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UX Research Brief Template

Run a successful UX research project

The best products and services are built with an intimate insight into its customers. To achieve this level of insight requires user research, and great user research starts with a clear brief.

This template will help you outline the right user research plan . It covers background information, goals, proposed research methods, target audience and recruitment details, along with any key dates, budget information, and access to past research.

This template is part of the UX/UI Designers collection.

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A complete guide to presenting UX research findings

In this complete guide to presenting UX research findings, we’ll cover what you should include in a UX research report, how to present UX research findings and tips for presenting your UX research.

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User experience research sets out to identify the problem that a product or service needs to solve and finds a way to do just that. Research is the first and most important step to optimising user experience.

UX researchers do this through interviews, surveys, focus groups, data analysis and reports. Reports are how UX researchers present their work to other stakeholders in a company, such as designers, developers and executives.

In this guide, we’ll cover what you should include in a UX research report, how to present UX research findings and tips for presenting your UX research.

Components of a UX research report

How to write a ux research report, 5 tips on presenting ux research findings.

Ready to present your research findings? Let’s dive in.

[GET CERTIFIED IN USER RESEARCH]

There are six key components to a UX research report.

Introduction

The introduction should give an overview of your UX research . Then, relate any company goals or pain points to your research. Lastly, your introduction should briefly touch on how your research could affect the business.

Research goals

Simply put, your next slide or paragraph should outline the top decisions you need to make, the search questions you used, as well as your hypothesis and expectations.

Business value

In this section, you can tell your stakeholders why your research matters. If you base this research on team-level or product development goals, briefly touch on those.

Methodology

Share the research methods you used and why you chose those methods. Keep it concise and tailored to your audience. Your stakeholders probably don’t need to hear everything that went into your process.

Key learnings

This section will be the most substantial part of your report or presentation. Present your findings clearly and concisely. Share as much context as possible while keeping your target audience – your stakeholders – in mind.

Recommendations

In the last section of your report, make actionable recommendations for your stakeholders. Share possible solutions or answers to your research questions. Make your suggestions clear and consider any future research studies that you think would be helpful.

1. Define your audience

Most likely, you’ll already have conducted stakeholder interviews when you were planning your research. Taking those interviews into account, you should be able to glean what they’re expecting from your presentation.

Tailor your presentation to the types of findings that are most relevant, how those findings might affect their work and how they prefer to receive information. Only include information they will care about the most in a medium that’s easy for them to understand.

Do they have a technical understanding of what you’re doing or should you keep it a non-technical presentation? Make sure you keep the terminology and data on a level they can understand.

What part of the business do they work in? Executives will want to know about how it affects their business, while developers will want to know what technological changes they need to make.

2. Summarise

As briefly as possible, summarise your research goals, business value and methodology. You don’t need to go into too much detail for any of these items. Simply share the what, why and how of your research.

Answer these questions:

• What research questions did you use, and what was your hypothesis?
• What business decision will your research assist with?
• What methodology did you use?

You can briefly explain your methods to recruit participants, conduct interviews and analyse results. If you’d like more depth, link to interview plans, surveys, prototypes, etc.

3. Show key learnings

Your stakeholders will probably be pressed for time. They won’t be able to process raw data and they usually don’t want to see all of the work you’ve done. What they’re looking for are key insights that matter the most to them specifically. This is why it’s important to know your audience.

Summarise a few key points at the beginning of your report. The first thing they want to see are atomic research nuggets. Create condensed, high-priority bullet points that get immediate attention. This allows people to reference it quickly. Then, share relevant data or artefacts to illustrate your key learnings further.

Relevant data:

• Recurring trends and themes
• Relevant quotes that illustrate important findings
• Data visualisations

Relevant aspects of artefacts:

• Quotes from interviews
• User journey maps
• Affinity diagrams
• Storyboards

For most people you’ll present to, a summary of key insights will be enough. But, you can link to a searchable repository where they can dig deeper. You can include artefacts and tagged data for them to reference.

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4. Share insights and recommendations

Offer actionable recommendations, not opinions. Share clear next steps that solve pain points or answer pending decisions. If you have any in mind, suggest future research options too. If users made specific recommendations, share direct quotes.

5. Choose a format

There are two ways you could share your findings in a presentation or a report. Let’s look at these two categories and see which might be the best fit for you.

Usually, a presentation is best for sharing data with a large group and when presenting to non-technical stakeholders. Presentations should be used for visual communication and when you only need to include relevant information in a brief summary.

A presentation is usually formatted in a:

• Case studies
• Atomic research nuggets
• Pre-recorded video

If you’re presenting to a smaller group, technical stakeholder or other researchers, you might want to use a report. This gives you the capacity to create a comprehensive record. Further, reports could be categorised based on their purpose as usability, analytics or market research reports.

A report is typically formatted in a:

• Notion or Confluence page
• Slack update

You might choose to write a report first, then create a presentation. After the presentation, you can share a more in-depth report. The report could also be used for records later.

1. Keep it engaging

When you’re presenting your findings, find ways to engage those you’re presenting to. You can ask them questions about their assumptions or what you’re presenting to get them more involved.

For example, “What do you predict were our findings when we asked users to test the usability of the menu?” or “What suggestions do you think users had for [a design problem]?”

If you don’t want to engage them with questions, try including alternative formats like videos, audio clips, visualisations or high-fidelity prototypes. Anything that’s interactive or different will help keep their engagement. They might engage with these items during or after your presentation.

Another way to keep it engaging is to tell a story throughout your presentation. Some UX researchers structure their presentations in the form of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey . Start in the middle with your research findings and then zoom out to your summary, insights and recommendations.

2. Combine qualitative and quantitative data

When possible, use qualitative data to back up quantitative data. For example, include a visualisation of poll results with a direct quote about that pain point.

Use this opportunity to show the value of the work you do and build empathy for your users. Translate your findings into a format that your stakeholders – designers, developers or executives – will be able to understand and act upon.

3. Make it actionable

Actionable presentations are engaging and they should have some business value . That means they need to solve a problem or at least move toward a solution to a problem. They might intend to optimise usability, find out more about the market or analyse user data.

Here are a few ways to make it actionable:

• Include a to-do list at the end
• Share your deck and repository files for future reference
• Recommend solutions for product or business decisions
• Suggest what kind of research should happen next (if any)
• Share answers to posed research questions

4. Keep it concise and effective

Make it easy for stakeholders to dive deeper if they want to but make it optional. Yes, this means including links to an easily searchable repository and keeping your report brief.

Humans tend to focus best on just 3-4 things at a time. So, limit your report to three or four major insights. Additionally, try to keep your presentation down to 20-30 minutes.

Remember, you don’t need to share everything you learned. In your presentation, you just need to show your stakeholders what they are looking for. Anything else can be sent later in your repository or a more detailed PDF report.

5. Admit the shortcomings of UX research

If you get pushback from stakeholders during your presentation, it’s okay to share your constraints.

Your stakeholders might not understand that your sample size is big enough or how you chose the users in your study or why you did something the way you did. While qualitative research might not be statistically significant, it’s usually representative of your larger audience and it’s okay to point that out.

Because they aren’t researchers, it’s your job to explain your methodology to them but also be upfront about the limitations UX research can pose. When all of your cards are on the table, stakeholders are more likely to trust you.

When it comes to presenting your UX research findings, keep it brief and engaging. Provide depth with external resources after your presentation. This is how you get stakeholders to find empathy for your users. This is how you master the art of UX.

Need to go back to the basics and learn more about UX research? Dive into these articles:

What is UX research? The 9 best UX research tools to use in 2022

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What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

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How to write and present actionable UX research reports

Regardless of how thorough or valuable your user research is, it quickly becomes meaningless if you’re unable to succinctly put it together and present it in a digestible UX research report.

UX research reporting is a skill just as valuable as being able to conduct the research in the first place. It lets you showcase methodology and findings of your research, and ensure a product’s user experience delivers with the first iteration.

Luckily, how to write and present UX research reports is something you can learn. What’s more, this chapter will guide you through it (and provide free templates for your UX report).

What is a UX research report?

A user research report is an easy-to-digest summary of a user research project that aims to update product stakeholders on results, inform product decisions with user data, and harmoniously guide a product build or iteration.

Once upon a time, UX research reporting was a cumbersome, dreaded box to tick. It was notorious for resulting in unnavigable reports that product teams would rather leave at the bottom of their inbox than try to consume.

The word 'report' conjures images of lengthy word documents, a PDF one-pager, or hour-long presentation with an occasional GIF—but a research report doesn't have to mean that.

Kevin Rapley , Senior User Researcher at Justice Digital, explains a UX report as being “about arming our teammates with data that allows them to decide on the direction of a product or service.”

A useful UX report includes:

• The research goals and research process
• Research questions the report is hoping to answer
• A recap of the UX research plan
• What UX research methods were used and why
• Quantitative and qualitative data sets and conclusions
• Key insights & actionable takeaways
• An expanded data appendix

Why do you need a user research report?

Product teams need a user research report to reflect on research activities and accurately guide a product’s scope with key insights. A UX research report helps sort information, defend research, and affirm (or disprove) a hypothesis. No matter how well-organized your research repository is, sometimes simply having the research results available is not enough. A succinct report will align entire teams in one sitting by presenting findings in a unique way.

In short, a research report helps to:

• Positively influence UX design
• Make sense of data sets and explain complicated graphs or other quantitative research results
• Provide actionable recommendations on next steps
• Summarize key findings, so they can be translated into every role and responsibility of the product team

Where UX research enables product teams to understand the user, prove or disprove hypotheses, and prioritize and generate ideas, a UX research report ensures the user is at the center of every product decision. Presenting that UX report then aligns team members on goals and priorities, and provides authentic user insights to inform every product decision.

We’ve covered what a research report is , but what is it not ? A UX research report is not a static, one-time document that your team reads once. It’s an ongoing reference point; the guardrails and guiding insights that guarantees the entire build stays on track.

How to write an effective UX research report: the essential elements

No matter how you choose to present your research study, there are a few elements that every report needs to include for it to be both useful and effective. Let’s look at how to create a report.

Introduction

Your introduction should lay out your research goals, plan, and scope. It should cover your product team’s pain points, and give a clear study overview. You need to answer what you did and why. The introduction can go on to include sales support data and competitive product analysis that inspired or guided this research project.

It’s a good idea to set up how this research helps to support and answer related company goals, team-level goals, and product-dev goals: so all stakeholders know it’s got something for them.

You can include questions from your UX research strategy you had originally hoped to answer, even if your results have gone on to answer other questions as well. Now’s also a good time to introduce research stakeholders: your fellow research team members.

As a secondary step to your introduction, ensure you’re including the approach you took to your UX research process : i.e. what research methods you used, as well as participant profiles and your user personas .

Don’t feel you need to spend too much time on this, says Charlie Herbozo Vidal , Senior User Experience Researcher at CVS Health. “As researchers, it’s not uncommon to dwell on the methodology for longer than needed. While interrogating methods might be valuable to other researchers, business partners might be disengaged by them.”

Ultimately, while methodology is important, it’s the results that most people are here for.

Key findings

This is where you get people on the edge of their seats! Give an overview of your findings, before breaking them down into more detail. Remind your audience ‘what we thought’ vs. what you actually learned.

Artifacts to use are:

• User personas built
• Insights from customer interviews
• User journey maps
• Prototype testing
• Storyboards
• Feedback & satisfaction reports

At the end of this section, and continuing throughout your presentation, you can pepper relevant atomic research nuggets.

Make sure you champion the user's needs throughout, and make special notes of 'offhand' comments users make. Often, it's the random comments that provide the most insight—they must not be forgotten about when writing the report.

Jack Dyer , Designer at Interactive Schools

Summarize your quantitative and qualitative research , and how they’ll both impact your product design and growth. Lay out opportunities versus risks, good-to-knows versus must-knows. Here you’ll want to convey the impact of each suggested step, roadmap designs, and figure out the long and short-term project scope. A few things to cover in your next steps are:

• Long and short-term goals
• ICE framework (Impact, confidence, ease)
• Roles and responsibilities for each task
• A timeline of events and project map
• A request for resources
• Desired outcomes

No matter how you’re presenting your research, be it asynchronously or not, you’ll need to include a Q&A. These can be subjective (based on what you think your team is likely to ask), pre-collected ahead of the presentation, answered live, or an opportunity to build an FAQ later.

What’s important is to acknowledge and be open to receiving questions. After all, questions are a positive thing—it means people are actually listening!

It’s easy to overlook the appendix after putting together a detailed report, but all that glorious research data needs to be accounted for and referenced clearly. Plus, you never know to what extent your team will want to dive into it. Your appendix is also where you’ll want to include secondary research that didn’t make the cut but backs up your research.

9 Ways to present UX research findings

UX research reporting will look a little different depending on your internal personas and organizational culture. First, ask yourself: who is your audience? Who needs to see the report, and who will benefit from seeing it? This will help determine how to present your user research report.

A few things to consider:

• Are you working with internal or external stakeholders? Tool limitation and file-sharing will differ for both.
• Are you working with an in-office, fully-remote, or hybrid team?
• Are you sitting in the same time zone or not?
• What are the knowledge levels like within your team?
• How does your team communicate daily/weekly/monthly?
• Are there any predetermined knowledge bases or tools your team is comfortable with?

The most common players across a UX team that need to understand your UX research report are:

• Product Designers (UX/UI)
• Fellow Product Researchers
• UX/UI Writers

However , it doesn’t stop at your product decision-making team. More often than not, there will be other stakeholders that can benefit from your research presentation. Your marketing, finance, sales, and even C-suite executives will massively benefit from your findings too. If you can tailor versions of your report or provide key summaries for each collective, even better!

Psst 👉 This is much easier to do when you have a research team that can host stakeholder interviews ahead of your research process.

Now, let’s get into the report formats to consider:

1. Workshops: for real-time, collaborative reports

First up, workshops. Workshops are a unique way of keeping your report interactive and engaging. They can be held remotely or in-person, but are almost impossible to hold asynchronously—so time zones are a big factor here.

You’ll also want to consider workshopping tools if you’re hosting digitally—a few to consider are: Miro, Mural, FigJam, and Gather.

A plus with workshops is that your stakeholders will actively have a say early on in the product development process , allowing you to foster more diverse inputs, minimize research bias you may have accumulated in your summaries, and build a sense of responsibility for the product’s success early on.

A negative of workshops is that they can be culprits to in-the-room or bandwagon bias. People are quick to ride on the coattails of a strong conclusion, without fully understanding or trialing another (less popular) conclusion or suggestion.

2. Slack channels: for an asynchronous and interactive research repository

Slack is a great option (especially if you’re already using it) if your research team needs to deliver insights to a fully-distributed collection of stakeholders. Slack tends to be the go-to channel for startups and creative companies, and there’s some key features you can tap into:

• Canvas: Store files, images, videos, and more in one place
• Huddles: Jump on a quick chat to fill in any gaps
• Clips: Post audio, video, or screen-sharing clips
• Connect: Team up with freelancers and agencies working on the project with you
• Workflow: Build drag-and-drop processes from your findings
• Knowledge sharing: Tag your data accordingly so it's easy to find later

3. Knowledge bases: for self-serve UX research reports

Knowledge bases can be a great home for your research presentation, and work especially well for distributed teams working across different time zones.

However your team is set up, research repositories are incredibly valuable. Sharing your report in a centralized location, regardless of the other ways you distribute findings, can democratize research , showcase the impact of your work, and disseminate valuable insights throughout your entire organization.

Keep in mind that knowledge bases can be tough to navigate if poorly organized or tagged. If you’re storing your UX research report in a knowledge base, ensure you provide clear instructions on how someone can find it, and how to navigate through the report itself.

If you have the time, run a card sorting test with an internal focus group to see how you can logically sort your research for those who are going to be looking for it.

4. Presentations / slide decks: great for the PAS framework

Live presentations tend to be the most impactful, but do risk being short-lived if you don’t have a follow-up plan for after your presentation.

While they’re great for sharing metrics and visuals, and can provide a beautiful overview of your research project, presentations can be a little one-sided. This one-way presentation style can prevent collaboration and innovation from the rest of the team. Consider how you can make your presentation interactive or engaging, whether it’s taking questions throughout or doing a ‘choose your own adventure’ session and asking people which sections they want to review first.

Kevin Rapley , Senior User Researcher at Justice Digital, recommends presenting slides using the PAS framework:

• Problem: State the problem you set out to overcome
• Agitate: Detail the impact or opportunity missed by not meeting the problem
• Solution: Offer a route forward from the research findings and insights, the next steps, and likely outcomes by solving the problem

Kevin explains that the PAS framework cuts to the detail people are invested in: “Stakeholders want to know the path forward: Are we on the right track to build this service? Have we uncovered user engagement or uptake issues? Have we learned that our assumptions are incorrect and we now have a better understanding of user needs? Presenting slides in this way delivers what’s needed.”

5. Written reports: for direct and simple sharing

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. A written report is probably the idea that jumped to the front of your mind when you read the title of this chapter. For many, this may seem like the ‘OG’ of UX reports.

These types of reports often come as a PDF or a word document, making them static, reluctant to change, and resulting in low engagement or re-reads. Delivering a written report via email also means you can’t guarantee your audience is going to read it. On the other hand, written reports can be incredibly detailed, scanable for different stakeholders, and include all kinds of results from visual data to qualitative findings.

For many teams this method still works, especially if you’re trying to communicate findings to a distributed, asynchronous team. Written UX reports enable people to go through things in their own time—and come back to it when they need to.

6. Atomic research nuggets: to eliminate ‘bad research memory’

Deriving from an atom—the smallest unit of matter—atomic UX research nuggets are minute and succinct conclusions from data points. They’re always aligned and tagged with a product direction. Formalized by Tomer Sharon and Daniel Pidcock , it’s described as “the concept of breaking UX research down into its constituent parts”:

Experiments: “We did this…” Facts: “…and we found out this…” Insights: “…which makes us think this…” Conclusions: “…so we’ll do that.”

