting thorough user research before designing a product or service is widely recognized, but it’s important to know what types of research will be most helpful for your project. Below I will discuss some top UX research methods and their respective pros and cons, so that you can make the best decisions for your project!

So let’s get right to it. Here are some methods I like to apply while doing UX research and the benefits of applying them to your processes.

Market insight

Market insights are the most common type of user research because it’s necessary to know what your competitors are doing to stay ahead. This is also crucial for learning about any new trends that may not have been popularized yet, so you can start incorporating them into your design before everyone else does!

Businesses can use various analyzing methods, including competitive intelligence and market analysis to get a headstart to their quantitative research. The former is conducted by reviewing competitors’ website analytics, like page views or conversion rates , while the latter can be done on social media platforms where customers post their latest purchases with hashtags like #OOTD (Outfit Of The Day). This will give an idea of what type of customer they target and how well it works for them!

Benefits of market insight:

• Provides valuable information on competitive intelligence
• Explores new trends before the competition does
• Helps stay ahead of competitors and keep up with any changes in design
• It’s easy to conduct for people with no experience in UX research

Market insight is essential to UX research because it provides valuable information on competitive intelligence, explores new trends before the competition, and helps to stay ahead of competitors.

CRO & UX are a big field, it can be difficult to know where to start 🤔

Personas are another type of UX research used when working on a new product or improving upon a current one. They can be fictional or real, usually determined by the designer based on their own experiences and knowledge .

These help better understand your user because they’re typically made up of information gathered through interviews, surveys, focus groups, observations, and contextual inquiry. It’s important to note that you should never only rely on one or two personas because they may not represent the entire group.

Benefits of personas:

• Improve user experience
• Help you understand your audience better with personas
• Give you a better idea of who to create a product for and how they use it
• Investigate changes to be made to improve the quality of the product
• Increase empathy with your product

Personas are an excellent user research method because they allow users to be understood and for the product to be made with empathy, which will lead to a better user experience. I always use this as a key component in my design methodology.

Usability testing

The best way to find flaws in your product is through usability testing. This type of UX research allows you to determine whether people can easily use it, what steps they take when using the app or site, if there’s confusion about crucial features like contrast and readability. Testing for weaknesses before launching will help ensure a solid customer experience on your website/mobile application!

Usability testing is a vital tool for any UX professional. Jakob Nielsen developed the technique of 5-person usability tests and argues that once one or two people are totally confused by the prototype design, little can be achieved by testing more subjects who struggle with an imperfect design.

“Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than five users and running as many small tests as you can afford.” says Jakob Nielsen.

Nielsen’s point is that testing with five users, solving the problems they discover, and then testing it in a different group of five, is better than running a usability test on 10. In practice, these tests are carried out once or twice a week during development, when three to five people are tested each round and results are delivered within 24 hours, so you can identify any problems before you implement them. He also states the number of users tested within one project can range from 40 to over 100. Research shows that user tests carried out by organizations most commonly involve recruiting 5–10 participants.

Benefits of usability tests:

• Gain insight into how your site or app is being used
• Find and fix issues before they become problematic
• Get more information on what users want from your product
• Understand if something needs to be re-thought from the ground up
• The results are highly accurate, as you get unbiased feedback from real, live users

We rely on usability testing to find flaws in our product before it’s launched. This will help ensure a solid customer experience in the product you launch.

Creating prototypes for user feedback and more

Prototypes allow users to grasp an idea in its most basic form before investing resources into building something that might be too complicated or not what they wanted.

You can easily create a prototype with paper, pen, and other tools for early testing. This is one of the best UX research methods because it’s quick and easy to make prototypes!

Benefits of prototyping:

• Fast, easy, and cheap
• Simple for any skill level
• Allows customers to help shape your product without spending significant money or time upfront
• Creates better products with less risk
• Improves the efficiency of early product design
• Increases ROI because you are not wasting resources on complicated products

Prototyping is one of the best UX research methods because it’s rapid, painless, and inexpensive. This will allow your customers to help shape your product without spending significant money or time upfront. Ideal for pre-launch testing so that you can optimize the success of your product at launch!

User testing

This type of UX research tests whether your product meets user needs, which is essential when designing any digital product and belongs in the category of feedback methodologies in the design process.

User testing can show you if any features are lacking that need added, and more by letting people use products with varying levels of expertise so you know who your target audience should be. This method differs from Usability Testing in that User Testing focuses more on the features and how they work.

Benefits of user testing:

• Helps ensure your product meets user needs
• Shows you how consumers will actually use the product
• Aids in design so it can be both simple and intuitive

User testing helps ensure your product meets user needs. This will allow you to design a simple yet intuitive product that consumers can use easily!

User interviews

User interviews are one of the most trusted research methods in UX and are one of the most commonly used observation techniques (at least in my arsenal of research tools).

These sessions with actual customers help designers and developers understand what users want and add to your qualitative research, so it’s essential to connect with a diverse group if you’re going for feedback on your product or service.

The benefit of user interviews:

• Get the most authentic understanding of what your users want
• Find insight into pain points and desires you may not have been aware of if you didn’t do this research yourself
• Learn how to build better products & services by watching people use them
• Amplify your UX design skills

User interviews are an excellent way to understand what your users want and need. They are a fantastic, affordable way to go about getting feedback on your product or service.

A survey can be used for many purposes, but one of the most popular is to collect data. There are two types: closed-ended and open-ended surveys.

Closed-ended questions generate data for quantitative research that will help back up your idea or decisions, while an open question generates data for qualitative research, which provides more detail without being biased by answers given when you ask a direct question about a topic.

A standard tool in UX research design is to survey people’s thoughts on topics including functionality, usability, etc., using qualitative and quantitative methods depending on what information needs to be collected from participants. I would also say that surveys also belongs in the category of feedback methodologies in the design process.

The benefit of Surveys:

• Helpful for getting feedback on an idea or decision.
• Gain access to unbiased data
• An easy way to get feedback
• Access qualitative and quantitative findings

User tests are one of the best methods for getting feedback on your product or service in a fast and cost-effective way.

Focus Groups

UX research methods can be complicated, but focus groups are an excellent way to get feedback on your products. They’re like surveys in that they allow you to ask specific questions and collect data, with the added benefit of meeting people’s reactions for qualitative information.

The benefit of Focus groups:

• Convenient ways to get feedback from your target audience.
• Highly customizable and adaptable to various research needs.
• A friendly, non-intimidating environment where participants feel comfortable giving their honest opinions.
• Cost-effective research method
• Face-to-face interaction with respondents
• Online interviewing is a terrific option if your product is not available in that country or language. (or we have a pandemic)

The focus group is an excellent way to get feedback on your products. It’s like a survey, but with more qualitative information, and it lets you communicate directly with the potential customers.

Contextual Inquiry

Many people use this research method, but it could be a game-changer. This involves talking to customers about their experience with your product and how they use it in different contexts — this will give you an idea of the challenges users face while using your product.

Combining this with focus groups and user testing can provide them excellent insights into what’s most important!

The benefit of Contextual Inquiry:

• Give you an insider’s perspective of user experience
• Learn more about where customers struggle with your product
• Understand customer needs and expectations from different points of view
• Generate various ideas for improving the user experience

Contextual Inquiry is an excellent way to get an insider’s perspective of user experience

How to conduct user research

Does your design research need a fresh coat of paint? If you want to learn how to conduct UX research, the best place to start is with WHY, WHAT, and WHO.

Why are you conducting this study? What do you or your team hope for from the end-users perspective, and what will be their goal after completing it all — these answers give directions for everything that comes next in a compelling user experience analysis.

It’s easy to get carried away when you’re excited about a project. Many designers underestimate the importance of conducting research. They jump into designing wireframes and prototypes without ever talking to potential users or researching their target audience’s wants and needs. The best way to make your product desired by people is with some good old-fashioned market research!

We have talked a lot about how to conduct UX research, but the real key is in knowing what kind of action plan you need to do thorough user research to create both a beautiful design and a great user experience. Why? We want a balance between qualitative and quantitative research: one that will ensure we have enough data for both strategy and execution while also bridging any gaps from our target users on all sides.

Some critical questions you can start asking yourself or your team is

• What are the goals of this research?
• What will you be researching and why?
• Who is your target audience, what products or services do they use now, who are their competitors?

This information should help guide decisions on how to conduct UX research.

Some general steps for conducting a successful UX study include:

• Define objectives  — brainstorming solutions with stakeholders, and use the questions posed above
• Conduct user interviews  — gathering qualitative data from potential users about needs and wants
• Monitor customer service calls/online chats  — understanding the challenges people face in real-life situations where they might need support
• Survey sample size (e.g., 100)  — quantitative analysis of responses collected by surveys or polls that measure opinions, attitudes, knowledge, etc
• Create personas  — a fictional representation of the user/stakeholder used to classify groups and create empathy for end-users
• Design wireframes or prototypes (depending on the goal)  — understanding how design decisions can affect UX research
• Ask questions in persona interviews  — get deeper insights into what would work best with our target audience
• Test designs against goals and objectives  — validate assumptions through testing various solutions before making a final decision. This process may take some time but will lead to better results because the designer will have considered more options beforehand
• Document findings from the study  — What were the key learnings? Were valuable thoughts or ideas lost during conversations? Use a shared documentation tool so everyone can see what is happening

In conclusion, it’s important to conduct user research and have a structured plan with an end goal in mind. Conducting this type of UX research can help you create a better product for your target audience by understanding their wants and needs before designing the final product or wasting time on something that could be avoided at the beginning of any project. The key to conducting UX is getting answers as quickly as possible so you know who will use your prototype, what features the end-user really wants — and thus where the design team should focus its efforts from day one!

The process will appear differently based on the case, the team, and how you like to work. But using the example above and the tools provided in the last article, you have a head start in how to conduct UX research.

Moving forward with user research methods

Conducting UX research is more than simply asking customers what they want and then giving it to them. You need to know where their needs are, why they have those needs, how often these problems occur, if the problem has been solved before, and really get a deep understanding of the user behaviors.

Moving forward, I would recommend you take some time to think about your own goals for conducting UX research. What do you hope to learn? How can design decisions affect your study? Who is your target audience? What would be your first steps in conducting the research?

Do you want to learn more about UX and CRO?

I’m currently working on my book on the subject of CRO and UX , and how they complete each other for a better user experience. This book is for the aspiring UX designer who wants to learn more about CRO and help them in their everyday design work. It’s packed with real-life examples, case studies from Silicon Valley companies, and tips on applying this knowledge to your projects.

You can sign up for my newsletter here to get the latest updates and a heads-up when it comes out for pre-order on Amazon.

You can also find me on Twitter , Instagram , and LinkedIn to continue the discussion! ( or even email me )

Get ready to skyrocket conversion! 🚀

Related articles from the same category:, the best online ux design courses: 7 top ux & ui design courses, the ultimate guide to ux prototyping: what tools to use, how to get started and what not to do, the five principles of ux design psychology: can you predict the behavior of your users.

• Utility Menu

User Research Methods and Recommendations

This document is intended as a high-level overview of the concepts, methods, benefits, and challenges of user research as a discipline within an information technology organization..

Purpose of this Document

This document is intended as a high-level overview of the concepts, methods, benefits, and challenges of user research as a discipline within an Information Technology organization. This advisory encourages individual contributors involved in the discovery, design, development, and implementation of new products, processes, or services; or the monitoring of success criteria for existing solutions, to incorporate appropriate research methods as part of their regular strategic and operational practices. Links to additional resources, including guides for performing select user research methods, are provided.