Atomic research nuggets help to fight ‘bad research memory’—the idea that knowledge gets lost or forgotten amid the depths of a larger report. These nuggets are accessible, usable, and searchable. They can be delivered (or accessed) throughout an entire product build, serving as North Stars for micro goals. Research nuggets can be a firm reminder your team is, or isn’t, taking the right action.

7. Pre-recorded video: for better knowledge retention

People retain 90% of the information they receive via video versus text. There’s no question that, for many, video is a better way of onboarding and remembering information. At the same time, it can be easier to share information via video if your UX researchers aren’t the most confident of writers.

Although pre-recorded video is an easy way to share a UX research report with a team, as with other formats on this list, you’ll need to ensure people actually watch it.

Loom can be a great screen-sharing video recording tool. Some of their features and paid plans will enable you to see who from your team has watched your video, as well as spark conversation and engagement opportunities throughout the video. Alternatively, you can share the video as a watch-along during a synchronous meeting and discuss afterwards, while still sharing the video with those who can’t attend live.

8. Case studies: for sticky storytelling

Case studies aren’t just for winning potential customers. At their very core, case studies are put together to convince someone of something due to a real-life story. This is why they can be great if your UX research report needs to convince a diverse or largely cautious selection of stakeholders.

What’s more, case studies tend to rely on storytelling tactics and a strong narrative to get their point across. They can pull from user personas to further a point and make it more relatable for your design team. Muhammad Ahmad , UX Designer at VentureDive, shares the value presenting reports as case studies holds:

“Case studies show how you think. As a UX Researcher or Designer, how you percieve problems and what framework you use to evaluate them matters a lot. Your case studies are supposed to show just that.”

9. Maze reports: for all-in-one research and reporting

Automate your reporting with Maze. Maze automatically generates a report for each test you run, turning it into an easy-to-navigate dashboard. Add comments to generate conversation, highlight key responses and generate usability scores for your prototype testing .

If you’re working with moderated research, Maze AI can speed up the reporting process with automated sentiment tagging, project naming, and even generating summaries and identifying critical learnings from user interviews . So you can sit back, and let Maze take care of the data processing.

When you’re happy with your report, generate a custom link that you can share with your team, and further internal and external stakeholders.

Using Maze reports will enable you to share:

• Introduction and mission slides
• An analysis of each UX research method: From card sorting to live website testing
• In-depth breakdowns of research data
• Overviews of the report metrics: From misclicks to bounce rates and time-on-screen
• A usability score

These reports will also allow you to download CSV files of your data, and customzie filters and views to bring your stakeholders the numbers they need, fast. Your team will be able to collaborate in a comments section and let AI identify key themes and takeaways if you’re struggling to spot them.

Overall, UX research tools with in-built reporting are a great way to translate and share all of your research into visual data sets that can be digested by the rest of the team in a few clicks.

7 UX research report templates

There are some fantastic research report templates to help get you started on your journey. Here are some of our favorites to help you better present those deliverables, key learnings, and everything in between.

Maze: Usability testing report

Hosted on Pitch, this report template is clear, simple, and follows a lot of the design and framework best practices shared in this chapter.

Access the template here

Aadil Khan: UXR report with examples

A straightforward report template is designed by Aadil Khan , UX Researcher at IBM, who says: “I made this template based on tons of mentoring calls I’ve been in with people looking to land UXR jobs where we discuss how to present UXR case studies during interviews and such. Oftentimes their case studies were too lengthy and lacked some sort of narrative structure to make it easier to present.”

EaTemp: Key findings report

A beautifully-designed template hosted on Figma. Get access to personas, empathy maps, and card sorting. All colors, fonts, and shapes are customizable.

Miro: Research repository template

Build a centralized research hub on Miro. Connect your team in a few clicks and allow them to collaborate with this free template. Note: you’ll need to sign up for a (free) Miro account.

Furquan Ahmad: UX research report template

A sleek and vibrant presentation, this template was created by Furquan Ahmad , Product Designer at Meta, “to help people focus their energy and time on the insights they're providing rather than worry about what the presentation will look like. I'm always shocked at how many people have benefited from the community.”

Estefanía Montaña Buitrago: Atomic UX research canvas

Beautifully designed on FigJam, this canvas by Estefanía Montaña Buitrago , UX Designer at Globant, has been used by over 7,000 people and now comes with several useful remixes too.

Muhammad Ahmad: UX research kit

Muhammad Ahmad , UX Designer at VentureDive, shared this minimalistic template. Here you’ll get 60+ customizable templates in both light and dark modes. There’s a free version, or a (paid) premium version which may be worth the investment for you.

Best practices for writing an effective UX research report

The functionality of your research report will come down to how you write it. Sitting down and being faced with copious amounts of data can make UX reporting feel like a daunting task—here’s some techniques and tips to help you along the way.

Take a leaf from your UX design book with user-friendly copy

No matter the format, you want your UX report to be as accessible and skim-able as possible for your audience. It’s a good idea to mimic some of the same mentalities you would use in UX design.

Gestalt grouping principles are good to consider for UX report writing. Think similarity , proximity , and common-region for grouping relevant information.

Similarly, UI design principles such as the figure-ground and focal point will help direct your readers’ eyes to the most important information first, as well as make for a more accessible read.

Lastly, Gestalt’s continuity principle is a great one to apply to your UX report. Readers naturally follow patterns for easier flows in information, so if you’re including stylistic elements like bolding, italics, asides, indenting, or something else, ensure these run consistently throughout your report.

At the same time, think about the structure, layout, and formatting of your written report. Are you leaving enough negative space for your reader to process information? These are especially important for readers with dyslexia, but will generally lift your readability on the whole:

• Is all of your copy aligned left?
• Is your font choice clear with a good amount of spacing between letters and words?
• Are you bolding important words and sentences rather than underlining them?
• Are you peppering your report with enough headings and subheadings?

Release oxytocin: Follow storytelling tactics

A Forbes article reported that “immersive storytelling releases the empathy-related chemical oxytocin in our brains.” If you’re not familiar with oxytocin, it’s known as a natural ‘feel-good’ chemical, promoting feelings of trust and attachment.

Why else do you think case studies are so effective? They rely on storytelling: they have characters, plots, beginnings, endings, peaks, and pits. User research reports that mimic storytelling threads and tactics are more likely to create sticky data points, as well as hold your readers’ attention throughout. This is why the PAS framework works so well, but whatever format your report takes, bear in mind a story-like structure with a beginning, middle, and end.

Ask your editor to edit your research presentation with the three Cs in mind

Clear , Concise , Compelling . These core principles exist everywhere the written word does, but it can be hard to spot them when editing your own work. Just because something is clear, concise, and compelling for you, doesn’t mean it is for someone else—ask a colleague to read your report (or, better yet—a content editor).

Failing that, if you don’t have access to an editor or are in a time crunch, here are some tools to help you edit your own work.

• Grammarly: Good for catching those little typos and grammatical errors
• Hemingway Editor: Gives a readability score and helps to simplify sentences

Consider your reader, and rethink the jargon

Tailoring your report to meet the needs and knowledge level of each stakeholder is a balancing act. Many will tell you to avoid jargon, acronyms, and technical language at all costs. But, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, using industry jargon is the most direct way of getting your point across, and if you know your reader understands it, go for it.

However, keep in mind that if your report is going to other teams: sales, C-suite, finance, etc, then you may need to find alternative terms that aren’t department-specific—or provide a glossary or acronym dictionary within the report.

Muhammad shares more: “Typically UX folks (or even product folks) are not that well-equipped with research terminologies. So giving them the summary of the research in plain language is the approach that works best for me.”

Wrapping up how to present user research findings

There you have it, a complete guide on how you can write and present your user experience research in a way that everyone can benefit from it.

Remember, be conscious of your audience, your format, and your language. Different stakeholders and team cultures require different reporting styles, it’s up to you to curate the information into a report that delivers the insights you’ve uncovered.

Generate UX reports that have impact

From AI-generated summaries of your user interviews, to usability scores for your prototype tests, automate UX research reporting with Maze.

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The User Research and Insights Tool for Design and Product Teams

How to Create a UX Research Plan [Free Template Inside]

Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail”. While Benjamin Franklin wasn’t talking about UX research, the statement applies. 

Many researchers fail to plan because they assume they understand user research well enough to create a budget, timeline, process, and more. They conveniently forget that planning is the cornerstone of a successful project and expertise is never enough to see anything through. 

Creating a UX research plan allows you to leverage multiple perspectives from project stakeholders and teammates.  Stakeholders can help you understand where techniques might not work, timelines may be too tight, or budget insufficient to execute a research project. 

Research planning prevents surprises that may come up along the way. It reduces cost and helps you determine how each step of the UX research will be executed to ensure success.

In this guide, we’ll lead you through the steps of creating a UX research plan. You’ll also get a free template so you can create your first research plan immediately.

What Is UX Research?

UX research is the study of user interaction to obtain insights that improve the design process. UX researchers study a group of target users to collect and analyze data that leads to user-friendly products. 

The primary goal of UX research is to build products for the end-user based on real data not what you think the user wants. When you conduct UX research, you can give your audience the best solutions because you know what they need.

As a UX researcher, you could begin with qualitative research methods to collect data and understand the user’s needs and motivation. Next, you use quantitative measures such as usability testing to test your hypothesis and results.

What Is a UX Research Plan?

A UX research plan is a document that sets expectations and highlights the most important information you need to communicate with stakeholders in a research project. It is usually a collaboration between all stakeholders to ensure it meets the goals and objectives you’ve laid out.

A user research plan acts as a starting point to help you write easily and keep your team focused on the who, what, why, and when of a UX research project.

What Are the Benefits of Planning User Research?

Show Project Sponsors and Senior Executives the ROI of Your Research

In most scenarios, project sponsors do not care about the process or the user research techniques you choose. They want to know what your research will achieve and how much it will cost to execute. A brief research plan lays out the objective of the research and how it will benefit product design.

Engage Stakeholders

A written research plan is also a great way to engage stakeholders and ensure they’re involved with the research project and the results. You’ll also be leveraging the experience of team members who’ve conducted similar research in the past.

Keeps You Accountable

When you write something down, it looks different from what you pictured in your head. It eliminates the risk of missing steps in the process, going above budget, or losing sight of your research objectives. Think of a research plan as a list of checkpoints to make sure you’ve achieved each goal in your research.

Easier to Plug Holes in Your Process

A research plan helps you to learn what works or doesn’t work and questions you need to be asking. As you write down your plan and process, you can find holes and improve your research plan. It makes it easier to focus and prepare for the study.

How to Create a User Research Plan? 

1. Write the Background of the Research

The background section should be brief. Tell stakeholders and clients about the recent history of the project, why you’re conducting the research, and what you’re going to accomplish. In a few sentences (no more than five lines of text), everyone should understand the purpose of the study.

The background section should also include the problem statement. A few ways to identify the problem statement include interviews with stakeholders, a deep analysis of the current data, or team sessions to brainstorm.

2. What Are the Objectives of the Research?

You must have an objective before getting in a room with users. The research objective drives all the research questions you’ll be asking participants during the user interview process.

Why are you conducting user research? What problems do you hope to solve? What is the end goal after completing the research?

Getting answers to these questions should be a collaborative effort between stakeholders and team members involved in the project.

3. Define Stakeholders

Who are the stakeholders that will benefit from the results? Research project stakeholders could be employees in sales, customer support, C-level executives, or product teams.

When you’ve listed everyone you think should be involved, set up a meeting to brainstorm ideas and collect input. It’s easier to deliver the right insights when you’re involving the right stakeholders in your project.

4 . Study Existing Solutions

Have any studies been done on this topic in the past? Perhaps your competitors or in-house teammates have published previous findings that will work as the basis of your research? The answers will help you determine where to begin.

If your team uses Aurelius as a research repository , you’ll be able to easily search through past research projects to quickly find information and make Cross-Project Insights and recommendations from past research with your current project.

5. Recruit Participants

After defining the problem and objectives, it’s time to create a participant profile. Choosing the right participants is one of the most crucial parts of a project. 

When creating participant profiles start with characteristics such as occupation, age group, geography, and level of engagement with the product. Next, determine the number of participants to recruit for each UX research method. 

We advise internal collaboration with all stakeholders such as sales, marketing, and customer support teams to brainstorm a hypothesis on who your ideal user is. Analyze your competitors to see what type of users they have in their audience.

If you have a database, consider looking inwards to customers who already know your product. If you don’t, use a research recruitment platform to find participants. 

When recruiting externally, use a screener to hone in on your ideal participant. Is there a particular behavior you’re looking for? A qualifying action they must have taken within a specific timeframe? Do they need to be a certain age? Screeners ensure you’re bringing in the right users for your research.

6. Establish KPIs and Metrics of Success

How will success be determined?  What criteria will you use to check milestone achievements? Examples of success metrics include:

• Time on task
• Specific information about the user 
• Decisions that the collected data will help you make 
• Statistics you intend to create

7. Outline Scope and Focus of Research

Outlining the focus areas leads to efficient research planning. The deeper you’re able to hone in on the specific information you want to collect from the research, the more clarity you’ll have. 

8. Write Research Questions

This is the section where you’ll write down the research questions to ask during user interviews. Start by examining what you already know about the problem such as insights from previous research . Find the knowledge gaps and create questions to answer them.

When brainstorming research questions, it’s important to determine if the goal is to create a new design or to fix an existing design. 

If your objective is to build the right design, then your questions will focus on observing user behavior and leveraging mental models.

If the goal is to fix an existing design, then you’ll ask questions about usability to improve the current design. Whatever the goal is, aim for open-ended questions.

Here’s a comprehensive list of questions to ask when conducting UX research interviews

9. Determine Your Budget 

Budget plays a role in the amount of data you gather and how you conduct research. More budget equals flexibility to outsource to a dedicated recruitment service, run paid campaigns to attract more people, or even increase the incentives for participants.

More money also makes it easier to choose the right UX research methods that translate into quality insight. Conversely, with a small budget, you have to think of ways to stretch your funds such as using zoom over in-person meetings, limiting the number of research participants, or choosing inexpensive research techniques.

10. Establish Project Timeline

Having a timeline for executing the research plan lets stakeholders and clients know how long the research will take. There might be different expectations between what you think the timeline should be versus the client’s expectation. 

When establishing a timeline consider the following:

• The scale of the project
• The time needed to collect data for research analysis
• Time for recruiting research participants
• Number of teammates to engage in research activities
• Unforeseen circumstances such as participants showing up late or needing to reschedule for another day

11. Develop Research Protocols

The research protocol is a list of questions and tasks you’ll cover during in-person sessions. It also includes a list of research methods you’ve chosen. 

A common practice is to write down the opening and closing statement of your UX interview. It begins with an explanation of the product, research objectives, and how long each interview session will take. In the end, you thank the participant for their time and answer any questions they might have.

Make sure you get feedback from stakeholders on the research questions as well as the following:

• The duration of each session
• Tasks each research participant will complete during usability testing
• A script to guide each session
• How to record interviews and protect participant data

12. Determine the Research Methods

In this section, you’ll discuss the UX research methods you’ll use during the research and explain why you’ve chosen these techniques.

While there are dozens of research methods to choose from, your choices should be informed by your research questions. Some, like A/B tests and surveys, are suited for quantitative research while others like user interviews and contextual inquiries work best for qualitative research . 

Learn more about how to choose a UX research method plus options to choose from during user research

13. Choose UX Research Tools 

Similar to research protocols, the research tools you choose should be based on your research objectives and questions.

When choosing UX research tools, consider the following:

• Are you recruiting participants internally from your database or externally?
• Is it going to be a usability test?
• Will you conduct interviews via video conferencing?
• How will you store and analyze research data ?
• Are you going to A/B test certain elements for conversion?
• Will you conduct surveys to collect mass feedback?

There are different tools that fulfill each of these objectives. For example, you can recruit participants from platforms like User Interviews and Userbrain . You can build a research repository to store data and get insights with Aurelius . Tools like Optimizely and Crazy Egg are great for A/B testing.

Get a comprehensive list of UX research tools to complete each stage of the research process in this article

14. Draw Insights and Present your Research Findings

This is the final stage when creating a UX research plan. The insights will be determined by the goals of the research. Is the goal to improve an existing product or create a new product? Which stakeholders will need access to the result?

Make sure you document your process and include details about setbacks you faced along the way, methodologies used, and session materials. This way, your team can have an overview to look back on when conducting the next research project.

To get insight from your research data, use Aurelius to analyze dozens of notes, audio/video recordings as well as spreadsheets.

Create a new project in Aurelius, import your data from anywhere, find information quickly with Tags, search for patterns with Keywords, highlight major findings with Key Insights and make suggestions with Recommendations.

Aurelius turns your recommendations and key insights into shareable reports that you can customize as you like. You can share or present your research findings via email, a PDF, or a live link to your report.

Learn More About How Aurelius Can Help You Improve the Research Process 

Asides from having a plan of action for research issues, you must have a plan for working with research participants. 

A few things to do during the first interaction with research participants include:

• Inform users about the background of the research and what they’re signing up for
• Tell them how you plan to store their data
• Ask for permission to record the process
• Ask for permission to use their data for research purposes only
• Share details about the UX research process
• Tell them the methods you’re using to collect data 

If you feel like it’s too much information, remember that it’s better to overshare than to not give sufficient information.

Use a Template to Streamline UX Research Planning

Templates help you create research plans quickly. Think of it as a starting point for your research project. It includes all the essential elements you need to conduct research and communicate your findings.

Go ahead and download our free UX research plan template. Then, use the tips above to fill out the template.

Download our free UX research plan template

UX Research Plan Template

Create a strong business case for UX research and streamline your process with the UX research plan template.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the UX Research Plan Template

A UX research plan, also known as a user research plan, is a brief reference document that outlines your research project’s goals, key contributors, important dates, and timelines.

Think of your research plan as a UX-focused  kick-off document  for your project. The plan offers an overview of the research initiative, encourages well-defined and agreed-upon goals, and acts as a written guarantee that the research will meet these goals.

What is a UX research plan?

When conducting usability testing or user research with a goal in mind, researchers need to plan. UX researchers often present their findings to stakeholders, like product managers, developers, marketers, and executives, to act on those results.