Executive Summary

Understanding the human dimensions that shape a person’s interactions with an IT organization—and the solutions it delivers—are critical for the successful delivery of value to the people it ultimately serves. Integrating user research methods with routine IT procedural activities (e.g. requirements gathering, solution design, user acceptance testing) enables the organization to:

• unveil unmet needs and improve strategic decision making
• measure the value and impact of current or proposed solutions

Potential user research methods that supplement existing IT activities include user interviews, surveys, expert reviews, usability tests, and the collection of experience metrics through usage analytics.

The proposed user research methods provide opportunities for participation from everyone in the IT organization, ensuring that the organization and its individual contributors:

• never lose sight of who they are serving
• appreciate and plan for the human impact of strategic and tactical decisions throughout the IT lifecycle

Recommended User Research Methods for an IT Organization

There are many opportunities for user research to augment and improve the successful delivery of solutions. While many User Experience methods and techniques are focused on gathering insights of the human impact of technology decisions, a few recommended methods should be used by technologists to develop a richer understanding of their end-users.

The inclusion of one or more of the following research methods into routine IT practices will assist with defining and developing new solutions, as well as the evaluation and improvement of existing technologies and services.

User Interviews

Traditional business activity to supplement: Discovery and requirements gathering activities

Interviews with representative end-users, as well as business stakeholders, are an invaluable source for gathering information about people’s needs and goals; their motivations, thoughts, and decision-making processes; and their attitudes and beliefs. The User Interview method lends itself to allowing broad participation from technology teams and business stakeholders, as a way of information gathering and empathy building (i.e. hearing and observing first-hand from people is a natural and effective way to make connections with the people who utilize your products and services).

It is also important to note that interviewing business stakeholders as part of a user interview process is highly recommended. Knowing and understanding the business goals more deeply, as well as its motivations and expectations, will help find gaps and overlaps between business and user needs, provide a path to stakeholder alignment, and assist in the process of better defining problems and imagining solutions.

IMPORTANT: User Interviews are not the same as requirements gathering . Although requirements gathering is a traditional way for technologists to assess user needs, the process tends to focus more on the capabilities and attributes of a proposed solution, as opposed to exploring and evaluating the human dimensions of cognition, emotion, and behavior; which can lead to greater insights for producing innovative and alternative solutions.

Sample research questions answered by this method

• What are the needs and goals of the users and the business?
• What are the processes currently used to solve problems?
• What are the expectations of users and the business?
• Who is the right population for a solution, and are there additional audiences who need to be considered?
• How do business goals align with user needs and expectations?

Traditional business activities to supplement: Discovery and requirements gathering activities

Surveys are another way of gathering information about users that can reveal similar human dimensions as User Interviews for research focused on new and existing solutions, with the added benefit of scalability, which can help to surface the size or importance of a particular aspect. However, due to their one-way nature, surveys limit the depth to which the researcher can probe on areas of interest, and don’t elicit the level of empathy that a two-way conversation can produce.

• How big is the problem or opportunity?
• How satisfied are people with an existing solution?
• What is the desire for a new product or service?

Expert Reviews

Traditional business processes to supplement: Design and development, Implementation, Quality Assurance (QA), User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

An effective method for identifying baseline usability issues is to have an IT professional trained in this method or a User Experience practitioner perform an Expert Review, sometimes referred to as a Heuristic Review—a systematic review of a solution, which looks to identify any violations of common UX principles and best practices. This method can surface critical issues, but its effectiveness is limited by the reviewer’s knowledge of usability best-practices, and the context and subject-matter involved with the solution.

• Are there issues with a solution that will likely create barriers for end-users?

Usability Tests

Traditional business process to supplement: Design and development, Implementation, Quality Assurance (QA), User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

Testing concepts, prototypes, and developed solutions can provide information about how a solution performs, and whether it is an adequate fit-to-need for intended users. These tests can have a quantitative dimension—measuring what users do, such as how long it takes to complete a task, and what kinds of user errors are repeated (e.g. navigation patterns that cause a user to become ‘lost)’—as well as qualitative dimensions, which help the technologist to better understand user comprehension and why users behave in certain ways.

IMPORTANT: Usability testing is not Quality Assurance (QA) or User Acceptance Testing (UAT) . QA and UAT can surface issues around whether a proposed solution meets necessary technical aspects, and answer questions such as ‘Did we build the thing right?’, as opposed to the more holistic, user-centered approach, which can get the technologist closer to understanding “Did we build the right thing?”

• Does the solution deliver the value to the user as intended?
• Are there elements of the solution that prevent the user from satisfying their needs?
• What opportunities for improving user utility, efficiency, and satisfaction exist?

Usage Analytics

Traditional business process to supplement: Monitoring of success criteria and KPIs

Measuring the utilization of a current service or product with the additional of experience metrics can reveal important insights into how effective and efficient the solution is at serving both user and business goals.

• How many people are using a current solution?
• How are people using a current solution?

Why Conduct User Research?

For IT solutions to be utilized and return value to the organization, it is critical that the human dimensions of end-users—cognition, behavior, and context—be placed at the center of design, development, and decision-making processes.

The Human Dimensions of End-Users:

User cognition, user behavior, user context.

Uncovering these human insights helps improve both strategic and tactical decisions by rooting them in empathy and understanding for the people who will ultimately use and benefit from a product or service; helping to mitigate the pitfalls of assumption and bias, by relying on observation rather than anecdote and preconceived beliefs.

By refocusing success from the successful deployment of solutions to a more user-centered, empathetic lens focused on the human dimensions of a solution, the IT organization can better plan for what and how it delivers value to its customers. User Research is the necessary, evidence-based means for uncovering the human insights that make empathetic, user-centered decision-making possible.

Benefits and Challenges of User Research

Benefits of user research.

• Moves an IT organization to being more planful and strategic by surfacing currently unmet needs and goals
• Increases adoption of systems and processes by making sure the solution fits the needs, behaviors, and beliefs of the end-users
• Accelerates consensus building and decision-making, by using evidence as opposed to anecdote
• Validates or invalidates assumptions and hypotheses before they become ingrained in an initiative’s DNA
• Continuously checks solutions as new information is gathered, and keeps the solution space open to alternatives
• Creates efficiency, by allowing a solution to pivot earlier in the process, saving time and resources

Challenges of User Research

• Research can be time consuming and resource intensive, depending on the method and breadth of the inquiry
• Research is not an integrated part of current planning or development methodologies in many IT organizations
• Some (not all) methods require levels of expertise and capabilities that may not be developed yet within the organization

Types of User Research

User Research can be roughly divided into two lines of inquiry: one that looks to design or find new solutions and opportunities, and one that looks to evaluate existing solutions.

Generative Research

Evaluative research.

Within both of these general branches of research are further categories of research types that can help us to understand different dimensions of the human experience:

Attitudinal Research

Behavioral research, qualitative research, quantitative research, common methods of user research.

There are many User Research methods, each of which has strengths depending on the research goals of the inquiry.

Some common methods and their fit for research objectives are listed below.

Definitions of Methods

• Usability testing – Allows teams to observe how individuals interact with solutions as the user steps through a series of tasks
• Focus groups – Reveals the feelings, opinions, and attitudes of individuals, through a moderated discussion within a group context
• User interviews – Collects first-hand evidence of user attitudes, goals, and perceptions, with the ability to re-focus the discussion and probe on areas of interest
• Contextual inquiry – A combination of user interviews and usability testing with the added dimension of the method being performed in the user’s natural context, such as a workspace
• Card sorting – A method of finding relationships and hierarchy of information through a process of organizing text artifacts
• Surveys – Collects self-reported data about opinions and attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions
• Expert review – An evaluation using agreed-upon usability standards and best-practices
• Usage analytics – The collection and measurement of usage and experience metrics to optimize a solution

Incorporating User Research into Information Technology Activities

Who should be involved in User Research?

Every role in an Information Technology organization provides inputs that impact the overall experience of products and services, including the process by which a user realizes the value of a solution, its fit-to-need, its completeness and accuracy, and its utilization. Therefore, everyone would benefit from a deeper understanding of the effects their contributions play.

The level of effort and expertise involved in research methods varies, but a broad set of opportunities for participation by anyone in an IT organization include:

Facilitating Activities

Note taking/observing, research synthesis, research question generation.

Including everyone in the User Research process helps to ensure that the organization doesn’t lose sight of who it serves and why it matters.

When should User Research be performed?

Ideally, User Research methods would be employed at two key points in an IT organization:

• When measuring performance of an existing solution
• When evaluating and designing changes to existing or new solutions

In addition, User Research should be performed whenever there are questions or assumptions about user needs or behaviors driving IT decision making, or if the human impact of decisions is not well understood.

The need for User Research exists along the entire IT lifecycle, from strategic planning to the design, development, and procurement of new solutions, to the operational maintenance and ultimate decommissioning of existing products and services.

At a minimum, User Research activities should be incorporated in an integrated way into planned activities surrounding:

• the discovery and analysis of new solutions and processes
• the design, development, procurement of new solutions
• the evaluation of existing solutions

How much User Research is enough?

While User Research should be an ongoing process embedded in every stage of the IT lifecycle, most individual methods applied to specific research goals will eventually reach a point at which new information is no longer providing meaningful insights for the research objective(s). These diminishing returns can generally be mitigated at the practical level by:

• producing enough evidence that patterns begin to appear
• stopping when no new patterns are being introduced (i.e. the results are saying the same thing over and over).

However, the answer to how much User Research should be conducted for any initiative at the strategic level should take into consideration:

• the risks of making IT decisions with too little information about the people who will be affected
• the costs of performing and making sense of collected information
• the potential impacts and benefits to both the user and the organization.

By layering an understanding of the human dimensions of cognition, behavior, and context to IT activities, User Research helps IT organizations create better outcomes for the people it serves. User Research supports the organization in its strategy and decision-making by revealing new opportunities, improving decision making, and reducing uncertainty—through the collection of evidence, and testing and validation of assumptions and hypotheses—allowing it to make decisions more confidently and efficiently regarding the value and the impact of its activities.

User Research Guides and Resources

The following resources are intended as a starting point for learning and putting into practice the UX methods described in this advisory.

Putting Methods into Practice

Usability testing, ux resources at harvard, harvard web publishing, ux @ harvard library - harvard wiki, user research center at harvard, digital accessibility services, a54d3b3f70a15a25e8eef64048e10d7f, table of contents.

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User Research

What is user research.

User research is the discipline of learning about users’ needs and thought processes by studying how they perform tasks, observing how they interact with a product, or by using other data-driven strategies.

Although the term is sometimes confused with usability testing, user research encompasses a broader range of methodologies, some of which are quantitative (such as surveys or multivariate testing), while others are qualitative (such as in-depth interviews).

Objectives of user research

A business might conduct user research for a number of reasons, but ultimately the goal is to help an organization create products that offer the right solutions to its target user persona, and to design and develop these products in ways that will resonate with users and persuade them to buy.

Here are three strategic reasons a business might have for conducting user research:

1. To design solutions that are relevant to users

No amount of studying or reading about a specific user persona in the abstract will give a product manager or UX designer enough insight to confidently design a real-world product that its intended user will find relevant, intuitive, and enjoyable to use.