You should present your UX research plan in plain language with a single document. Keep your findings clear, collaborative, easily accessed, and digestible to get buy-in for your research and your team’s next steps.

A user research plan typically has up to seven segments:

Project background: Reasons for the study and internal stakeholders involved.

Research goals and objectives: What your teams want to learn, or their ideal research outcome.

Research participants: Who they are and how they’ll be recruited.

Method: How you conducted research, and any other information about how the research will be conducted.

Guides: An interview guide or cheat sheet of instructions and questions to follow during the session.

Duration: A rough timeline of how long the research will take and when the team can review the report.

Other helpful information: Additional resources for your team, such as previous studies, scripts, or results, can inform this new round of research.

Research plans keep your team focused on outcomes rather than getting lost in the details or changing the research goal midway through the project. By the end of the project, UX researchers should feel confident that their questions were answered and presented in both the plan and actual research.

When to use UX research plans

UX research plans are useful for teams who need to decide on  questions such as:

What do our customers need? Who is our target persona?

Does the proposed or current design work well for our customers? How can we make it better?

Planning UX research also gives researchers an opportunity to:

Decide what works for your stakeholders, especially the questions they’re trying to answer.

Engage stakeholders and keep them invested in your research results.

Clarify your ideas, problems to be solved, and research approaches.

Treat your research plan as a blueprint for aligning expectations, asking for feedback, or generating enthusiasm and support for increasing the value of user research in your organization.

Create your own UX research plan template

Making your own UX research plans is easy, and Miro is the perfect tool to create and share them. Get started by selecting the UX research plan template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.

Give your team or stakeholders a quick project introduction.  You can hop on a video chat with up to 25 team members and remind everyone what you’re trying to achieve. Remember that research proves its value when it satisfies a single objective rather than many. If you seem to have lots of different goals or objectives, avoid overreaching and start fresh: what’s the one customer problem and business problem you’re trying to solve?

Define the user and business problems your research needs to solve.  The default sticky notes are simply for inspiration — feel free to edit each of these to fix your own context. If you want your team to focus on this area instead of skipping ahead, you can select the “problem” frame and  click the “hide frame” (closed eye) icon  that appears in the frame’s menu.

Define your research goals.  Ask your team to brainstorm their top three research goals or priorities. Remember that the best research sessions are chasing a single objective, so out of the two to three you note down, ask your team to vote for their preferences. Try  Miro’s Voting Plugin  to help your team reach a decision.

Draft your research questions.  Pick three to five questions with your team or stakeholders that are most important to your research. Aim for no more than 10. The more focused your questions, the more focused your research will be.

Link to useful supporting information as needed.  Keep this plan to the point in order to get buy-in. For stakeholders who need more detail, there may be other useful data to link to. If you have previous UX research results or relevant studies, link to them on your Miro Board. You can also import survey data, embed  tables and charts , or link sticky notes  to external sources .

Dive even deeper into how to conduct UX research – and see examples – in our expert guide to  user research .

Why should you use the UX Research Template?

Centralized planning: Centralize your UX research plans in one shared space. This ensures that all relevant information, including research objectives, methodologies, and timelines, is easily accessible in one place, reducing the risk of scattered or lost documentation.

Collaborative research: Multiple stakeholders, including designers, researchers, and product managers, can collaborate on your UX research plan template simultaneously, fostering a more inclusive and collaborative approach to research planning.

Visual representation of research steps: Create diagrams, flowcharts, and visual representations of the research process. This visual mapping helps teams better understand the sequence of research activities, identify dependencies, and effectively communicate the overall research strategy.

Iterative refinement: Provide feedback, comments, and suggestions directly on the UX research plan template. Promote continuous improvement, allowing the team to refine the research plan based on insights and changing project requirements.

Integration with user flows and personas: Integrate with other templates, such as user flows and persona maps. By connecting these elements, teams can create a holistic view of the user experience journey. This integration helps align research activities with the overall UX strategy and ensures a more cohesive and user-centric product design.

How can I ensure that a UX Research Plan remains effective?

Regularly review and update the research plan as project requirements evolve. It's crucial to stay flexible and adapt the plan based on the findings and changing project needs.

Get started with this template right now.

PI Planning Template

Works best for:.

Agile Methodology, Strategic Planning, Software Development

PI planning stands for “program increment planning.” Part of a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), PI Planning helps teams strategize toward a shared vision. In a typical PI planning session, teams get together to review a program backlog, align cross-functionally, and decide on the next steps. Many teams carry out a PI planning event every 8 to 12 weeks, but you can customize your planning schedule to fit your needs. Use PI planning to break down features, identify risks, find dependencies, and decide which stories you’re going to develop.

User Interview Template

Desk Research, Product Management

A user interview is a UX research technique in which researchers ask the user questions about a topic. They allow your team to quickly and easily collect user data and learn more about your users. In general, organizations conduct user interviews to gather background data, to understand how people use technology, to take a snapshot of how users interact with a product, to understand user objectives and motivations, and to find users’ pain points. Use this template to record notes during an interview to ensure you’re gathering the data you need to create personas.

This or That Template

Marketing, Meetings, Workshops

If you’re a social media manager, a designer, or just someone who loves photography, then you’ve probably seen the “This or That” game on Instagram. The premise is simple: You make two parallel lists that pit a series of choices against each other, like “apples or oranges” or “pizza or hot dogs”. The Instagram user chooses between the various options by circling the one that they prefer. Then they share the completed game with their followers. Although it was popularized on Instagram, you can use This or That on other social media platforms too, or even your website or blog.

RAID Log Template

Agile Methodology, Project Management, Agile Workflows

Use the RAID Log template to better understand potential risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies relating to an upcoming project. With this information, you can make effective contingency plans and prepare your resources accordingly. You’ll know what could go wrong throughout the project and how to fix the problem.

Cisco Recommended Security Architecture Template

Software Development, Diagrams

Cisco offers data center and access networking solutions built for scale with industry-leading automation, programmability, and real-time visibility. The Cisco Recommended Security Architecture uses Cisco elements to visually show the network design of Cisco networks.

Entity Relationship Diagram Template

Flowcharts, Strategic Planning, Diagrams

Sometimes the most important relationships in business are the internal ones—between the teams, entities, and actors within a system. An entity relationship diagram (ERD) is a structural diagram that will help you visualize and understand the many complex connections between different roles. When will an ERD come in handy? It’s a great tool to have for educating and onboarding new employees or members of a team, and our template makes it so easy to customize according to your unique needs.

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UX Research

What is ux research.

UX (user experience) research is the systematic study of target users and their requirements, to add realistic contexts and insights to design processes. UX researchers adopt various methods to uncover problems and design opportunities. Doing so, they reveal valuable information which can be fed into the design process.

See why UX research is a critical part of the UX design process.

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UX Research is about Finding Insights to Guide Successful Designs

When you do UX research, you’ll be better able to give users the best solutions—because you can discover exactly what they need. You can apply UX research at any stage of the design process. UX researchers often begin with qualitative measures, to determine users’ motivations and needs . Later, they might use quantitative measures to test their results . To do UX research well, you must take a structured approach when you gather data from your users. It’s vital to use methods that 1) are right for the purpose of your research and 2) will give you the clearest information. Then, you can interpret your findings so you can build valuable insights into your design .

“I get very uncomfortable when someone makes a design decision without customer contact.” – Dan Ritzenthaler, Senior Product Designer at HubSpot

We can divide UX research into two subsets:

Qualitative research – Using methods such as interviews and ethnographic field studies, you work to get an in-depth understanding of why users do what they do (e.g., why they missed a call to action, why they feel how they do about a website). For example, you can do user interviews with a small number of users and ask open-ended questions to get personal insights into their exercise habits. Another aspect of qualitative research is usability testing , to monitor (e.g.) users’ stress responses. You should do qualitative research carefully. As it involves collecting non-numerical data (e.g., opinions, motivations), there’s a risk that your personal opinions will influence findings.

Quantitative research – Using more-structured methods (e.g., surveys, analytics), you gather measurable data about what users do and test assumptions you drew from qualitative research. For example, you can give users an online survey to answer questions about their exercise habits (e.g., “How many hours do you work out per week?”). With this data, you can discover patterns among a large user group. If you have a large enough sample of representative test users, you’ll have a more statistically reliable way of assessing the population of target users. Whatever the method, with careful research design you can gather objective data that’s unbiased by your presence, personality or assumptions. However, quantitative data alone can’t reveal deeper human insights.

We can additionally divide UX research into two approaches:

Attitudinal – you listen to what users say—e.g., in interviews.

Behavioral – you see what users do through observational studies.

When you use a mix of both quantitative and qualitative research as well as a mix of attitudinal and behavioral approaches, you can usually get the clearest view of a design problem.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Use UX Research Methods throughout Development

The Nielsen Norman Group—an industry-leading UX consulting organization—identifies appropriate UX research methods which you can use during a project’s four stages . Key methods are:

Discover – Determine what is relevant for users.

Contextual inquiries – Interview suitable users in their own environment to see how they perform the task/s in question.

Diary studies – Have users record their daily interactions with a design or log their performance of activities.

Explore – Examine how to address all users’ needs.

Card sorting – Write words and phrases on cards; then let participants organize them in the most meaningful way and label categories to ensure that your design is structured in a logical way.

Customer journey maps – Create user journeys to expose potential pitfalls and crucial moments.

Test – Evaluate your designs.

Usability testing – Ensure your design is easy to use.

Accessibility evaluations – Test your design to ensure it’s accessible to everyone.

Listen – Put issues in perspective, find any new problems and notice trends.

Surveys/Questionnaires – Use these to track how users’ feel about your product.

Analytics – Collect analytics/metrics to chart (e.g.) website traffic and build reports.

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Whichever UX research method you choose, you need to consider the pros and cons of the different techniques . For instance, card sorting is cheap and easy, but you may find it time-consuming when it comes to analysis. Also, it might not give you in-depth contextual meaning. Another constraint is your available resources , which will dictate when, how much and which type of UX research you can do. So, decide carefully on the most relevant method/s for your research . Moreover, involve stakeholders from your organization early on . They can reveal valuable UX insights and help keep your research in line with business goals. Remember, a design team values UX research as a way to validate its assumptions about users in the field , slash the cost of the best deliverables and keep products in high demand —ahead of competitors’.

User research methods have different pros and cons,and vary from observations of users in context to controlled experiments in lab settings.

Learn More about UX Research

For a thorough grasp of UX research, take our course here: User Research – Methods and Best Practices

Read an extensive range of UX research considerations, discussed in Smashing Magazine: A Comprehensive Guide To UX Research

See the Nielsen Norman Group’s list of UX research tips: UX Research Cheat Sheet

Here’s a handy, example-rich catalog of UX research tools: 43 UX research tools for optimizing your product

Questions related to UX Research

UX research is a good career for those who enjoy working with a team and have strong communication skills. As a researcher, you play a crucial role in helping your team understand users and deliver valuable and delightful experiences. You will find a UX research career appealing if you enjoy scientific and creative pursuits. 

Start exploring this career option; see the User Researcher Learning Path .

Studies suggest that companies are also willing to pay well for research roles. The average salary for a UX researcher ranges from $92,000 to $146,000 per year.

In smaller companies, user research may be one of the responsibilities of a generalist UX designer. How much can your salary vary based on your region? Find out in UI & UX Designer Salaries: How Much Can I Earn .

Research is one part of the overall UX design process. UX research helps inform the design strategy and decisions made at every step of the design process. In smaller teams, a generalist designer may end up conducting research.

A UX researcher aims to understand users and their needs. A UX designer seeks to create a product that meets those needs.

A UX researcher gathers information. A UX designer uses that information to create a user-friendly and visually appealing product.

Learn more about the relationship between UX research and UX design in the course:

User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

If we consider a very broad definition of UX, then all user research is UX research.

However, in practice, there is a subtle difference between user research and UX research. While both involve understanding people, user research can involve users in any kind of research question, and some questions may not be that directly connected to user experience.

For example, you might do user research relating to a customer’s experience in relation to pricing, delivery or the experience across multiple channels.

Common UX research methods are usability testing, A/B testing, surveys, card sorting, user interviews, usage analytics and ethnographic research. Each method has its pros and cons and is useful in different scenarios. Hence, you must select the appropriate research method for the research question and target audience. Learn more about these methods in 7 Great, Tried and Tested UX Research Techniques .

Get started with user research. Download the User Research template bundle .

For a deep dive into usability testing—the most common research method, take the course Conducting Usability Testing .

Having a degree in a related field can give you an advantage. However, you don’t need a specific degree to become a UX researcher. A combination of relevant education, practical experience, and continuous learning can help you pursue a career in UX research. Many UX researchers come from diverse educational backgrounds, including psychology, statistics, human-computer interaction, information systems, design and anthropology.

Some employers may prefer candidates with at least a bachelor’s degree. However, it does not have to be in a UX-related field. There are relatively fewer degrees that focus solely on user research.

Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX

User Research – Methods and Best Practices

Every research project will vary. However, there are some common steps in conducting research, no matter which method or tool you decide to use: 

Define the research question

Select the appropriate research method

Recruit participants

Conduct the research

Analyze the data

Present the findings

You can choose from various UX research tools . Your choice depends on your research question, how you're researching, the size of your organization, and your project. For instance:

Survey tools such as Typeform and Google Forms.

Card sorting tools such as Maze and UXtweak.

Heatmap tools such as HotJar and CrazyEgg

Usability testing (through first-click testing and tree-testing) tools such as Optimal Workshop and Loop 11

Diagramming applications such as Miro and Whimsical to analyze qualitative data through affinity diagramming.

Spreadsheet tools such as Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel for quantitative data analysis

Interface design and prototyping tools like Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch and Marvel to conduct usability testing.

Presentation tools such as Keynote, Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Many of these tools offer additional features you can leverage for multiple purposes. To understand how you can make the most of these tools, we recommend these courses:

There are relatively fewer degrees that focus solely on user research.

While there are no universal research case study formats, here’s one suggested outline: 

An overview of the project: Include the problem statement, goals and objectives.

The research methods and methodology: For example, surveys, interviews, or usability testing).

Research findings

The design process: How the research findings led to design decisions.

Impact of design decisions on users and the business: Include metrics such as conversion and error rates to demonstrate the impact.

Optionally, include notes on what you learned and how you can improve the process in the future.

Learn how to showcase your portfolio to wow your future employer/client in the How to Create a UX Portfolio course.

While AI can help automate tasks and help UX researchers, it will not completely replace them. AI lacks the creativity and empathy that human designers bring to the table.

Human researchers are better at understanding the nuances of human behavior and emotions. They can also think outside the box and develop creative solutions that AI cannot. So, AI can help researchers be more efficient and effective through data analysis, smart suggestions and automation. But it cannot replace them.

Watch AI-Powered UX Design: How to Elevate Your UX Career to learn how you can work with AI.

Agile teams often struggle to incorporate user research in their workflows due to the time pressure of short sprints. However, that doesn’t mean agile teams can’t conduct research. Instead of seeing research as one big project, teams can break it into bite-sized chunks. Researchers regularly conduct research and share their findings in every sprint.

Researchers can involve engineers and other stakeholders in decision-making to give everyone the context they need to make better decisions. When engineers participate in the decision-making process, they can ensure that the design will be technically feasible. There will also be lower chances of errors when the team actually builds the feature. Here’s more on how to make research a team effort .

For more on bite-sized research, see this Master Class: Continuous Product Discovery: The What and Why

For more practical tips and methods to work in an agile environment, take our Agile Methods for UX Design course.

User research is very important in designing products people will want and use. It helps us avoid designing based on what we think instead of what users actually want.

UX research helps designers understand their users’ needs, behaviors, attitudes and how they interact with a product or service. Research helps identify usability problems, gather feedback on design concepts, and validate design decisions. This ultimately benefits businesses by improving the product, brand reputation and loyalty. A good user experience provides a competitive edge and reduces the risk of product failure.

Learn more about the importance of user research in the design process in these courses:

Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide

Literature on UX Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on UX Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about UX Research

Take a deep dive into UX Research with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love , if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design .

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’ .

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world . You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

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UX Research Briefing Template

A UXinsight by Maaike Mintjes

• Operationalising research
• Research process
• Research setup

“Asking questions is a waste of time unless you know your reason for doing so in advance.” Erika Hall

Figuring out what the research objective is, is a crucial part of preparing for a research project. Other things to discuss upfront are things like budgets, deadlines and how recruitment will be handled. This template helps you to think about those important questions before you start, so you can make your research project a success. Fill it out together with your team, clients and/or stakeholders.

Download the template below:

Coaching by Maaike? Get in touch.

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About the author

Maaike Mintjes

Maaike is a Design Researcher and Co-creation Facilitator. She also provides training and coaching. She has worked in the field of human-centred design since 2007, both in Australia and The Netherlands. She loves using design thinking to build bridges between research insights and design outcomes.

How to measure UX research impact: A multi-level framework

Whether you are the only UX researcher in your organisation or part of a larger team: it makes sense to reflect on the impact of user research regularly. We propose a framework for defining and measuring UX research impact across different levels.

How to build a UX research role & practice from scratch

Are you the first UX researcher in your organisation? Or is it your first role as a UX researcher? Get inspired by this case study on how to define your role from scratch and spread the research mindset in your teams (templates included!).

How to make UX research accessible for neurodiverse professionals

There have been a lot of discussions in the UX research field about diversity and inclusion. But how inclusive is our field to UX professionals? Learn how UX research industry standards are harmful, and how can we change them to make our field accessible to neurodiverse UX professionals.

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Fundamentals

How To Create A UX Research Plan

Written by: Phil Hesketh

Published on: 01 Feb, 2023

Having a clear plan in place is essential before you spend valuable time and resources on any type of user research.

Whether it’s a spreadsheet, slides, or a simple document, a research plan will give your team a clear direction to help everyone stay on track and avoid the many logistical pitfalls that can derail this type of project.

Our template will teach you how to create a UX research plan from scratch in a few simple steps—even if you’ve never written one before.

What is a UX Research plan?