In most cases, developing solutions tailored to the needs, priorities, and behaviors of a specific persona will require working extensively with those people beforehand. Failing to conduct user research can lead to a product or solution that misses the mark with its intended users.

2. To build products that users find intuitive and even fun

Given the ever-increasing competition in many industries, a product built today must be not only functional but also easy and even enjoyable to use. If users find a product too time-consuming or mentally taxing to operate, they will likely abandon it and search for a better alternative.

3. To develop more relevant and compelling messages for the market

Finally, user research can help an organization learn not only the most compelling ways to develop and design a product for its intended users, but also the most powerful ways to communicate the product’s benefits to those users.

By using the right types of user research—perhaps surveys asking users to rank features by priority, or by conducting several in-depth user interviews and looking for common themes—a product team can often uncover ways to articulate the benefits of their products that users will find most compelling.

User research methods

There are many methodologies for conducting user testing, so we’ll discuss just a few common frameworks here. Reviewing the list below should give you a sense of the wide range of available approaches, and the fact that the most appropriate methodology for your team will depend on the types of insights you are hoping to glean.

A review of this list might also spark your team’s creativity and help you devise your own user research strategy suited to the specific answers you are looking for.

Task analysis

In its early days, Google conducted user research sessions using a task-analysis model. A researcher would sit down beside a user in front of a computer. The researcher would then open a browser, navigate to google.com, and pass the keyboard to the user.

The goal was to see what people did when they encountered Google’s homepage. This was a classic task-analysis method of user research: Give users a chance to interact with some aspect of your product, and just observe them in action.

Funny story: Researchers repeatedly found that the first thing users did on google.com was… nothing. They just stared at the screen. When the researchers asked what they were doing, users said they were waiting for the page to finish loading. Google’s original homepage was so bare that people assumed there was still more of it that hadn’t appeared yet onscreen. It was this user research that led Google to add links, such as Privacy Terms and Settings, across the bottom of its homepage, as a signal to visitors that the page was finished loading.

User surveys

Surveys are questionnaires sent out to a list of target users. Because this method does not allow an organization to talk directly with users, the survey questions need to be crafted strategically to give the company the greatest amount of insights as possible.

Contextual interviews

These are interviews conducted in the users’ own environment, such as at their workplace. The goal of these sessions is to observe users in a setting that is natural to them, to learn firsthand how they work, how they interact with your solution, and what if any issues they have with it.

This type of interview can lead to deep insights about your user personas that might not surface in their answers to an online survey. At the same time, however, these sessions will not yield the type of measurable, statistical data that you might receive from more quantitative user research, such as a review of your product’s actual usage data.

Looking for tips for conducting better customer interviews?

Hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'ff516c22-f77b-4d7d-8cd3-e02b22f343e5', {});, who is responsible for user research.

Ownership of the user research role varies from company to company. At some organizations a product manager will take the lead on this initiative. In other companies, the responsibility will fall to a designer or UX strategist. Still other companies employ full-time user research professionals whose sole job is to manage this function.

UX strategist Adam Nemeth has this to say about who should be responsible for user research :

“It boils down to these three factors. Who [in the organization] is able to argue the best for the user against a product choice? Who is able to notice a product error? Who is responsible for the product? Whoever that person is, they’re the one who should be responsible for research.”

For successful product development, user research is a must

Organizations can no longer afford to create products in isolation. Users have become highly sophisticated in conducting their own research into products before deciding to buy. At the same time, the barriers to entry in most industries have fallen sharply, meaning more products than ever face many competitors.

This means product teams today need ongoing guidance and feedback from their target users if they hope to develop products that will resonate with those users. In other words, for any organization hoping to bring a successful product to market, user research is a must.

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Your Ultimate Guide To User Research in UX Design

Discover the what, why, and how of User Research in our comprehensive guide for UX designers

Welcome, UX designers! In the ever-evolving landscape of digital product design, one thing remains constant: the need for user-centric experiences.

To achieve this, User Research takes the center stage.

In this User Research 101 guide, we'll explore the what, why, and how of User Research, alongside real-world examples and invaluable tools and methods.

So, let's embark on this exciting journey!

What is User Research?

User Research is the process of understanding users' needs, behaviors, and preferences to inform the design of products or services.

By gaining insights into users' motivations and challenges, UX designers can create intuitive and delightful experiences that meet their expectations.

Explainer video on User Research:

Why conduct user research.

User Research serves as the compass guiding your design decisions.

It helps you:

Understand your users

By delving into users ' goals, habits, and pain points, you gain empathy and can design solutions that truly resonate with them.

Identify opportunities

User Research unveils unmet needs and uncovers opportunities for innovation and differentiation, allowing you to create unique and valuable offerings.

Validate assumptions

User Research helps you test hypotheses, ensuring that your design decisions are grounded in real user data rather than assumptions or personal biases.

Examples of User Research

Let's explore a few common User Research methods and how they can be applied:

Conducting one-on-one interviews with users provides deep qualitative insights. Ask open-ended questions to understand their experiences, challenges, and aspirations.

Utilize online surveys to collect quantitative data from a larger user base. Surveys help gauge user preferences, satisfaction levels, and demographics.

Usability Testing

Observe users as they interact with prototypes or existing products. This method helps identify usability issues, gather feedback, and improve overall user experience.

Card Sorting

Use card sorting exercises to understand how users organize information. This technique helps inform information architecture and navigation design.

Tools and Methods for Gathering User Research

Here are some popular tools and methods employed by UX designers during User Research:

User Testing Platforms

Tools like UserTesting, Maze, or Lookback allow remote usability testing, recording user sessions, and capturing valuable feedback.

Analytics and Heatmaps

Services such as Google Analytics, Hotjar , or Crazy Egg provide insightful data on user behavior, page visits, and heatmaps to identify areas of interest or concern.