A user research (UX) plan is an outline of your project which maps out all the steps you will take to gather data and get the information you need to reach a specific goal (e.g. running live user testing before a new product launch).

Once you’ve created your plan, it can be shared with key stakeholders and team members so that everyone understands the project’s goals, direction, scope, and timeframe.

You might not even look at this plan after you’ve written and shared it, but it’s a useful document you can refer to during the course of your research, in case you need to do things like:

Remind stakeholders why this study is necessary

Remind your team about approximate milestone dates

Ensure you’re not getting sidetracked from the original objectives

Explain why specific research participants were chosen

Your UX plan doesn’t need to be a formal document. It’s just a way to help kick off your project, set parameters, and keep everyone aligned during the course of the research.

What should a UX research plan include?

When you’re thinking about how to structure a UX research plan, you’ll need to make sure you include everything that will happen from the start to the finish of your project.

You can break this plan down into 9 very straightforward steps (or less, as a couple of these steps are optional).

Here’s how you should structure your UX research plan:

Define the problem

Identify the goals

Decide on your methodology

Plan participant profiles

Plan your recruiting strategy

Create a research brief

Decide how you’ll present and share findings

Plan the timeline (optional)

Appendix (optional)

We’ll look at all of these steps in detail below.

Benefits of creating a UX research proposal

Your plan is a proposal that should communicate the “why”, “what”, and “how” behind your research sessions. It should function as a working guide to streamline your researchers’ processes and keep stakeholders on the same page.

The primary benefits of creating a user research plan are to ensure:

A plan keeps your team clear on the research project’s objectives, expectations, and other fundamental moving parts to ensure everybody is moving in the same direction during the course of the study.

For your stakeholders, it’s a way to involve them in your project rather than being passive onlookers. A plan can help you get their buy-in, set realistic expectations about what you intend to achieve, and tie your research to business objectives.

During any type of research, it’s easy to dig up something fascinating. And it’s always tempting to run with this new knowledge and head off on a wildly different tangent to where you started out.

Having a plan ensures that this doesn’t happen, and that your team stays focused on the original objectives that are laid out.

There are plenty of pitfalls in any user research initiatives. Talking to the wrong participants. No-show participants. No participants. Tech problems. Scheduling conflicts. Piles of useless data. And the list goes on.

A UX research plan can help you avoid many of these things so you can ensure your study reaches its conclusion on time, and on budget.

How to create a UX research plan [step-by-step template]

1. define the problem.

The starting point of your UX research plan is to create a background section with a problem statement that sets out what you’re looking to achieve with your study.

This only needs to be a few sentences which set out the central question you’re looking to address with your research study, and how you intend to answer it.

Here are some example questions to guide you in creating a problem statement

Who are the users we are undertaking this study for?

What needs do they have?

What are the pain points they have when they arrive on our website/look for a particular product?

Why are they arriving at the checkout page, but not purchasing?

Example problem statement

We want to understand why 75% of our website visitors fail to complete their purchase when they reach the checkout page, and if there are any specific barriers that are preventing them from doing so.

For this study, we will be undertaking usability testing to follow the customer experience with our website, and any pain points, objections, and hesitations they experience in the buying process leading up to the point of purchase.

We will also be undertaking discovery research to enable us to more deeply understand the user’s experience of our brand, and the needs they have when considering making a purchase on our website.

2. Identify the goals of the research

Having set out the core problem above, you now need to identify exactly what you’re trying to learn from your upcoming research. It will be easier to write the rest of your research plan with defined end goals in mind.

The scope of your UX research might be quite broad, so focusing on specific objectives here will ensure your team has a singular focus, and is less likely to get sidetracked or fall victim to “shiny research syndrome” when something fascinating is discovered that doesn’t fall within the original scope.

Here are some questions you can use to help you define your goals for this section

What do we want to know?  This will reflect what you’ve mentioned in your problem statement

Why do we need to know this?  Tie this into conversions, increased profits, or other relevant stakeholder goals

What do we know already?  What information do you have tucked away in analytics, feedback, support logs, etc. that are relevant to this study?

What DON’T we know?  A tricky one to answer, but you need to acknowledge the gaps in your existing data as a means to fill them in with the results of the research

What must occur for us to confidently finish this study?  Define the agreed point when “enough” data has been collected to conclude the research

What are the anticipated outcomes of the research?  State the end goal, and what will make this study a success

How will this research help drive decision making?  Will it fast-track product development? Help your developers design a better website flow? Or help create a new product?

How will this research contribute to overall business goals?  What are your stakeholders looking to achieve, and how will this help them get there?

What deliverables do we need to create to present our findings?  Are you intending to release the findings as a report, a slideshow, in a stakeholder meeting? Whatever you choose, it’s important to share the findings when they’re completed so they don’t end up gathering dust on your hard drive.

A key benefit to laying out objectives in your user research plan is that it’s easier to get buy-in from stakeholders when they can connect the dots between your research efforts and their own business goals. ‍Make a point of positioning your goals in this way if possible.

Example goals that stem from your problem statement

To understand the end-to-end journey of how and why participants choose to leave our website before completing the checkout process

To uncover users’ past experiences and thought processes when they decide to order products like ours online

To evaluate the pain points customers are experiencing when they go through our online checkout process

3. Decide on your research methods

This is a quick section where you set out the research techniques you’ve chosen to help reach your objectives, plus the reason you’ve chosen a particular method.

There are a lot of different UX research methods available to you, from quantitative to qualitative research, behavioral, generative, and attitudinal—and it can often be overwhelming trying to pick the method that will yield the most informed hypothesis.

Take into account where you are in your overall research process or product development, together with any time and resource constraints that may factor into your study when you’re planning out the best research method.

Putting the thought into this up front can help you map your methodology to your goals and enable you to pinpoint the most effective methodology before work begins.

Example research methodology

For this research project, we will carry out a 20-minute usability test with 10 participants to help us gain a better understanding of how visitors navigate and experience our website from the point of entry to checkout.

This method will give us a deeper understanding of any hesitations or barriers to purchasing our product online, and enable us to achieve our goals in this study.

4. Plan participant profiles

Once you’ve defined your problem statement and objectives, it’s time to select the participants you need to kick off your research.

If you don’t have a good idea of who your participants should be, make sure you note this fact down in your UX research plan, and mention that the participants will be ones who approximate your ideal users.

Planning participant profiles properly can be time consuming, so we recommend setting aside a day to work on this section if possible. This ensures you’re not wasting valuable time talking to the wrong people, or collecting data that will lead to making the wrong decisions for your product.

Here are a couple of ideas to help you think about ways to recruit the best participants for your study.

Talk with internal stakeholders

Your stakeholders may have a very clear idea who your research should target. Depending on the focus of your study, you could also chat with members from your sales, marketing, support and product team to dig deeper into who your user personas might be.

Talk with competitors’ customers

If you’re able to speak to the customers of a competing business, this can help you dig into the gaps in your competitors’ products, and how these users would make things better.

Talk with previous research participants

If you’ve done a lot of previous UX research, past participants might be your ideal users for this study as well.

Participant scope

Once you’ve got your ideal participants sorted out, the next question to ask is—what’s the sample size you need, based on the research methodology you’ve chosen?

There’s no “right” answer to this, but as a guideline, we recommend:

1:1 interview - 5 to 10 participants

Usability testing - 5 to 10 participants

Quantitative research - 20+ people

Surveys - 100+ people

You can also check out the Nielsen Group’s guide on how to calculate the scope of your participant pool based on the methodology you’ve chosen.

Recruitment strategy

Decide how you’re going to recruit your ideal users for your research. This will help your team stay focused and not spread their resources too thin when they’re in the recruitment phase.

You could consider:

Using an online participant recruitment service

Advertising in places your idea users spend time (either physically or digitally)

Contacting previous research participants

Contacting current and past customers

Create a screening survey

Screeners are ideal to help people self-select whether they are the right fit for user interviews and surveys. And now that you have your research objectives defined, you can more easily create the questions you need to hone in on your ideal participants.

Think about the characteristics you want to attract (and don’t want to attract), and make sure these points are covered in your screening questions.

For example:

Have they purchased any products online in the last 3 months?

Have they purchased from a competitor website?

Do they need to meet specific gender or age profiles?

Do they need to meet a certain income bracket?

Your screener should be kept to 5-10 disqualifying questions that quickly and accurately filter out the people who aren’t a good fit.

To incentivize, or not to incentivize?

While it’s not compulsory, you should always compensate your participants for their time in helping out your company.

Incentives can assist you in reaching the desired number of users for your research, and improve inclusion if people have to take time off work or travel to take part in your research.

Incentives don’t have to be monetary—you can offer subscription discounts, gift cards, swag, or whatever else your target users might find helpful or valuable.

As a guideline:

Remote interviews require less incentive than in-person interviews

The longer the time you spend with each user, the higher compensation they should receive

High-income users will expect better incentives

The most important part of offering incentives is that you ensure you keep your word and distribute your agreed compensation once the study is complete.

Add this to your UX research plan’s timeline if you need to keep it top of mind.

Don’t forget to collect consent from your research participants!

Obtaining and managing consent is simple, accessible and compliant with Consent Kit.

When you conduct UX research, this step can easily be overlooked. But it’s an essential part of the process for two reasons.

Getting consent positions you as a transparent researcher, which builds trust in your participants from the outset and helps them feel secure about working with you.

Collecting user consent also ensures you’re compliant with data laws and other regulations like  GDPR  and  CPRA  that may exist in your state or country.

6. Prepare a UX research brief

Your UX research brief acts as an interview guide for your team when they’re conducting the research, such as in 1:1 interviews, field studies, and live user testing environments.

It will keep your team consistent with their line of enquiry, and help to keep their research sessions on track without wasting time or missing out important questions.

To structure your brief, you should include the following:

Introduction  - this is a quick introduction and overview for your participants of what you’re doing, what to expect, and how long it will take.

Interview questions  - aim for no more than 10 open ended questions that are focused on driving the results you need to reach your goal. The more focused your questions are, the better chance you have of coming to an actionable conclusion with your study.

Short outro  - include a quick wrap-up to thank people for their time, ask if they’re open to further research, and the next steps (e.g. sending them the incentive you mentioned when they agreed to participate)

7. Decide how you will present and share research findings

Many UX research studies end up gathering dust in a digital basement somewhere. But after all your hard work and exciting findings, that’s something you want to avoid at all costs.

An important part of your research plan is deciding how to share what your team has learned in the course of the study.

There’s no right or wrong format for this section—your presentation should simply be the one that ensures your conclusions are impactful, useful, and most importantly—implemented by your company.

Presentation examples

Setting up a meeting to share findings

Creating a PDF or slides with key findings and takeaways

Setting up a folder with documents that can be accessed by relevant people at any time

Creating videos

Sharing survey responses

Making audio or video snippets of the most interesting 1:1 interview findings

Planning your presentation methods ahead of time can help you avoid the overwhelm that can happen at the end of your research when you’re faced with mountains of data to wade through.

It will help you more easily connect the dots between your findings and ensure you can share your qualitative and quantitative data with stakeholders in the most effective way.

8. Map out a timeline (optional)

Some people find it helpful to include a projected research timeline, with approximate dates for each milestone.

Other researchers feel that they may be creating a timeline that is impossible to stick to, which can add an extra element of stress to the project.

If you do include a timeline, make sure your team can realistically achieve it, and stress that these dates are only an approximate guide to aim for.

Timeline example

Project start date: 1 March

Create, share, and review UX research plan: 4 March

Start recruiting participants: 10 March

Begin interviews: 14 March

Complete interviews: 21 March

Begin research synthesis: 23 March

Complete synthesis: 30 March

Present findings: 1 April

Estimating how long your research will take from the outset, and when stakeholders can expect your findings, is an essential part of tying your project to greater business goals, and keeping product developments on track.

Even if you choose not to create a UX research plan, you should always define an expected timeframe with your team before work begins.

This research will take approximately 4-5 weeks to identify goals, develop participant profiles, recruit participants, undertake research, analyze findings, create a hypothesis, and present findings

9. Appendix (optional)

This is a section where you can note down any extra resources that are relevant to your UX research.

It could include things like:

Links to specific documents

Meeting notes

Stakeholder comments

Basically, anything that has been discussed before or during the UX research project can be noted down in the section to keep everything in one findable place.

Wrapping up

A UX research plan is your best friend when it’s time to map out a new project.

Whether you use it to get buy-in from stakeholders, or as a roadmap to check off your progress, creating a simple plan at the start can ensure you achieve exactly what you set out to accomplish.

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The Complete Guide To UX Research (User Research)

UX Research is a term that has been trending in the past few years. There's no surprise why it's so popular - User Experience Research is all about understanding your customer and their needs, which can help you greatly improve your conversion rate and user experience on your website. In this article, we're going to provide a complete guide to UX research as well as how to start implementing it in your organisation.Throughout this article we will give you a complete high-level overview of the entire UX Research meaning, supported by more in-depth articles for each topic.

Introduction to UX Research

Wether you're a grizzled UX Researcher who's been in the field for decades or a UX Novice who's just getting started, UX Research is an integral aspect of the UX Design process. Before diving into this article on UX research methods and tools, let's first take some time to break down what UX research actually entails.

Each of these UX Research Methods has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to understand your goals for the UX Research activities you want to complete.

What is UX Research?

UX research begins with UX designers and UX researchers studying the real world needs of users. User Experience Research is a process --it's not just one thing-- that involves collecting data, conducting interviews, usability testing prototypes or website designs with human participants in order to deeply understand what people are looking for when they interact with a product or service.

By using different sorts of user-research techniques you can better understand not only people desires from their product of service, but a deeper human need which can serve as an incredibly powerful opportunity.

There's an incredible amount of different sorts of research methods. Most of them can be divided in two camps: Qualitative and Quantitative Research.

Qualitative research - Understanding needs can be accomplished through observation, in depth interviews and ethnographic studies. Quantitative Research focusses more on the numbers, analysing data and collecting measurable statistics.

Within these two groups there's an incredible amount of research activities such as Card Sorting, Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Usability Tests, Personas & Customer Journeys and many more. We've created our The Curated List of Research Techniques to always give you an up-to-date overview.

Why is UX Research so important?

When I started my career as a digital designer over 15 years ago, I felt like I was always hired to design the client's idea. Simply translate what they had in their head into a UI without even thinking about changing the user experience. Needless to say: This is a recipe for disaster. An no, this isn't a "Client's don't know anything" story. Nobody knows! At least in the beginning. The client had "the perfect idea" for a new digital feature. The launch date was already set and the development process had to start as soon as possible.

When the feature launched, we expected support might get a few questions or even receive a few thank-you emails. We surely must've affected the user experience somehow!

But that didn't happen. Nothing happened. The feature wasn't used.

Because nobody needed it.

This is exactly what happens when you skip user experience research because you think you're solving a problem that "everybody" has, but nobody really does.

Conducting User Experience research can help you to have a better understanding of your stakeholders and what they need. This is incredibly valuable information from which you can create personas and customer journeys. It doesn't matter if you're creating a new product or service or are improving an existing once.

Five Steps for conducting User Research

Created by Eric Sanders , the Research Learning Spiral provides five main steps for your user research.

• Objectives: What are the knowledge gaps we need to fill?
• Hypotheses: What do we think we understand about our users?
• Methods: Based on time and manpower, what methods should we select?
• Conduct: Gather data through the selected methods.
• Synthesize: Fill in the knowledge gaps, prove or disprove our hypotheses, and discover opportunities for our design efforts.

1: Objectives: Define the Problem Statement

A problem statement is a concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon. It identifies the gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal) state of a process or product.

Problem statements are the first steps in your research because they help you to understand what's wrong or needs improving. For example, if your product is a mobile app and the problem statement says that customers are having difficulty paying for items within the application, then UX research will lead you (hopefully) down that path. Most likely it will involve some form of usability testing.

Check out this article if you'd like to learn more about Problem Statements.

2: Hypotheses: What we think we know about our user groups

After getting your Problem Statement right, there's one more thing to do before doing any research. Make sure you have created a clear research goal for yourself. How do you identify Research Objectives? By asking questions:

• Who are we doing this for? The starting point for your personas!
• What are we doing? What's happening right now? What do our user want? What does the company need?
• Think about When. If you're creating a project plan, you'll need a timeline. It also helps to keep in mind when people are using your products or service.
• Where is the logical next step. Where do people use your product? Why there? What limitations are there to that location? Where can you perform research? Where do your users live?
• Why are we doing this? Why should or shouldn't we be doing this? Why teaches you all about motivations from people and for the project.
• Last but not least: How? Besides thinking about the research activities itself, think about how people will test a product or feature. How will the user insights (outcome of the research) work be used in the  User Centered Design - and development process?

3: Methods: Choose the right research method

UX research is about exploration, and you want to make sure that your method fits the needs of what you're trying to explore. There are many different methods. In a later chapter we'll go over the most common UX research methods .

For now, all you need to keep in mind that that there are a lot of different ways of doing research.

You definitely don't need to do every type of activity but it would be useful to have a decent understanding of the options you have available, so you pick the right tools for the job.

4. Conduct: Putting in the work

Apply your chosen user research methods to your Hypotheses and Objectives! The various techniques used by the senior product designer in the BTNG Design Process can definitely be overwhelming. The product development process is not a straight line from A to B. UX Researchers often discover new qualitative insights in the user experience due to uncovering new (or incorrect) user needs. So please do understand that UX Design is a lot more than simply creating a design.

5. Synthesise: Evaluating Research Outcome

So you started with your Problem Statement (Objectives), you drafted your hypotheses, chose the top research methods, conducted your research as stated in the research process and now "YOU ARE HERE".

The last step is to Synthesise what you've learned. Start by filling in the knowledge gaps. What unknowns are you now able to answer?

Which of your hypotheses are proven (or disproven)?

And lastly, which new exciting new opportunities did you discover!

Evaluating the outcome of the User Experience Research is an essential part of the work.

Make sure to keep them brief and to-the-point. A good rule of thumb is to include the top three positive comments and the top three problems.

UX Research Methods

Choosing the right ux research method.

Making sure you use the right types of user experience research in any project is essential. Since time and money is always limited, we need to make sure we always get the most bang-for-our-buck. This means we need to pick the UX research method that will give us the most insights as possible for a project.

Three things to keep in mind when making a choice among research methodologies:

• Stages of the product life cycle - Is it a new or existing product?
• Quantitative vs. Qualitative - In depth talk directly with people or data?
• Attitudinal vs. Behavioural - What people say vs what people do

Image from Nielsen Norman Group

Most frequently used methods of UX Research

• Card Sorting: Way before UX Research even was a "thing", psychological research originally used Card Sorting.  With Card Sorting, you try to find out how people group things and what sort of hierarchies they use. The BTNG Research Team is specialised in remote research. So our modern Card Sorting user experience research have a few modern surprises.
• Usability Testing: Before launching a new feature or product it is important to do user testing. Give them tasks to complete and see how well the prototype works and learn more about user behaviours.
• Remote Usability Testing: During the COVID-19 lockdown, finding the appropriate ux research methods haven't always been that easy. Luckily, we've adopted plenty of modern solutions that help us with collecting customer feedback even with a remote usability test.
• Research-Based User Personas: A profile of a fictional character representing a specific stakeholder relevant to your product or service. Combine goals and objections with attitude and personality. The BTNG Research Team creates these personas for the target users after conducing both quantitative and qualitative user research.
• Field Studies: Yes, we actually like to go outside. What if your product isn't a B2B desktop application which is being used behind a computer during office hours? At BTNG we have different types of Field Studies which all help you gain valuable insights into human behaviour and the user experience.
• The Expert Interview: Combine your talent with that of one of BTNG's senior researcher. Conducting ux research without talking to the experts on your team would be a waste of time. In every organisation there are people who know a lot about their product or service and have unique insights. We always like to include them in the UX Research!
• Eye Movement Tracking: If you have an existing digital experience up and running - Eye Movement Tracking can help you to identify user experience challenges in your funnel. The outcome shows a heatmap of where the user looks (and doesn't).

Check out this article for a in-depth guide on UX Research Methods.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative UX research methods

Since this is a topic that we can on about for hours, we decided to split this section up in a few parts. First let's start with the difference.

Qualitative UX Research is based on an in-depth understanding of the human behaviour and needs. Qualitative user research includes interviews, observations (in natural settings), usability tests or contextual inquiry. More than often you'll obtain unexpected, valuable insights through this from of user experience research methods.

Quantitative UX Research relies on statistical analysis to make sense out of data (quantitative data) gathered from UX measurements: A/B Tests - Surveys etc. Quantitative UX Research is as you might have guessed, a lot more data-orientated.

If you'd like to learn more about these two types of research, check out these articles:

Get the most out of your User Research with Qualitative Research

Quantitative Research: The Science of Mining Data for Insights

Balancing qualitative and quantitative UX research

Both types of research have amazing benefits but also challenges. Depending on the research goal, it would be wise to have a good understanding which types of research you would like to be part of the ux design and would make the most impact.

The BTNG Research Team loves to start with Qualitative Research to first get a better understanding of the WHY and gain new insights. To validate these new learning they use Quantitative Research in your user experience research.

A handful of helpful UX Research Tools

The landscape of UX research tools has been growing rapidly. The BTNG Research team use a variety of UX research tools to help with well, almost everything. From running usability tests, creating prototypes and even for recruiting participants.

In the not-too-distant future, we'll create a Curated UX Research Tool article. For now, a handful of helpful UX Research Tools should do the trick.

• For surveys : Typeform
• For UX Research Recruitment: Dscout
• For analytics and heatmaps: VWO
• For documenting research: Notion & Airtable
• For Customer Journey Management : TheyDo
• For transcriptions: Descript
• For remote user testing: Maze
• For Calls : Zoom

Surveys: Typeform

What does it do? Survey Forms can be boring. Typeform is one of those ux research tools that helps you to create beautiful surveys with customisable templates and an online editor. For example, you can add videos to your survey or even let people draw their answers instead of typing them in a text box. Who is this for? Startup teams that want to quickly create engaging and modern looking surveys but don't know how to code it themselves.

Highlights: Amazing UX, looks and feel very modern, create forms with ease that match your branding, great reports and automation.

Why is it our top pick? Stop wasting time on ux research tools with too many buttons. Always keep the goal of your ux research methods in mind. Keep things lean, fast and simple with a product with amazing UX.

https://www.typeform.com/

UX Research Recruitment: Dscout

What does it do? Dscout is a remote research platform that helps you recruit participants for your ux research (the right ones). With a pool of +100.000 real users, our user researchers can hop on video calls and collect data for your qualitative user research. So test out those mobile apps user experience and collect all the data! Isn't remote research amazing?

Highlights: User Research Participant Recruitment, Live Sessions,Prototype feedback, competitive analysis, in-the-wild product discovery, field work supplementations, shopalongs.

Why is it our top pick? Finding the right people is more important than finding people fast. BTNG helps corporate clients in all types of industries which require a unique set of users, each time. Dscout helps us to quickly find the right people and make sure our user research is delivered on time and our research process stays in tact.

https://dscout.com/

Analytics and heatmaps: VWO

What does it do? When we were helping the Financial Times, our BTNG Research Team collaborated with FT Marketing Team who were already running experiments with VWO. 50% of the traffic would see one version of a certain page while 50% saw a different version. Which performed best? Perhaps you'd take a look at time-on-page. But more importantly: Which converts better!

Hotjar provides Product Experience Insights that show how users behave and what they feel strongly about, so product teams can deliver real value to them.

Highlights: VWO is an amazing suite that does it all:Automated Feedback, Heatmaps, EyeTracking, User Session Recordings (Participant Tracking) and one thing that Hotjar doesn't do: A/B Testing.

Why is it our top pick? Even tho it's an expensive product, it does give you value for money. Especially the reports with very black and white outcomes are great for presenting the results you've made.

https://vwo.com/

Documenting research: Notion

What does it do? Notion is our command center, where we store and constantly update our studio's aggregate wisdom. It is a super-flexible tool that helps to organise project documentation, prepare for interviews with either clients or their product users, accumulate feedback, or simply take notes.

Highlights: A very clean, structured way to write and share information with your team in a beautiful designed app with an amazing user experience.

Why is it our top pick? There's no better, more structured way to share information.

https://www.notion.so/

Customer Journey Management: TheyDo

What does it do? TheyDo is a modern Journey Management Platform. It centralises your journeys in an easy to manage system, where everyone has access to a single source of truth of the customer experience. It’s like a CMS for journeys.

Highlights: Customer Journey Map designer, Personas and 2x2 Persona Matrix, Opportunity & Solution Management & Prioritisation.

Why is it our top pick? TheyDo fits perfectly with BTNG's way of helping companies become more customer-centric. It helps to visualise the current experience of stakeholders. With those insight which we capture from interviews or usability testing, we discover new opportunities. A perfect starting point for creating solutions!

https://www.theydo.io/

Transcriptions: Descript

What does it do? Descript is an all-in-one solution for audio & video recording, editing and transcription. The editing is as easy as a doc. Imagine you’ve interviewed 20 different people about a new flavor of soda or a feature for your app. You just drop all those files into a Descript Project, and they show up in different “Compositions” (documents) in the sidebar. In a couple of minutes they’ll be transcribed, with speaker labels added automatically.

Highlights: Overdub, Filler Word Removal, Collaboration, Subtitles, Remote Recording and Studio Sound.

Why is it our top pick? Descript is an absolute monster when it comes to recording, editing and transcribing videos. It truly makes digesting the work after recording fast and even fun!

https://www.descript.com/

Remote user testing: Maze

What does it do? Maze is a-mazing remote user testing platform for unmoderated usability tests. With Maze, you can create and run in-depth usability tests and share them with your testers via a link to get actionable insights. Maze also generates a usability study report instantly so that you can share it with anyone.

It’s handy that the tool integrates directly with Figma, InVision, Marvel, and Sketch, thus, you can import a working prototype directly from the design tool you use. The BTNG Design Team with their Figma skills has an amazing chemistry with the Research Team due to that Figma/Maze integration.

Highlights: Besides unmoderated usability testing, Maze can help with different UX Research Methods, like card sorting, tree testing, 5-second testing, A/B testing, and more.

Why is it our top pick? Usability testing has been a time consuming way of qualitative research. Trying to find out how users interact (Task analysis) during an Interviews combined with keeping an eye on the prototype can be... a challenge. The way that Maze allows us to run (besides our hands on usability test) now also run unmoderated usability testing is a powerful weapon in our arsenal.

https://maze.co/

Calls: Zoom

What does it do? As the other video conferencing tools you can run video calls. But what makes Zoom a great tool? We feel that the integration with conferencing equipment is huge for our bigger clients. Now that there's also a Miro integration we can make our user interviews even more fun and interactive!

Highlights: Call Recording, Collaboration tools, Screen Sharing, Free trial, connects to conferencing equipment, host up to 500 people!

Why is it our top pick? Giving the research participants of your user interviews a pleasant experience is so important. Especially when you're looking for qualitative feedback on your ux design, you want to make sure they feel comfortable. And yes, you'll have to start using a paid version - but the user interface of Zoom alone is worth it. Even the Mobile App is really solid.

https://zoom.us/

In Conclusion

No matter what research methodology you rely on if it is qualitative research methods or perhaps quantitative data - keep in mind that user research is an essential part of the Design Process. Not only your UX designer will thank you, but also your users.

In every UX project we've spoken to multiple users - no matter if it was a task analysis, attitudinal research or focus groups... They all had one thing in common:

People thanked us for taking the time to listen to them.

So please, stop thinking about the potential UX research methods you might use in your design process and consider what it REALLY is about:

Solving the right problems for the right people.

And there's only one way to get there: Trying things out, listening, learning and improving.

Looking for help? Reach out!

See the Nielsen Norman Group’s list of user research tips: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-research-cheat-sheet/

Find an extensive range of user research considerations, discussed in Smashing Magazine: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/comprehensive-guide-ux-research/

Here’s a convenient and example-rich catalogue of user research tools: https://blog.airtable.com/43-ux-research-tools-for-optimizing-your-product/

Related Posts

How to generate UX Insights

The importance of User Research

How to recruit participants

What is ux research.

UX Research Tools

• June 12, 2023

Briefing the right way: A Guide to UI/UX briefs

Remember high school group projects? Do you remember wondering where to start, how to start, how much of the work you’d have to do yourself because you didn’t trust anyone but you also had sports practice to get to? Totally not talking from personal experience…👀

Imagine having an all-in-one form you could fill out – what gives you a path to follow while encouraging you to think deeply about what you’re trying to come up with. How useful it could’ve been! 

While projects only get bigger as we go through our lives, luckily, we have the tools to deal with them and make sure a dream-project doesn’t suffer from a lack of insight or direction. 

Product briefs

A product brief (or product spec) refers to a document that outlines the goals, benefits and scope of a product. It explains the product’s vision and highlights why it is needed, and how to achieve it. While product briefs can also be surface level, some can go more in-depth to include contextual analysis.

McKinsey researched 5,000 product managers from around the world who work on both internal and external software products in a range of industries, and a whopping 75% responded that product manage­ment best practices aren’t being adopted at their companies, that product manage­ment is a nascent function within their organisation, or that it doesn’t exist at all. 

Product briefs are critical to any business because they can be used they’re the template with which people go about creating a new product, or revamping an existing one. You can use them to keep your team on track, convince potential shareholders, and figure out what marketing strategy you want to take. Additionally, an effective design brief aligns the company and designer’s goals so that everyone can be on the same page with the final deliverable.

UI & UX

UI (user interface design) and UX (user experience design) are crucial to a product and go hand in hand.

Don Norman, the co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group Design Consultancy, is credited with coining the term “user experience” in the late 1990s. His definition highlights that regardless of its medium, non-digital UX designs encompass any and all interactions between a potential or active customer and a company.

In the digital world, UX applies to anything that can be experienced—be it a website, a photo booth, or a visit to the supermarket. It involves getting a user from point A to B, and making it easy to accomplish the desired tasks. This is possible by observing and conducting task analyses to see how users actually complete tasks in a user flow.

For example: How easy is the checkout process when shopping online? How easy is it for you to grip that vegetable peeler? Does your online banking app make it easy for you to manage your money?

While user experience is a collection of tasks focused on optimising a product for effective and enjoyable use, user interface design is the face of such functions: the look, feel, presentation and interactivity of a product. User interface design is a purely digital term for the interaction between the user and a digital device or product—like the touchscreen on your smartphone or the touchpad you use to select what kind of coffee you want from the coffee machine. In relation to websites and apps, UI design considers the look, feel, and interactivity of the product.

Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people’s minds. — Jony Ive

When it comes to product design, UX and UI complement each other, and getting both aspects right is an absolute must. Yet the two require different approaches. 

UI and UX briefs 

A well-written design brief states the main objectives, deadlines, budgets, and overall expectations from a certain project. It should be the document that sets the strategic vision of the project and the basic guidelines for the designers’ team. Each design project is different, and, accordingly, the briefs should be written for those specific needs.

The objectives of the UI design are the most important aspect of the brief. You might want to improve users’ flow, raise the app’s efficiency, or provide your company’s staff with an effective tool for managing projects. It is also important to mention if there is a pre-existing visual identity that you would be working with or would require something from scratch to be made (more on this in a while!). For instance, you might include a link to an online resource that you like using and provide a description of the aspects of the resource that appeal to you. The designer will look at everything and suggest a few different ways your preferences can be included in the final design.

A UX design brief is a concise document that aims at describing your project and ensuring that both the client and the designers are on the same page. If you decide you need UX help, there’s a reason behind it – are you losing users? Has the conversion dropped significantly? It is also necessary to give the project a visual direction as well once you have a project overview laid out along with other pertinent strategic information. ‍It should answer things like “what does the customer want the mobile application to look like if it is a mobile application? If it is a web application, which one would they like to model it after?” 

Jakob Nielsen, a renowned web usability consultant and partner in the Nielsen Norman Group, and Rolf Molich, another prominent usability expert, established a list of ten user interface design guidelines in the 1990s. While the guidelines don’t focus on some specifics of visual identity like typography and such, it’s a good starting point when coming up with a brief. Design behemoth Figma has tons of templates you could go through for this very purpose.

The brief 

For a brief set of guidelines, on which you could create more briefs or go further in depth, these are some of the most important questions you could focus on. Here’s a quick template that sums it all up. 

1. What is your company/product about and what do you want to achieve with the it?

If this is for a product, and you already have a brand identity, it is best to specify what you’re working on, and why such a product is important for your company. A new product’s outline doesn’t need to match the company’s design, but it would benefit designers to know what the overarching principles you’re going for. For example, by choosing visual elements and language that aligns with your brand, you could have brand-aligned and consistent UX and UI. Here’s a good stud y on how such companies like Headspace and Spotify have aligned their UX and UI.

Say, for instance, you wish to revamp a newsletter your company offers. Here’s a handy template you could use !

However, if you don’t yet have a brand identity, it would serve you well to come up with one to guide further projects and products. Here is a good example of how to make one , complete with the thought process behind the logo, the colours used, and the products that could be created out of it. Moodboards are your friend in this process: scour through the internet for inspiration from other companies and brands in the same space as you. 

Ask yourself what you want to achieve with this project. In what ways will the outcome help the business? Would it: 

• Increase the number of visitors?
• Grow sales?
• Enhance user retention time on the website?
• Simplify user flows?
• Gain brand visibility?
• Encourage users to sign up for the newsletters?

You could add to this section by working with developers in understanding the pain points of the business, and with the designer on how to best align it with the company’s themes. 

2. Who’s your target audience?

Here, you could add who you’re making this product for. Why should someone use this product instead of the others? What market are you trying to tap into? Perhaps people have told you what they want, or you’ve undertaken a survey to see what resonates better. Design is always subjective and while you could have a user persona in mind, you aren’t always only designing it for a specific client – you are creating something that would resonate with a larger target audience as well. Figure out the audience age, demographics, type of content they consume, purchasing capacity, lifestyle choices, etc. 

3. What is the scope of your project?

The project’s scope depends on the number and complexity of your assigned tasks to the chosen team. Whether you need to build a mobile app for an existing product or create the software from scratch, the professionals need to know where to start and how large the project is. Here, the essential details regarding the project’s scope are to be added. For instance, if you want to design a new landing page, mention what data to visualise, what didn’t work earlier, and add inferences from the previous two questions on what you wish to achieve. 

If there is existing research, the brief will list these UX artefacts to show what you’re working with such as:

• User personas
• Product analytics
• Moodboards, user journeys, etc.
• Competitor and market research
• Existing design files (wireframes, mockups, prototypes, etc.)
• Brand assets (logos, colors, fonts, etc.)

4. What are the project goals?

This section should highlight what you wish to achieve, preferably analytical, offering tangible goals.  These are typically business or marketing-related metrics. For example, “to increase the current conversion rate from 1.5% to the industry average of 4-5% by Sept. 10, 2023.

This section also sets realistic expectations of the task: it helps understand what to expect out of a design project or product. Remember to set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals aka SMART goals. 

Answer questions like this: 

• How will that design goal be measured in terms of success?
• What design objectives do you need to achieve to reach that design goal?
• What design challenges will the design team face and how will they be addressed?

If you need to redesign an existing product, make sure to mention the metrics and KPIs you want to be improved. 

5. What’s your budget & expected deadline?

Perhaps the most important metric in terms of conducting a new project or revamping the old one, a budget estimate will help you draw the kind of solution you can realistically provide.

Best practice here is to itemise costs so as not to surprise or overwhelm. You’d also need to have seperate equipment needs explained.

Try asking these questions to gather the information you need:

• What are the budget constraints on this project?
• Have research, development, and testing costs been considered?
• In what circumstances would there be budget flexibility?

Coming to an understanding of the project schedule is as important as laying out a clear budget to help manage expectations while still respecting any internal deadlines. Try and figure out:

• What internal deadlines this project needs to align with—for example, product launch dates or industry events.
• What are the key milestones within the project itself?
• How would you like to handle review periods and revisions?
• How much flexibility does this schedule allow, if any?