Remote Collaboration Tools

Tools like Miro, Figma , or Mural facilitate remote collaboration, enabling teams to share and analyze research findings and collaborate on design solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions about User Research

When should User Research be conducted?

User Research should ideally be conducted throughout the design process , from the initial stages to post-launch evaluations.

However, early-stage research is crucial to ensure a strong foundation for the design.

How many participants should be included in User Research studies?

The number of participants can vary based on the research goals and resources available.

Generally, conducting research with 5-10 participants can uncover the majority of usability issues.

What if I have a limited budget or time constraints?

Even with limited resources, some User Research is better than none.

Focus on high-impact research methods, such as targeted interviews or usability testing with a small sample size.

Can User Research be conducted remotely?

Absolutely! Remote User Research has gained popularity, allowing for a broader reach and more flexibility.

Remote interviews, surveys, and usability testing can be conducted effectively using various online tools .

User Research is the heart and soul of exceptional user experiences.

By diving into users' minds and needs, UX designers can create products and services that truly resonate with their target audience.

Armed with valuable insights, supported by a myriad of tools and methods, User Research empowers designers to craft remarkable digital experiences .

So, embrace the power of User Research and watch your designs soar to new heights!

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The beginner's guide to user research

User research is the reality check every project needs. Here’s our guide to why you should be doing it — and how to get started.

Doing your research is a critical design step and the quality of your research will make or break your product. This guide will help you get it right.

The ancient Greeks believed that inspiration came from the Muses. Today, while we’re still always searching for those elusive Muses, we know that great design ultimately stems from the ability to observe, listen, sympathize, empathize, understand, glean insights, and tap into the user’s reality.

People ignore designs that ignore people.

–Frank Chimero

Why should you do UX research?

There are many reasons you should do UX research, but some of the most important are:

• To remove assumptions from the design process
• To avoid critical mistakes that would otherwise cost us extra time, money and resources
• To back up our design decisions with qualitative data

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

–Steve Jobs

When should you do user research for your project?

The most common question about user research is, “ When should I do user research?”

The best time to do user research is at the beginning of the project. It will help you set a solid foundation and ensure you’re tackling real problems instead of imaginary ones.

Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.

–Charles Eames

However, user research should continue throughout all stages of the product development cycle. There’s something to learn in every phase and it will help you stay on the right track. If you feel like you haven’t done enough user research for your product until now, don’t waste time regretting it — get started! No matter what project stage you’re in, it’s never too late for a reality check. The earlier you begin, the quicker you’ll obtain valuable insights for your product.

Begin with a clear question in mind

Before delving into user research, define your research as clearly as possible. Otherwise, you might end up wasting your time. It may seem obvious, but one of the biggest problems with UX research is not knowing when to stop.

Formulate your problem using verbs like describe , identify , or evaluate . Avoid abstract words like explore , investigate , or understand .

Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.

–John Maeda

Once you establish what you want to find, it’s time to choose a suitable research method. Most of the time, it depends on your research objective, finances, time, and other resources. ‍

Nielsen Norman Group , a leading UX research agency, classifies user research methods into four stages:

Stage 1: Discover

The discovery stage is about illuminating what we don’t know.

• What product features are missing?
• What problem(s) should our product solve?
• What do our users need?
• What information do we need to start on the right foot?

Use the discovery methods listed below to introduce new features, products, validate, or remove assumptions and present accurate data to the developers.

Good design is like a refrigerator — when it works, no one notices, but when it doesn’t, it sure stinks.

Build complex interactions and animations without even looking at code.

Research methods for the discovery stage

Gather information for the project discovery stage with:

• Stakeholder interviews to understand the business requirements and constraints of the project
• Field studies to observe people interacting with problems that you’re trying to solve
• User interviews to get to know most frequent issues with the system
• Diary studies to better understand users’ behavior
• Competitive testing to discover the strengths, weaknesses and key features of competing products

Stage 2: Explore

The exploration stage revolves around understanding the problem at hand, defining the project scope, and addressing user needs the right way. We explore by comparing our product and features with competitors’, creating user personas, writing user stories, and doing design reviews.

Everything is designed. Few things are designed well.

–Brian Reed

Research methods for the explore stage

Some of the most popular methods used during the exploration stage are:

• Task analysis to analyze a task step by step, from a user's perspective
• Design reviews to identify weak spots in a product
• Journey mapping – to visually model a process to understand user needs and pain points
• Writing user stories to focus on user goals and priorities
• Competitive analysis to determine how a product performs against its competitors
• Persona building to create realistic representations of audience segments for reference
• Card sorting to find out how to structurize your navigation and information architecture
• Prototype testing to figure out the key problems

Stage 3: Test

Tests and other validation methods help us check if our designs work well while we develop them.

Pay attention to what users do, not what they say.

–Jakob Nielsen

Research methods for the testing stage

Common user research techniques for the testing stage are:

• Qualitative usability testing (in-person or remote) to gather detailed qualitative feedback from your users
• Benchmark testing to observe the product’s progress over time  
• Accessibility evaluation to ensure the universal access to your product

Stage 4: Listen

The listening stage runs throughout the entire UX design process. Gathering data and monitoring all the information related to the product will help you understand existing problems and identify new ones.  

A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.

–Martin LeBlanc

Research methods for the listening stage

The best methods for the listening stage are:

• Consumer surveys to get low-cost feedback
• User feedback review to see what people are saying about your product in reviews, complaints, social media messages, forum posts, and more
• Search-log analysis to discover what terms people use when searching for products / features like yours
• Usability-bug review to uncover common usability problems
• FAQ review to understand and answer user questions

If you have resources for only one user research method, use this

The discover, explore, test, listen cycle ends only when you stop improving your product. There are always new things to explore, consider, implement, and test.