When it comes to implementing a brief, there are numerous product methodologies to run through a variety of iterations of a product, like the Waterfall, Spiral, Rapid Application Development (RAD), Rational Unified Process (RUP), and Agile. 

These development methodologies range from the sequential and structured approach, such as the Waterfall at one end of the spectrum, to an iterative approach, such as the RUP that enables the development to occur incrementally, to the entirely iterative approach, the Agile.

Conclusion 

All in all, a product brief for your new UI and UX projects are bound to benefit the overall project. A start-to-finish guide for the project, it helps keep the project in check and make sure deadlines and budgets are not exceeded, getting you the app or look that you want to wow your customers. 

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UX Research Cheat Sheet

February 12, 2017 2017-02-12

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User-experience research methods are great at producing data and insights, while ongoing activities help get the right things done. Alongside R&D, ongoing UX activities can make everyone’s efforts more effective and valuable. At every stage in the design process, different UX methods can keep product-development efforts on the right track, in agreement with true user needs and not imaginary ones.

In This Article:

When to conduct user research.

One of the questions we get the most is, “When should I do user research on my project?” There are three different answers:

• Do user research at whatever stage you’re in right now . The earlier the research, the more impact the findings will have on your product, and by definition, the earliest you can do something on your current project (absent a time machine) is today.
• Do user research at all the stages . As we show below, there’s something useful to learn in every single stage of any reasonable project plan, and each research step will increase the value of your product by more than the cost of the research.
• Do most user research early in the project (when it’ll have the most impact), but conserve some budget for a smaller amount of supplementary research later in the project. This advice applies in the common case that you can’t get budget for all the research steps that would be useful.

The chart below describes UX methods and activities available in various project stages.

Each project is different, so the stages are not always neatly compartmentalized. The end of one cycle is the beginning of the next.

The important thing is not to execute a giant list of activities in rigid order, but to start somewhere and learn more and more as you go along.

When deciding where to start or what to focus on first, use some of these top UX methods. Some methods may be more appropriate than others, depending on time constraints, system maturity, type of product or service, and the current top concerns. It’s a good idea to use different or alternating methods each product cycle because they are aimed at different goals and types of insight. The chart below shows how often UX practitioners reported engaging in these methods in our survey on UX careers.

If you can do only one activity and aim to improve an existing system, do qualitative (think-aloud) usability testing , which is the most effective method to improve usability . If you are unable to test with users, analyze as much user data as you can. Data (obtained, for instance, from call logs, searches, or analytics) is not a great substitute for people, however, because data usually tells you what , but you often need to know why . So use the questions your data brings up to continue to push for usability testing.

The discovery stage is when you try to illuminate what you don’t know and better understand what people need. It’s especially important to do discovery activities before making a new product or feature, so you can find out whether it makes sense to do the project at all .

An important goal at this stage is to validate and discard assumptions, and then bring the data and insights to the team. Ideally this research should be done before effort is wasted on building the wrong things or on building things for the wrong people, but it can also be used to get back on track when you’re working with an existing product or service.

Good things to do during discovery:

• Conduct field studies and interview users : Go where the users are, watch, ask, and listen. Observe people in context interacting with the system or solving the problems you’re trying to provide solutions for.
• Run diary studies to understand your users’ information needs and behaviors.
• Interview stakeholders to gather and understand business requirements and constraints.
• Interview sales, support, and training staff. What are the most frequent problems and questions they hear from users? What are the worst problems people have? What makes people angry?
• Listen to sales and support calls. What do people ask about? What do they have problems understanding? How do the sales and support staff explain and help? What is the vocabulary mismatch between users and staff?
• Do competitive testing . Find the strengths and weaknesses in your competitors’ products. Discover what users like best.

Exploration methods are for understanding the problem space and design scope and addressing user needs appropriately.

• Compare features against competitors.
• Do design reviews.
• Use research to build user personas and write user stories.
• Analyze user tasks to find ways to save people time and effort.
• Show stakeholders the user journey and where the risky areas are for losing customers along the way. Decide together what an ideal user journey would look like.
• Explore design possibilities by imagining many different approaches, brainstorming, and testing the best ideas in order to identify best-of-breed design components to retain.
• Obtain feedback on early-stage task flows by walking through designs with stakeholders and subject-matter experts. Ask for written reactions and questions (silent brainstorming), to avoid groupthink and to enable people who might not speak up in a group to tell you what concerns them.
• Iterate designs by testing paper prototypes with target users, and then test interactive prototypes by watching people use them. Don’t gather opinions. Instead, note how well designs work to help people complete tasks and avoid errors. Let people show you where the problem areas are, then redesign and test again.
• Use card sorting to find out how people group your information, to help inform your navigation and information organization scheme.

Testing and validation methods are for checking designs during development and beyond, to make sure systems work well for the people who use them.

• Do qualitative usability testing . Test early and often with a diverse range of people, alone and in groups. Conduct an accessibility evaluation to ensure universal access.
• Ask people to self-report their interactions and any interesting incidents while using the system over time, for example with diary studies .
• Audit training classes and note the topics, questions people ask, and answers given. Test instructions and help systems.
• Talk with user groups.
• Staff social-media accounts and talk with users online. Monitor social media for kudos and complaints.
• Analyze user-forum posts. User forums are sources for important questions to address and answers that solve problems. Bring that learning back to the design and development team.
• Do benchmark testing: If you’re planning a major redesign or measuring improvement, test to determine time on task, task completion, and error rates of your current system, so you can gauge progress over time.

Listen throughout the research and design cycle to help understand existing problems and to look for new issues. Analyze gathered data and monitor incoming information for patterns and trends.

• Survey customers and prospective users.
• Monitor analytics and metrics to discover trends and anomalies and to gauge your progress.
• Analyze search queries: What do people look for and what do they call it? Search logs are often overlooked, but they contain important information.
• Make it easy to send in comments, bug reports, and questions. Analyze incoming feedback channels periodically for top usability issues and trouble areas. Look for clues about what people can’t find, their misunderstandings, and any unintended effects.
• Collect frequently asked questions and try to solve the problems they represent.
• Run booths at conferences that your customers and users attend so that they can volunteer information and talk with you directly.
• Give talks and demos: capture questions and concerns.

Ongoing and strategic activities can help you get ahead of problems and make systemic improvements.

• Find allies . It takes a coordinated effort to achieve design improvement. You’ll need collaborators and champions.
• Talk with experts . Learn from others’ successes and mistakes. Get advice from people with more experience.
• Follow ethical guidelines . The UXPA Code of Professional Conduct is a good starting point.
• Involve stakeholders . Don’t just ask for opinions; get people onboard and contributing, even in small ways. Share your findings, invite them to observe and take notes during research sessions.
• Hunt for data sources . Be a UX detective. Who has the information you need, and how can you gather it?
• Determine UX metrics. Find ways to measure how well the system is working for its users.
• Follow Tog's principles of interaction design .
• Use evidence-based design guidelines , especially when you can’t conduct your own research. Usability heuristics are high-level principles to follow.
• Design for universal access . Accessibility can’t be tacked onto the end or tested in during QA. Access is becoming a legal imperative, and expert help is available. Accessibility improvements make systems easier for everyone.
• Give users control . Provide the controls people need. Choice but not infinite choice.
• Prevent errors . Whenever an error occurs, consider how it might be eliminated through design change. What may appear to be user errors are often system-design faults. Prevent errors by understanding how they occur and design to lessen their impact.
• Improve error messages . For remaining errors, don’t just report system state. Say what happened from a user standpoint and explain what to do in terms that are easy for users to understand.
• Provide helpful defaults . Be prescriptive with the default settings, because many people expect you to make the hard choices for them. Allow users to change the ones they might need or want to change.
• Check for inconsistencies . Work-alike is important for learnability. People tend to interpret differences as meaningful, so make use of that in your design intentionally rather than introducing arbitrary differences. Adhere to the principle of least astonishment . Meet expectations instead.
• Map features to needs . User research can be tied to features to show where requirements come from. Such a mapping can help preserve design rationale for the next round or the next team.
• When designing software, ensure that installation and updating is easy . Make installation quick and unobtrusive. Allow people to control updating if they want to.
• When designing devices, plan for repair and recycling . Sustainability and reuse are more important than ever. Design for conservation.
• Avoid waste . Reduce and eliminate nonessential packaging and disposable parts. Avoid wasting people’s time, also. Streamline.
• Consider system usability in different cultural contexts . You are not your user. Plan how to ensure that your systems work for people in other countries . Translation is only part of the challenge.
• Look for perverse incentives . Perverse incentives lead to negative unintended consequences. How can people game the system or exploit it? How might you be able to address that? Consider how a malicious user might use the system in unintended ways or to harm others.
• Consider social implications . How will the system be used in groups of people, by groups of people, or against groups of people? Which problems could emerge from that group activity?
• Protect personal information . Personal information is like money. You can spend it unwisely only once. Many want to rob the bank. Plan how to keep personal information secure over time. Avoid collecting information that isn’t required, and destroy older data routinely.
• Keep data safe . Limit access to both research data and the data entrusted to the company by customers. Advocate for encryption of data at rest and secure transport. A data breach is a terrible user experience.
• Deliver both good and bad news . It’s human nature to be reluctant to tell people what they don’t want to hear, but it’s essential that UX raise the tough issues. The future of the product, or even the company, may depend on decisionmakers knowing what you know or suspect.
• Track usability over time . Use indicators such as number and types of support issues, error rates and task completion in usability testing, and customer satisfaction ratings, to show the effectiveness of design improvements.
• Include diverse users . People can be very different culturally and physically. They also have a range of abilities and language skills. Personas are not enough to prevent serious problems, so be sure your testing includes as wide a variety of people as you can.
• Track usability bugs . If usability bugs don’t have a place in the bug database, start your own database to track important issues.
• Pay attention to user sentiment . Social media is a great place for monitoring user problems, successes, frustrations, and word-of-mouth advertising. When competitors emerge, social media posts may be the first indication.
• Reduce the need for training . Training is often a workaround for difficult user interfaces, and it’s expensive. Use training and help topics to look for areas ripe for design changes.
• Communicate future directions . Customers and users depend on what they are able to do and what they know how to do with the products and services they use. Change can be good, even when disruptive, but surprise changes are often poorly received because they can break things that people are already doing. Whenever possible, ask, tell, test with, and listen to the customers and users you have. Consult with them rather than just announcing changes. Discuss major changes early, so what you hear can help you do a better job, and what they hear can help them prepare for the changes needed.
• Recruit people for future research and testing . Actively encourage people to join your pool of volunteer testers. Offer incentives for participation and make signing up easy to do via your website, your newsletter, and other points of contact.

Use this cheat-sheet to choose appropriate UX methods and activities for your projects and to get the most out of those efforts. It’s not necessary to do everything on every project, but it’s often helpful to use a mix of methods and tend to some ongoing needs during each iteration.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Free eBook: The essential website experience & UX playbook

Related resources

User experience 20 min read, user experience surveys 9 min read, ux research tools 8 min read, user analytics 11 min read, rage clicks 11 min read, user experience analytics 10 min read, website user experience 14 min read, request demo.

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How to create an effective UX research plan (2024)

Last updated

23 January 2024

Reviewed by

Miroslav Damyanov

You wouldn’t build a home without a solid architectural plan. The plan ensures what you create fits the brief and will delight future residents. The same level of planning is needed when it comes to research.

Think of your research plan as the building blocks of your UX research, helping to streamline the process, firm up your goals, and ensure the results are reliable and actionable.

Let’s take a look at what a UX research plan is, and how to create one.

• What is a UX research plan?

A UX research plan outlines the research problem, objectives, strategies, participant profiles, budget, timeline, and methodology. It serves as a guide for researchers, designers, and project managers to understand the scope of the project and carry it out efficiently.

There’s no one format for UX research plans––they may be compiled into a slideshow, a simple document, or a more comprehensive report. The important thing is not the format, but that the plan covers all the essential elements of the research your team will perform.

In some cases, a UX research plan could also be required to secure funding or approval for the project.

• What's the difference between a research plan and research design?

A research plan and research design are two related, but distinct concepts. A research plan includes a summary of the intended research design.

Research plan

This outlines the goals, methodology, and strategies of the research. The research plan is typically compiled into a document or slideshow.

A research plan outlines the goals of the project while providing an overall structure.

Research design

This is the specific method by which the research will be conducted. It includes the UX research methodologies and tools that will be used to conduct the research, the sampling size, and the data collection process.

The focus of research design is to decide which research techniques will be used, how the information will be gathered, and how the analysis will be conducted.

• What are the benefits of using a UX research plan?

Having a solid foundation, or specific outline, for any UX research you wish to conduct can make the process much faster, more accurate, and more specific.

The UX research plan helps teams to firm up their goals, set clear research questions, decide on the research methods they’ll use––ones that will be most effective––and consider how the results will be analyzed. This process allows teams to consider contingencies and differing methods, and to make adjustments accordingly.

An effective research plan can also save organizations money by providing a clear path to success, highlighting potential challenges, and helping a team gather all the elements for success.

Some key benefits of research plans include:

Problem definition: having a research plan helps you clarify the problem you’re solving. A well-defined problem statement can firm up the focus and direction of the research, outlining specific issues and challenges you’ll look to address.

Goal clarity: all research projects should begin with clear goals. This ensures your research is relevant, useful, and measurable for your team’s needs. Creating a UX research plan can help you not only create goals but also consider if they are feasible and relevant for the business and the user.

Stakeholder alignment: creating a detailed UX research plan can help align all key stakeholders. This guides everyone toward the same goal, provides clarity for objectives, ensures teams don’t work in silos, and helps the whole organization work together to improve the customers’ user experience. It can also be useful to collect questions and requirements from stakeholders to keep them engaged with the research.

Method choices: through the process of defining the UX research goals, strategies, and data-collection process, it can be simpler to see the right research method for your project. Potential issues or roadblocks will become clear, allowing your research to be conducted more effectively.

• What should a UX research plan include?

While there is no one way to create a UX research plan, the most effective plans include a few core elements.

Some of the most essential aspects of a UX research plan include:

Challenges: identify challenges that users and the business may encounter. These may be fluctuations in revenue, friction in the user experience, insufficient information, or issues related to customer service. Addressing these challenges ensures the research aligns with the pertinent issues from user and business perspectives.

Research questions: pinpoint the specific questions that will be asked during the project to check they align with the overall project goals.

Methodology: note the UX research methods that will be used during the project. These should also be relevant to the overall goals and challenges.

Timeline: clarify timings so teams won’t complete research that’s too big for the budget or time available. Timings will impact what can be researched and even the results.

Participant selection: as part of UX research, usually participants are required to answer questions or complete exercises. Choosing the right number of relevant participants can be challenging. Having a plan in place for this can streamline that part of the process and prevent teams from getting bogged down by delays.

Data-collection methods: make sure your team knows how the data will be collected and analyzed. Having this as part of your plan can ensure the data collection aligns with the project goals and access to your team’s resources.

Budget: include your research budget to help you allocate resources, estimate overall costs, and prioritize activities. A clear budget will support the approval process, aid in risk management, and increase accountability for teams.

Ethical considerations: ethics are important in any research, whether or not it involves humans. UX studies typically involve participants, so it’s important to consider a range of critical factors. Personal privacy, potential for harm, and persuasion are just a few areas to be aware of.

Risk: all projects have the potential for risk. Considering what those risks are before the project starts can help the team consider potential contingencies.

• How to create a UX research plan

Creating a UX research plan doesn’t have to be intimidating. By following a framework and including essential elements, you’ll streamline the research process and reduce work down the line.

Let’s look at some best-practice steps.

1. Define the challenge 

UX research seeks to understand the pain points, wants, and needs of your customers so you can develop better products and services. Before beginning UX research, you need to understand what challenge you are looking to understand, and solve, for your business and customers. Here are three examples:

We seek to uncover the root causes behind the significant drop-off rates at the shopping cart, aiming to identify user behaviors and potential barriers to retention.

Our focus is on understanding and evaluating the factors influencing user behavior to transition from free to paying platform members, aiming to optimize our conversion rate.

Our current challenge is to identify functionalities and features for our B2B fitness coaching app that will drive conversion and revenue.

Before diving in, it’s important to know what the challenge is, and therefore, what the UX research will be focused on.

2. Set your goals 

Once the challenge is clear, it’s essential to set your specific goals for the research. The goals you set at the start will define the entire project, so this aspect is worth spending time on.

There may be several areas that your team would like to research, but, for the best results, keep things simple. Set a small number of goals that relate to the core challenge. You can order your goals by priority to select the most essential ones for your project.

An example of a goal could be:

To decrease shopping cart drop-off rates by 25% by identifying and solving the challenges our customers experience.

3. Select your research method 

Based on the goals you’ve set, choose a relevant research method. With many research methods to choose from––customer interviews, focus groups, user testing, A/B testing, surveys, diary studies, analytics, and more––choosing the right method is important.

First, consider whether quantitative or qualitative research (or a mixed approach) will be most helpful for your project. Then select a method that aligns with your project objectives.

To discover why users are abandoning their shopping cart, for example, a range of methods may be relevant. These include:

User testing: users could be tasked with adding items to a shopping cart and completing a purchase while being observed by researchers. This may reveal moments of friction or difficulty in the checkout process.

Surveys: users could also be asked to provide feedback immediately after using the shopping cart. This would help researchers gain insights into customers’ feelings and frustrations directly after interacting with the product.

Heatmaps: some tools show where users are clicking and using their cursor. This can help identify areas where users pause, suggesting they are challenging or confusing.

A/B testing: presenting users with two different options for the shopping cart could help teams refine what elements, design features, and interfaces work better for conversion.

4. Identify participant sources

Once you’ve chosen your method or methods, determine how you’ll select participants. Don’t select them merely based on demographic factors; also focus on key behavioral patterns. This can be a challenging aspect of UX research, and it’s helpful to include it in your UX research plan to make the process more efficient.

Your current customers can be an ideal source of participants. Other ways to attract participants include reaching out to recruitment research agencies, putting a callout on social media, sending an email to customers, or using incentives. Pop-up surveys on your website and app could also prove useful.