Choose your user research methods according to your project type, constraints, available resources, and present issues. If your circumstances allow just one activity, Norman Nielsen Group recommends using qualitative usability testing for already existing products.

It’s a simple, cheap, flexible, and easy way to gather insights.

There are many ways to conduct user research, but you don’t have to use all of them in your project. The primary goal of user research is to be informed and inspired. As long as you’re doing that, you should be able to make the right decisions for your users — and business.

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User experience (ux) research: definition and methodology.

17 min read To build outstanding products and services for your customers, you need a thorough understanding of who they are, what they need and where their pain points and priorities lie. UX research helps you fully step into your customers’ shoes.

What do we mean by user experience?

User experience (UX) is a customer’s-eye view of your business as it relates to completing tasks and using interactive platforms and services.

It’s closely tied to the idea of customer experience (CX) , but rather than being a holistic view of your brand, it’s more focused on utility and usability testing – the hands-on side of things. You can think of UX as a sub-discipline of CX .

For example, CX research might consider how customers perceive a company’s customer service levels and how confident they feel in having their issues resolved. Meanwhile, UX research would focus on how successfully those customers navigate a self-service website, whether the language on that site is clear and how easy it is to use.

Free eBook: The essential website experience & UX playbook

What is user experience (UX) research?

User experience (UX) research is about diving deep into how customers interact with your brand on a practical, functional level, and observing how easily they can complete their tasks and meet their goals.

User research is the process of discovering the behaviors , motivations, and needs of your customers through observation, task analysis, and other types of user feedback . It can involve working directly with members of your target audience through UX testing sessions, remote session observation using digital tools, surveys to collect user feedback, and many more UX research methods and techniques.

Why is UX research important?

So what exactly is the value of user experience research? After all, you understand your business and its workings better than anyone. How can uninformed external users help you learn more?

The fresh perspective of your end-users is exactly why UX research is so valuable. Because they’re not already immersed in your language, processes, and systems, user testing participants are in the best position to help you see where things might be confusing to a newcomer who isn’t involved with your business.

Better yet, they can show you where confusion or frustration might lead a new or potential customer to miss out on product benefits, fail to convert, or even give up and look toward your competitors instead.

In areas like new product design and development , user research allows you to head off potential issues with products and services before they even hit the shelves. You can design the product correctly the first time, instead of having to fix it later when customers are unhappy.

Simply put, UX research is critical because it keeps you from wasting time, money, and effort designing the wrong product or solution. It’s valuable for all areas of your business and yields clear benefits for your product, your users, and your bottom line.

• Product benefits By asking your customers for direct feedback about a potential product, you can discover how and when customers prefer to use a product, what pain points your product will solve, and how to improve your product design .
• User benefits UX research is unbiased feedback, straight from the most valuable source: your customers. Because this type of research is not biased by investors, company leaders, or outside influences, it is the best resource for getting actionable product feedback.
• Business benefits Knowing what your users value helps you spend less time and money fixing flawed designs, speeds up the product development process , and increases customer satisfaction.

UX research helps brands and organizations to:

• Understand how users experience products, websites, mobile apps, and prototypes
• Evaluate and optimize prototypes and ideas based on UX research discoveries – and nail the design and experience early in a product’s life cycle
• Unearth new customer needs and business opportunities
• Find and fix hidden problems with products and services that arise in real-world use cases
• Make informed decisions through the product development process by testing various aspects of product designs
• Provide user experiences that outperform other businesses in your sector ( UX competitor research )
• Understand each user interaction across complete customer journeys
• Build a richer, more useful picture of your target audiences for better marketing and advertising

What’s the ROI of performing UX research?

The ROI of UX research is tricky to pin down because there often isn’t a direct, easy-to-spot correlation between time spent on it and resulting revenue. UX research can and does drive revenue, but it more directly influences metrics that show customer satisfaction, customer retention, and behavioral goals like user signups.

A simple way to draw a straight (if basic) line between UX research and its associated ROI is to calculate your conversion rate, where ‘conversion’ simply means completing the action you had in mind:

Number of people who took your desired action

—————————————————————       x 100

Total visitors/users

That percentage can be calculated and revisited over time to see how UX changes resulting from your research are having an effect.

Generally, when we talk about ROI, we’re talking about the highest possible rates of return you can attribute to an investment. But – while PWC research suggests that ROI on UX research can rise to as high as 301% – it’s better not to get caught up in absolutes with operational data like revenue.

Instead, it’s worth thinking more about the benefits that come out of tracking human behavior associated with improving your UX in general.

For example, IBM research states that 3 out of 5 users think that a positive user experience is more influential than strong advertising, while Forrester Research estimates that as many as 50% of potential sales fall through because users can’t find the information they need.

Thorough UX research can also cut a project’s development time by up to 50% .

Ultimately, when trying to track the ROI of your time spent doing quantitative and qualitative research on UX, you want to look at behavior and sentiment. If your main goal is website use, you should notice a decline in bounce rate as a sign of positive ROI. If you sell services, run regular CSAT surveys to determine how satisfied customers are with everything.

You might also find that data in unusual places. For example, if you spot a decline in chatbot requests around how to do or perform certain actions, or for information, then you know your new UX implementations are working as desired.

Those kinds of behavioral data points will shine a light on how worthwhile your UX research has been more readily than changes in revenue.

User experience research methods

The type of UX research techniques you choose will depend on the type of research question you’re tackling, your deadline, the size of your UX research team, and your environment.

There are three research dimensions to consider as you decide which methods are best for your project:

Attitudinal and behavioral

“Attitudinal” refers to what people say, while “ behavioral ” refers to what people actually do – and these are often very different. Attitudinal research is often used in marketing because it measures people’s stated beliefs and needs. However, in product design and user experience research, what people do tends to be more relevant.