5. Run a test

At this stage, it’s helpful to run a test of your plan methodology to check it works effectively. That could mean having a team member try out your survey or trialing a usability test within the team to spot any issues.

By running a test, and ironing out any issues that may arise, you’re more likely to have fewer challenges when conducting the actual research.

6. Analyze the data

Deciding how the data will be collected and analyzed––including how those results will be shared with the broader team, is an essential aspect of a UX research plan.

Keep in mind that the data you collect and analyze should link back to your goals and the overall challenge your team is looking to solve.

• Tips for your UX research plan

To save time and make your UX plan as effective as possible, here are some best-practice tips:

Set clear goals: to get the best results from your research and ensure your UX research plan is comprehensive and effective, insist on clarity in your goals. Clear goals lead to cohesion among stakeholders, useful results, and addressing of business and customer challenges.

Understand your target market: your UX research should speak to your target market, solving their problems. Deeply understanding your market will direct you to the right type of research to keep delivering better products and services.

Set out an accurate timeline: to keep your project on track and ensure you have the appropriate resources to complete it, an accurate timeline is essential. The timeline should be well thought out, taking into account potential roadblocks and challenges.

Allow for flexibility: as you conduct the research, you may discover unexpected data or new insights. Some degree of flexibility in a UX plan, and your timeline, can be useful to allow for these potential diversions.

• Examples of a good UX research plan

To help you get started with your UX research plan, we’ve created this UX research plan template for your next project.

Feel free to use this as a guide, adding or removing elements as you see fit.

This example covers a UX team wanting to boost resubscriptions for their dog-sitting app.

50% of users are not renewing their app subscription.

To understand why some users are not renewing their app subscriptions and use this information to increase app resubscribes by 20%.

Research questions

What areas of the app are causing friction for users?

What aspects of the app provide the most value?

How can the app be streamlined for a boosted user experience?

How do user preferences and expectations align with the current offerings of the app, and are there opportunities for adjustments to better meet user needs?

How does the app compare to competitors in terms of subscription models, features, and overall user satisfaction?

Methodology

Surveys: conduct surveys with a relevant number of participants [the number you survey will depend on the population size, confidence level, and margin of error you are willing to have] who have just failed to renew their app subscription. Understand from these users what areas of the app caused the most friction and where more value could be added.

Usability testing: perform usability testing with a representative user sample to identify any usability issues that might be contributing to the drop in subscription renewals. Observe users interacting with the app and gather feedback on the user interface, navigation, and overall user experience.

Analytics: assess the analytics of customers who decide not to renew their subscriptions against those who do. Look for any differences in demographics, the way they use the app, and more.

Participants

[Choose existing or recent customers as participants so their insights are relevant to the project.]

Week 1: establish participants

Week 2–3: perform surveys and usability tests

Week 4: gather key analytics

Week 5: perform analysis

Week 6: collate and share results

Stakeholders and responsibilities

[Identify key stakeholders including project managers, product owner, vice president (VP) of product, researchers, UX managers, designers, data engineers, and more.]

Risks and mitigation

Some potential risks include:

Low participant turnout: ensure a sufficient number of participants complete the survey so that the results are valid. The use of incentives may be necessary to boost completion rates.

Data challenges: there may be challenges when collating customer analytics. To ensure this is seamless, use a platform where all data can be housed in one place. And use an experienced engineer who can solve challenges if they arise.

Success metrics

Deeply understand what customers value in the app and what areas cause friction

Use the information gathered to make changes to the app to provide more value and less friction

Increase app resubscriptions by 20%

• What's next after your user research plan?

Rather than diving straight into the research once your plan is in place, make sure your team validates your research plan. This will help you yield the results you are hoping for.

The plan should engage the relevant stakeholders to get them on board. Some research plans may also need to be approved by a funding body before further steps are taken.

Once all relevant parties are in agreement, the next step is to get started in line with the agreed timeline.

• An effective UX research plan

Good pre-planning helps your UX research meet your goals and pleases your customers.

While it might be tempting to jump into UX research, having a solid plan in place will ensure you take the necessary steps at the right time, you won’t overlook key aspects of research, and all stakeholders are aligned before the research begins.

Ultimately, a good plan can help your team perform effective UX research that benefits those who matter the most––your customers.

What are the key questions for UX research?

The questions you ask in UX research will be unique to your project goals and objectives. Some example UX research questions include:

User questions:  

What are our user’s demographics?

What problems do people seek to solve with our app?

What are our user’s key pain points?

Satisfaction:

How satisfied are our users with our product offering?

Would our users recommend us to a friend?

Efficiency:

Are our products providing efficiency?

Are our products giving a streamlined user experience?

What is a good UX research process?

A beneficial UX research process is one that ultimately improves the product experience for users. Typically, the process includes:

A specific challenge: rather than researching too generally, understand the challenge or challenges the research is looking to understand better.

Clear goals: have clarity in your UX research goals, otherwise the data will not necessarily benefit the end user.

Relevant methodology: the right research method, which aligns with the goals and overall challenge, will ensure you gather relevant data.

Deep analysis: once you have amassed your data, analyze it to ensure insights can be found and acted upon.

What are the 5 stages of UX research?

There are five core steps in UX research:

Setting goals

Selecting participants

Choosing a relevant research method

Data analysis

Reporting on and sharing the results with stakeholders

How do you plan a UX research roadmap?

A UX research roadmap helps to keep a team on track when working toward the overarching goals and objectives.

When creating a UX research roadmap, it’s helpful to:

Establish the strategy: that’s the challenge you’re looking to solve and the goals you’ve set.

Choose an effective tool: a tool for tracking the entire project—not just timings, but all the key steps—can save time and act as a source of truth for all parties to reference.

Define key check-in points: to keep a team on track and working toward the key goals, it’s essential to have check-ins. This will help establish progress across different members of the team and provide a chance to change tack if needed.

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How to write a great UX brief

Posted on 19 January 2016 by Nomensa

We receive lots of briefs for UX projects – some are very clear and detailed, others are somewhat vague and leave us guessing as to exactly what is needed and how we should respond. A great brief will help us to help you. If you write a good brief, the responses that you get back will reflect that. You’ll be much more likely to get inspiring, exciting and innovative proposals that give you exactly what you want.

In our experience, there are a number of elements that go together to make a great brief. It’s all about giving us enough information to understand what you need, without unnecessarily constraining the possible solutions.

So, to create a great UX brief, we’d love it if you could include the following elements.

Please tell us how much your budget is

We know that many clients don’t want to reveal a budget for fear that everyone will respond with proposals that exactly meet that price. But, from our perspective, the budget is probably one of the most important things to include in your brief. If you were shopping for a car, you’d definitely have a budget and you’d visit the appropriate dealerships – you wouldn’t be in the BMW showroom if your budget was £5k.

Similarly, different user experience agencies offer different services at different price points. By letting us know your budget, we know whether we’re a good match. We can figure out the best possible solution that we can deliver within your price range and we won’t waste your time (and ours) working up a response that is way too expensive. It also allows us to offer different solutions at different price points within your budget.

Outline your objectives, but don’t prescribe the solution

Obviously, we need to know what you want to achieve with your user experience project. What are your objectives? Why? Do you know how you will measure the success of the project?

If you keep your objectives at the most abstract level possible, you give us the freedom to come up with the best possible solution. Try not to prescribe the approach that you think is needed.

If you want more visitors through the door of your museum, then tell us that. Don’t ask for usability testing of the visitor pages on your website or for ethnographic visitor research onsite. Instead, set out the problem and the changes that you’d like to achieve. Give us the freedom to suggest a solution – it could well be something you’d never have thought of!

And please, if you’re not sure what you need, just give us a call. We can help you to make sure you get the maximum benefit from your investment in UX.

Give us as much background information as you can

Help us to understand you and your project. Let us know how you’ve arrived at the current situation. What previous projects have taken place? Do you have any relevant research that could help us to better understand the problem? What do you already know about your audiences and what they think? What is your company strategy? What is the essence of your brand?

Don’t worry about providing too much information – we need to “get” you. You are the experts in your own business – we need to absorb as much as we can and then apply our UX expertise to identify the best possible approach to meet your needs. Detailed information helps us to get our methodology spot on – for example, knowing your audience segments helps us to figure out how many people we might need to speak to. Knowing about the previous projects and research helps us to understand what you’ve already done and to make sure that our approach complements and augments the work that has already been completed.

Be really clear on what’s in scope and what’s out

This can be a simple list, but it’s important to be really clear so that there are no surprises down the line. If you’ve got 15 microsites that need to be assessed, please list them rather than assuming that we’ll find them for ourselves. If you’ve got a separate project looking at your SEO strategy, let us know.

If there are critical project dates, tell us

If you have critical project dates, please include them. You may need the project to finish by a certain date so that it can feed into another project. Or you may need to hit certain dates that are critical for your business, such as the Christmas shopping period.

If you tell us, we can make sure we have potential resource available when you might need them. And conversely, if dates don’t matter and the project doesn’t have any dependencies, let us know that as well. We don’t want to turn something down because we can’t meet the dates, only to find out the dates were flexible!

Let us know a bit about your team and how you work

It’s helpful to know who we’ll be working with – just some high-level information like job titles. Are there other agencies who we’ll need to collaborate and coordinate with? And let us know how you’d like to work with us. Do you want to be co-located with our team working together closely or would you rather be more hands-off?

This lets us tailor our approach accordingly. We can adjust the number of workshops and checkpoints depending on how involved you’d like to be and whether we need to involve other agencies. We can also make sure that any proposed deliverables will be fit for purpose – more detailed for a less experienced team or summarised for an executive audience.

And finally, let us know how you’ll be dealing with the responses to your brief

It’s always very helpful to know what the next steps will be once you receive the responses. How will you score the bids? What is the timeframe for responding? Do you anticipate face-to-face pitches? If so, approximately when?

All of this helps us to get the proposal right – making sure that we include the information that’s important to you – and to plan for the possible next steps.

Next time you’re thinking of sending out a UX brief, please take a few minutes to check this list. Spending the time to get your UX brief right will certainly not be wasted time. In fact, it could well help you to source and innovative solution that makes all the difference to your business.

Can we help?

Nomensa is an award-winning UX design agency with offices in Bristol, London and Amsterdam. If you would like us to help you with your user experience challenges or to provide you with a UX evaluation of your website/mobile app to help set you apart from your competition, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Take a full look at the UX Design services that we offer.

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UX Research Methods and the Path to User Empathy

How can designers move beyond personal insights to understand the problems users face? We introduce time-tested UX research methods that inspire user empathy and lead to better user experiences.

By Micah Bowers

Micah helps businesses craft meaningful engagement through branding, illustration, and design.

In 1941, a baby boy named Ken was born in Oakland, CA. Ken’s dad, Candido, was an Italian immigrant and inventor who, along with his brothers, supplied the United States with lightweight airplane propellers during the First World War.

Unfortunately, baby Ken suffered from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, a potentially fatal condition that can cause severe deformities. Doctors recommended hydrotherapy, but at the time, the only option was soaking in large tanks located in spas or hospitals.

Moved to ease his son’s suffering, Candido drew on his background in design and engineering to create a submersible pump capable of turning a home bathtub into a hydrotherapy tank. Lo and behold, it worked.

In fact, it worked so well that the family business shifted gears and began selling a portable version of the pump to health clubs and schools. A few years later, a self-contained pump/tub combo was marketed to homeowners under the family name—the Jacuzzi whirlpool bath.

And, Ken? Thanks to ongoing treatment in Jacuzzi tubs, his pain became manageable, and he spent the next 75 years of his life serving as a prominent advocate for people with disabilities.

Why Does User Empathy Matter in UX Design?

Candido Jacuzzi didn’t sit down one day to solve a theoretical design problem for a vague and faceless target customer. He observed his son’s struggle firsthand—heard his cries, saw his labored movements, and intimately understood the obstacles of his illness.

For today’s UX designers , there’s a lesson to be learned: The goal of our work is greater than gaining profitable advantages. Yes, profitability is important, but UX designers should strive for more by seeking to see problems through the eyes of the people they’re designing for.

To do this well, to move beyond rhetorical aspirations and deliver life-improving design solutions, requires a disciplined approach to UX research. In this article, we’ll introduce time-tested UX research methods that inspire user empathy and ultimately lead to better user experiences.

UX Research Types: A Bird’s-Eye View

Before diving in, we need to step way back and take a broad look at the different types of UX research. Doing so will provide context to the more specific methods examined later.

A word of caution: Without knowing how to classify the UX research you’re performing , you’re likely to misinterpret findings and arrive at design solutions that hinder users rather than help them.

Primary vs. Secondary Research

Primary research is original research that is completed by you or your design team. The tasks performed and insights gained during primary research relate back to the design problem you are attempting to solve.

Primary research typically takes place after secondary research has helped shed light on why the problem exists and what’s been done to address it in the past.

Secondary research is any research that was done by someone else, and it’s a great way for designers to familiarize themselves with the history of different design problems.

That said, the areas explored during secondary research needn’t relate directly to the design problem. Sometimes, seemingly unconnected topics can bring clarity and innovation.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Quantitative research produces results with numerical values and answers questions like “How much, how often, and how many?”

The variables measured by quantitative research may be quite granular, and the findings can be powerfully illustrated with statistics and data visualizations. However, it’s important to understand that for all its numerical precision, quantitative research can’t explain why something is happening.

• Qualitative research (a.k.a. empirical research) yields insights that aren’t numerical and instead come in the form of people’s comments, preferences, observations, and feelings. This type of research is valuable because human behavior is rarely based on patterns of pure logic and reason.

Generative vs. Evaluative Research

Generative research is conducted during the beginning of the investigative process. It helps UX researchers clearly define a problem and generate a hypothesis for its solution.

Generative research includes both primary and secondary research, and it can be quantitative and qualitative.

The generative design process works much like a funnel: It’s broad in the beginning, using secondary research to understand a wide range of information.

Then, as the problem becomes clearer and the research objectives are established, the focus becomes narrower, using more primary research tools that are both quantitative and qualitative in nature.

Evaluative research is executed near the end of the research process, and it’s used to test and refine ideas until the best solution is reached. For digital products, evaluative research is a vital part of the development cycle, and it should be introduced during the early phases of the design process (i.e., concept sketching and prototyping).

UX Research Methods That Lead to User Empathy

Now that we understand the different types of research, we’re ready to inspect five UX research methods and show how they inspire empathetic insights into the lives of users.

Here, it’s important to restate that the aim of these methods is seeing problems through the eyes of users in order to deliver life-improving design solutions.

If this is lost and research becomes little more than a perfunctory checklist, valuable (and potentially profitable) insights will be overlooked.

1. User Interviews

What are they?

• In user interviews, a UX researcher questions people that use a product and records their answers. The nature of the questions depends on the intent of the research, but the main goal is to extract user insights that can be used for product ideation and improvement.

How do they lead to user empathy?

• UX designers may be tempted to draw design conclusions from personal insights and experiences. User interviews are an affordable resource that helps designers avoid this tendency and maintain an important mindset: “I’m designing for the user. The user is not me.”

2. Ethnography

What is it?

• Want to know how users behave in their natural environment? Watch them. Ethnography is the firsthand observation of users as they interact with things in the world around them, and it’s an effective way for UX researchers to learn if a product is actually useful or hindered by design flaws.

How does it lead to user empathy?

• Testing a product in a controlled environment has its place, but the real world presents all manner of unforeseeable obstacles. Ethnography allows UX researchers to witness how everyday hurdles impact a product’s user experience. Then, researchers can pass their findings along to be included in the design problem-solving process.

3. User Surveys

A survey is a set of questions that evaluate users’ preferences, opinions, and attitudes about a product. Surveys are given to a sample audience that is representative of a larger population, and two types of questions are asked: closed and open.

Closed questions provide users with a fixed set of responses (i.e., yes/no, multiple choice, numerical scale, etc.), whereas open questions allow users to answer however they’d like.

• Surveys are a great way to get unfiltered feedback from users. By examining survey responses, UX designers can learn who users are, the problems they face, and what they honestly think about a product.

4. Contextual Inquiry

• A contextual inquiry is a hybrid UX research method where users are interviewed and observed while performing a task in its natural setting. However, it is the user (not the researcher) who takes on the role of expert and does most of the talking, explaining the steps of a process as it occurs.
• When people interact with something a lot, they develop an intimate knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses. Contextual inquiry helps researchers adopt a learning posture and allow users to explain how products are actually used day-to-day, workarounds and shortcomings included.

5. Card Sorting

Card sorting is a relatively simple technique that provides insight into how users structure data in their minds.

In an open card sort, people are given a deck of randomly shuffled cards and asked to organize them in whatever way they deem sensible. Once the cards are sorted, they are then asked to explain the reasoning behind their arrangement.

During a closed card sort, participants are asked to place cards from a deck into pre-existing groups, and their word associations are documented by researchers.

How does this UX research method lead to user empathy?

People with extensive product knowledge (e.g., designers, marketers, executives) tend to organize product information in ways that flow logically from their own in-depth understanding.

However, users are not privy to this insider knowledge and are likely to search for word associations that they can make sense of. Card sorting identifies what these associations are and reveals UX patterns that emerge from them.

Plan Before Embarking on Research Projects

Though we’ve primarily focused on the link between UX research methods and user empathy, we owe a word of acknowledgment to an overlooked aspect of the research process—planning.

In one respect, research is no different than any other design discipline: To do it well requires planning.

With planning, the goals and methodology of a UX research project are made crystal clear, and project stakeholders become much more likely to support any time and resources that are requested.

Without planning, UX research will lack focus and may intimidate or frustrate stakeholders, which can lead to unnecessary pushback and second-guessing.

Thankfully, research plans don’t need to be long. Aim for one page , and limit yourself to brief summaries of essential details like:

• Project Title
• Author Information
• Stakeholder Information
• Project Overview
• Research Objectives
• Research Methods
• Important Research Questions
• Target User Profile
• Relevant Supporting Data

If needed, you can expand this format, but a one-page plan is a useful tool that will help keep stakeholders on the same page as research progresses.