For example, A/B testing shows visitors different versions of a site at random to track the effect of site design on conversion and behavior.

Another behavioral method is eye tracking, which helps researchers understand how users interact and visually engage with the design of an interface by following their gaze.

Qualitative and quantitative methods

Quantitative UX research studies collect and analyze results, then generalize findings from a sample to a population. They typically require large numbers of representative cases to work with and are structured in their approach.

Quantitative research uses measurement tools like surveys or analytics to gather data about how subjects use a product and are generally more mathematical in nature. This type of inquiry aims to answer questions like ‘what,’ ‘where’ and ‘when’.

Qualitative research methods, on the other hand, gather information about users by observing them directly, as in focus groups or field studies.

Qualitative research aims to understand the human side of data by gaining a sense of the underlying reasons and motivations surrounding consumer behavior. It tends to use small numbers of diverse (rather than representative) cases, and the data collection approach is less structured. Qualitative methods are best suited to address the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of consumer behavior.

Qualitative UX research methods

Several UX research methodologies can help UX researchers answer those big ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions, and influence the design process of any product or service you’ve got cooking. Here are just a few …

1. Participatory design

In participatory design, people are asked to draw or design their own best-case version of the tool, product, or service in question. This gives UX researchers the ability to ask qualitative questions about why specific choices have been made. If multiple participants make similar choices, it’s easy to spot patterns that should be adopted.

You might ask participants how they would redesign your website. While their responses will naturally vary, you might spot that several of them have moved your site’s navigation to a more prominent spot, or have moved the checkout from the left of the screen to the right.

2. Card sorting

Card sorting involves giving participants a range of cards that represent business-specific topics and asking them how they would sort them into groups. UX researchers are then able to probe into why their audience might group certain things, and make changes to existing offerings as a result.

If you have a wide range of products and solutions, card sorting would be a useful way to gauge how your target audience would naturally bucket them on your website. A furniture seller, for example, might use this technique to find that people are naturally inclined to group items by room, rather than by furniture type.

3. Diary studies

If you’d like to know how the UX of your product or service varies over time or throughout the length of its use, a diary study can help. Here, participants are given a way to record their thoughts as they set about using the product or service in question, noting things that occur to them as they go. This is useful as it provides real-world insight over a longer period than a one-off focus group.

Giving people access to an early build of an app and asking them to keep usability testing notes can highlight pain points in the user interface. In a one-off focus group, having to tap three times to get to an oft-used screen might seem fine – whereas participants are more likely to find it annoying in the day-to-day. This kind of longer-term usability test can provide really valuable insights.

Both quantitative and qualitative UX research methodologies can be useful when planning the design and development of your brand presence, as well as for usability testing when it comes to product and service design.

Context-of-use

By collecting and analyzing information about users, the intended use of the application, the tasks they perform with the application, and the technical constraints presented by the application, context-of-use analysis allow UX researchers to better understand the overall experience.

Typically, context-of-use analysis data is collected through research surveys, focus groups, interviews, site visits, and observational studies.

Context-of use-analysis is one method for identifying the most important elements of an application or product in the context of using that application or product. This type of UX research is typically done early in the product lifecycle and continued as data identifies which components of the product and UX are most critical.

Types of user research tools

There are many types of user research methods for discovering data useful for product design and development. Below are some common examples of tools user experience researchers may use to gather information and draw insights into mental models, or users’ thought processes.

UX research surveys or questionnaires can discover data at scale through in-person or remote polling, with specific questions designed to collate useful information about user experience.

User groups or focus groups are a form of a structured interview that consults members of a target audience on their experience, views, and attitudes towards the product or solution. They usually involve neutral parties, such as a moderator and note-taker, and are led by a researcher who asks open-ended questions focused on specific aspects of an investigation.

User interviews are one-on-one structured interviews with a target audience member, led by a UX researcher to understand more about personal experiences with the product. These user interviews can be directed to compare and contrast answers between users, or non-directed, where users lead the conversation.

Ethnographic interviews take place within the target users’ typical environment to get a better context-of-use view. Field studies and site visits are similarly observational in nature, and take place in situ where the product or service is used, but may involve larger groups.

This is not a comprehensive list of research techniques but represents some of the main ways UX researchers might perform usability testing or trial UX design.

When to conduct user experience research

Before launching a new product or service, understanding user preferences that could impact your design or development is key to success. The earlier user experience research is performed, the more effective the end product or service will be, as it should encompass the insights learned about your target audience.

As a product and service’s use and value evolve over its lifecycle, the user experience will change over time. User research should be undertaken on an ongoing basis to determine how to adapt to users’ new needs and preferences.

Five basic steps to conducting UX research

If you’re new to UX research, here’s a step-by-step list of what to consider before you begin your UX testing program:

• Objectives What do you need to find out about your users and their needs?
• Hypothesis What do you think you already know about your users?
• Methods Based on your deadline, project type, and the size of your research team, what UX research methods should you use?
• Process Using your selected UX research method(s), begin collecting data about your users, their preferences, and their needs.
• Synthesis Analyze the data you collected to fill in your knowledge gaps, address your hypothesis and create a plan to improve your product based on user feedback.

Qualtrics makes UX research simple and easy

User experience research and user testing are multifaceted and can involve a lot of both quantitative and qualitative data. To ease the process and make sure it is efficient and scalable, it’s best conducted using a highly responsive platform that allows you to collect data, analyze trends and draw conclusions all in one place.

Whether you need attitudinal or behavioral insights, Qualtrics is your go-to solution for collecting all kinds of UX data and making use of it in the context of your wider CX program .

Conduct in-person studies or send beautifully designed surveys easily and quickly, and view your results via custom dashboards and reports using the most sophisticated research platform on the planet.

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