Commit to UX Research

UX design problems are complicated. Why? Because they involve the unpredictable phenomenon of human behavior. As designers, we’re always in search of order, always seeking simplicity. When it comes to digital products, order and simplicity are virtues, but they aren’t a starting point. If we think we can fully anticipate the needs of users based on past design solutions, we will miss opportunities to create products and experiences that truly delight.

The only way to avoid this is a commitment to research. Without research, or with a shallow commitment to research, designers are essentially saying to users, “We know what’s best for you. Keep quiet, and take what you’re given.”

While it seems obvious that no one wants to be treated this way, obstacles to UX research are abundant. Whether it be budgets, dubious stakeholders, or bull-headed designers, empathy-centric research often gets marginalized. The fallout almost always has a negative impact on users, and ultimately, a product’s profitability.

With this in mind, let us remain vigilant in our quest to see and synthesize problems through eyes that are not our own. We won’t create perfect products, but we will make progress and our designs will begin to improve the lives of the people we’re entrusted to help.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• Design Problem Statements: What They Are and How to Frame Them
• Know Your User: UX Statistics and Insights (With Infographic)
• Who, What, and Why: A Guide to User Testing Methods
• The Complete Guide to UX Research Methods
• Why Design Teams Need Psychological Safety
• The Value of User Research

Understanding the basics

What is ux research.

UX research is an investigation into the problems, needs, and experiences of users (people). A range of research types and methods exist, but the main goal is uncovering insights that can be passed along to UX designers and used to create more helpful/delightful user experiences.

What is user empathy?

User empathy is about seeing problems and experiences through the eyes of users. For UX researchers and designers, this means going beyond personal experiences. User empathy is important because UX designers must make decisions that are representative of and beneficial to the people they’re designing for.

What is key in user research?

The key to user research is an open, investigative mind that is free (as much as possible) of preconceived notions. If researchers and designers conduct (or interpret) research with the goal of supporting existing conclusions, they miss the opportunity to glean powerful empathetic insights.

What is empathy in design thinking?

Design thinking is a process of iteration and problem solving that helps designers better relate to users. The very first step in design thinking is to empathize. This means that researchers and designers must seek to study and understand user problems firsthand, in the environments in which they occur.

What is an empathy map?

An empathy map is a tool for visualizing and documenting what is known about a certain type of user. Empathy maps come in a variety of formats, but the standard format places the user information in the center of four quadrants: Says, Does, Thinks, Feels.

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Member since January 3, 2016

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• Victor Yocco
• Apr 9, 2024

Connecting With Users: Applying Principles Of Communication To UX Research

• 30 min read
• UX , User Research , Communication
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About The Author

Victor is a Philadelphia based researcher, author, and speaker. His book Design for the Mind , is available from Manning Publications. Victor frequently writes … More about Victor ↬

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Communication is in everything we do. We communicate with users through our research, our design, and, ultimately, the products and services we offer. UX practitioners and those working on digital product teams benefit from understanding principles of communication and their application to our craft. Treating our UX processes as a mode of communication between users and the digital environment can help unveil in-depth, actionable insights.

In this article, I’ll focus on UX research. Communication is a core component of UX research , as it serves to bridge the gap between research insights, design strategy, and business outcomes. UX researchers, designers, and those working with UX researchers can apply key aspects of communication theory to help gather valuable insights, enhance user experiences, and create more successful products.

Fundamentals of Communication Theory

Communications as an academic field encompasses various models and principles that highlight the dynamics of communication between individuals and groups. Communication theory examines the transfer of information from one person or group to another. It explores how messages are transmitted, encoded, and decoded, acknowledges the potential for interference (or ‘noise’), and accounts for feedback mechanisms in enhancing the communication process.

In this article, I will focus on the Transactional Model of Communication . There are many other models and theories in the academic literature on communication. I have included references at the end of the article for those interested in learning more.

The Transactional Model of Communication (Figure 1) is a two-way process that emphasizes the simultaneous sending and receiving of messages and feedback . Importantly, it recognizes that communication is shaped by context and is an ongoing, evolving process. I’ll use this model and understanding when applying principles from the model to UX research. You’ll find that much of what is covered in the Transactional Model would also fall under general best practices for UX research, suggesting even if we aren’t communications experts, much of what we should be doing is supported by research in this field.

Understanding the Transactional Model

Let’s take a deeper dive into the six key factors and their applications within the realm of UX research:

• Sender: In UX research, the sender is typically the researcher who conducts interviews, facilitates usability tests, or designs surveys. For example, if you’re administering a user interview, you are the sender who initiates the communication process by asking questions.
• Receiver: The receiver is the individual who decodes and interprets the messages sent by the sender. In our context, this could be the user you interview or the person taking a survey you have created. They receive and process your questions, providing responses based on their understanding and experiences.
• Message: This is the content being communicated from the sender to the receiver. In UX research, the message can take various forms, like a set of survey questions, interview prompts, or tasks in a usability test.
• Channel: This is the medium through which the communication flows. For instance, face-to-face interviews, phone interviews, email surveys administered online, and usability tests conducted via screen sharing are all different communication channels. You might use multiple channels simultaneously, for example, communicating over voice while also using a screen share to show design concepts.
• Noise: Any factor that may interfere with the communication is regarded as ‘noise.’ In UX research, this could be complex jargon that confuses respondents in a survey, technical issues during a remote usability test, or environmental distractions during an in-person interview.
• Feedback: The communication received by the receiver, who then provides an output, is called feedback. For example, the responses given by a user during an interview or the data collected from a completed survey are types of feedback or the physical reaction of a usability testing participant while completing a task.

Applying the Transactional Model of Communication to Preparing for UX Research

We can become complacent or feel rushed to create our research protocols. I think this is natural in the pace of many workplaces and our need to deliver results quickly. You can apply the lens of the Transactional Model of Communication to your research preparation without adding much time. Applying the Transactional Model of Communication to your preparation should:

• Improve Clarity The model provides a clear representation of communication, empowering the researcher to plan and conduct studies more effectively.
• Minimize misunderstanding By highlighting potential noise sources, user confusion or misunderstandings can be better anticipated and mitigated.
• Enhance research participant participation With your attentive eye on feedback, participants are likely to feel valued, thus increasing active involvement and quality of input.

You can address the specific elements of the Transactional Model through the following steps while preparing for research:

Defining the Sender and Receiver

In UX research, the sender can often be the UX researcher conducting the study, while the receiver is usually the research participant. Understanding this dynamic can help researchers craft questions or tasks more empathetically and efficiently. You should try to collect some information on your participant in advance to prepare yourself for building a rapport.

For example, if you are conducting contextual inquiry with the field technicians of an HVAC company, you’ll want to dress appropriately to reflect your understanding of the context in which your participants (receivers) will be conducting their work. Showing up dressed in formal attire might be off-putting and create a negative dynamic between sender and receiver.

Message Creation

The message in UX research typically is the questions asked or tasks assigned during the study. Careful consideration of tenor, terminology, and clarity can aid data accuracy and participant engagement. Whether you are interviewing or creating a survey, you need to double-check that your audience will understand your questions and provide meaningful answers. You can pilot-test your protocol or questionnaire with a few representative individuals to identify areas that might cause confusion.

Using the HVAC example again, you might find that field technicians use certain terminology in a different way than you expect, such as asking them about what “tools” they use to complete their tasks yields you an answer that doesn’t reflect digital tools you’d find on a computer or smartphone, but physical tools like a pipe and wrench.

Choosing the Right Channel

The channel selection depends on the method of research. For instance, face-to-face methods might use physical verbal communication, while remote methods might rely on emails, video calls, or instant messaging. The choice of the medium should consider factors like tech accessibility, ease of communication, reliability, and participant familiarity with the channel. For example, you introduce an additional challenge (noise) if you ask someone who has never used an iPhone to test an app on an iPhone.

Minimizing Noise

Noise in UX research comes in many forms, from unclear questions inducing participant confusion to technical issues in remote interviews that cause interruptions. The key is to foresee potential issues and have preemptive solutions ready.

Facilitating Feedback

You should be prepared for how you might collect and act on participant feedback during the research. Encouraging regular feedback from the user during UX research ensures their understanding and that they feel heard. This could range from asking them to ‘think aloud’ as they perform tasks or encouraging them to email queries or concerns after the session. You should document any noise that might impact your findings and account for that in your analysis and reporting.

Track Your Alignment to the Framework

You can track what you do to align your processes with the Transactional Model prior to and during research using a spreadsheet. I’ll provide an example of a spreadsheet I’ve used in the later case study section of this article. You should create your spreadsheet during the process of preparing for research, as some of what you do to prepare should align with the factors of the model.

You can use these tips for preparation regardless of the specific research method you are undertaking. Let’s now look closer at a few common methods and get specific on how you can align your actions with the Transactional Model.

Applying the Transactional Model to Common UX Research Methods

UX research relies on interaction with users. We can easily incorporate aspects of the Transactional Model of Communication into our most common methods. Utilizing the Transactional Model in conducting interviews, surveys, and usability testing can help provide structure to your process and increase the quality of insights gathered.

Interviews are a common method used in qualitative UX research. They provide the perfect method for applying principles from the Transactional Model. In line with the Transactional Model, the researcher (sender) sends questions (messages) in-person or over the phone/computer medium (channel) to the participant (receiver), who provides answers (feedback) while contending with potential distraction or misunderstanding (noise). Reflecting on communication as transactional can help remind us we need to respect the dynamic between ourselves and the person we are interviewing. Rather than approaching an interview as a unidirectional interrogation, researchers need to view it as a conversation.

Applying the Transactional Model to conducting interviews means we should account for a number of facts to allow for high-quality communication. Note how the following overlap with what we typically call best practices.

Asking Open-ended Questions

To truly harness a two-way flow of communication, open-ended questions, rather than close-ended ones, are crucial. For instance, rather than asking, “Do you use our mobile application?” ask, “Can you describe your use of our mobile app?”. This encourages the participant to share more expansive and descriptive insights, furthering the dialogue.

Actively Listening

As the success of an interview relies on the participant’s responses, active listening is a crucial skill for UX researchers. The researcher should encourage participants to express their thoughts and feelings freely. Reflective listening techniques , such as paraphrasing or summarizing what the participant has shared, can reinforce to the interviewee that their contributions are being acknowledged and valued. It also provides an opportunity to clarify potential noise or misunderstandings that may arise.

Being Responsive

Building on the simultaneous send-receive nature of the Transactional Model, researchers must remain responsive during interviews. Providing non-verbal cues (like nodding) and verbal affirmations (“I see,” “Interesting”) lets participants know their message is being received and understood, making them feel comfortable and more willing to share.

We should always attempt to account for noise in advance, as well as during our interview sessions. Noise, in the form of misinterpretations or distractions, can disrupt effective communication. Researchers can proactively reduce noise by conducting a dry run in advance of the scheduled interviews . This helps you become more fluent at going through the interview and also helps identify areas that might need improvement or be misunderstood by participants. You also reduce noise by creating a conducive interview environment, minimizing potential distractions, and asking clarifying questions during the interview whenever necessary.

For example, if a participant uses a term the researcher doesn’t understand, the researcher should politely ask for clarification rather than guessing its meaning and potentially misinterpreting the data.

Additional forms of noise can include participant confusion or distraction. You should let participants know to ask if they are unclear on anything you say or do. It’s a good idea to always ask participants to put their smartphones on mute. You should only provide information critical to the process when introducing the interview or tasks. For example, you don’t need to give a full background of the history of the product you are researching if that isn’t required for the participant to complete the interview. However, you should let them know the purpose of the research, gain their consent to participate, and inform them of how long you expect the session to last.

Strategizing the Flow

Researchers should build strategic thinking into their interviews to support the Transaction Model. Starting the interview with less intrusive questions can help establish rapport and make the participant more comfortable, while more challenging or sensitive questions can be left for later when the interviewee feels more at ease.

A well-planned interview encourages a fluid dialogue and exchange of ideas. This is another area where conducting a dry run can help to ensure high-quality research. You and your dry-run participants should recognize areas where questions aren’t flowing in the best order or don’t make sense in the context of the interview, allowing you to correct the flow in advance.

While much of what the Transactional Model informs for interviews already aligns with common best practices, the model would suggest we need to have a deeper consideration of factors that we can sometimes give less consideration when we become overly comfortable with interviewing or are unaware of the implications of forgetting to address the factors of context considerations, power dynamics, and post-interview actions.

Context Considerations

You need to account for both the context of the participant, e.g., their background, demographic, and psychographic information, as well as the context of the interview itself. You should make subtle yet meaningful modifications depending on the channel you are conducting an interview.

For example, you should utilize video and be aware of your facial and physical responses if you are conducting an interview using an online platform, whereas if it’s a phone interview, you will need to rely on verbal affirmations that you are listening and following along, while also being mindful not to interrupt the participant while they are speaking.

Power Dynamics

Researchers need to be aware of how your role, background, and identity might influence the power dynamics of the interview. You can attempt to address power dynamics by sharing research goals transparently and addressing any potential concerns about bias a participant shares.

We are responsible for creating a safe and inclusive space for our interviews. You do this through the use of inclusive language, listening actively without judgment, and being flexible to accommodate different ways of knowing and expressing experiences. You should also empower participants as collaborators whenever possible . You can offer opportunities for participants to share feedback on the interview process and analysis. Doing this validates participants’ experiences and knowledge and ensures their voices are heard and valued.

Post-Interview Actions

You have a number of options for actions that can close the loop of your interviews with participants in line with the “feedback” the model suggests is a critical part of communication. Some tactics you can consider following your interview include:

• Debriefing Dedicate a few minutes at the end to discuss the participant’s overall experience, impressions, and suggestions for future interviews.
• Short surveys Send a brief survey via email or an online platform to gather feedback on the interview experience.
• Follow-up calls Consider follow-up calls with specific participants to delve deeper into their feedback and gain additional insight if you find that is warranted.
• Thank you emails Include a “feedback” section in your thank you email, encouraging participants to share their thoughts on the interview.

You also need to do something with the feedback you receive. Researchers and product teams should make time for reflexivity and critical self-awareness.

As practitioners in a human-focused field, we are expected to continuously examine how our assumptions and biases might influence our interviews and findings. “

We shouldn’t practice our craft in a silo. Instead, seeking feedback from colleagues and mentors to maintain ethical research practices should be a standard practice for interviews and all UX research methods.

By considering interviews as an ongoing transaction and exchange of ideas rather than a unidirectional Q&A, UX researchers can create a more communicative and engaging environment. You can see how models of communication have informed best practices for interviews. With a better knowledge of the Transactional Model, you can go deeper and check your work against the framework of the model.

The Transactional Model of Communication reminds us to acknowledge the feedback loop even in seemingly one-way communication methods like surveys. Instead of merely sending out questions and collecting responses, we need to provide space for respondents to voice their thoughts and opinions freely. When we make participants feel heard, engagement with our surveys should increase, dropouts should decrease, and response quality should improve.

Like other methods, surveys involve the researcher(s) creating the instructions and questionnaire (sender), the survey, including any instructions, disclaimers, and consent forms (the message), how the survey is administered, e.g., online, in person, or pen and paper (the channel), the participant (receiver), potential misunderstandings or distractions (noise), and responses (feedback).

Designing the Survey

Understanding the Transactional Model will help researchers design more effective surveys. Researchers are encouraged to be aware of both their role as the sender and to anticipate the participant’s perspective as the receiver. Begin surveys with clear instructions, explaining why you’re conducting the survey and how long it’s estimated to take. This establishes a more communicative relationship with respondents right from the start. Test these instructions with multiple people prior to launching the survey.

Crafting Questions

The questions should be crafted to encourage feedback and not just a simple yes or no. You should consider asking scaled questions or items that have been statistically validated to measure certain attributes of users.

For example, if you were looking deeper at a mobile banking application, rather than asking, “Did you find our product easy to use?” you would want to break that out into multiple aspects of the experience and ask about each with a separate question such as “On a scale of 1–7, with 1 being extremely difficult and 7 being extremely easy, how would you rate your experience transferring money from one account to another?” .

Reducing ‘noise,’ or misunderstandings, is crucial for increasing the reliability of responses. Your first line of defense in reducing noise is to make sure you are sampling from the appropriate population you want to conduct the research with. You need to use a screener that will filter out non-viable participants prior to including them in the survey. You do this when you correctly identify the characteristics of the population you want to sample from and then exclude those falling outside of those parameters.

Additionally, you should focus on prioritizing finding participants through random sampling from the population of potential participants versus using a convenience sample, as this helps to ensure you are collecting reliable data.

When looking at the survey itself, there are a number of recommendations to reduce noise. You should ensure questions are easily understandable, avoid technical jargon, and sequence questions logically. A question bank should be reviewed and tested before being finalized for distribution.

For example, question statements like “Do you use and like this feature?” can confuse respondents because they are actually two separate questions: do you use the feature, and do you like the feature? You should separate out questions like this into more than one question.

You should use visual aids that are relevant whenever possible to enhance the clarity of the questions. For example, if you are asking questions about an application’s “Dashboard” screen, you might want to provide a screenshot of that page so survey takers have a clear understanding of what you are referencing. You should also avoid the use of jargon if you are surveying a non-technical population and explain any terminology that might be unclear to participants taking the survey.

The Transactional Model suggests active participation in communication is necessary for effective communication . Participants can become distracted or take a survey without intending to provide thoughtful answers. You should consider adding a question somewhere in the middle of the survey to check that participants are paying attention and responding appropriately, particularly for longer surveys.

This is often done using a simple math problem such as “What is the answer to 1+1?” Anyone not responding with the answer of “2” might not be adequately paying attention to the responses they are providing and you’d want to look closer at their responses, eliminating them from your analysis if deemed appropriate.

Encouraging Feedback

While descriptive feedback questions are one way of promoting dialogue, you can also include areas where respondents can express any additional thoughts or questions they have outside of the set question list. This is especially useful in online surveys, where researchers can’t immediately address participant’s questions or clarify doubts.

You should be mindful that too many open-ended questions can cause fatigue , so you should limit the number of open-ended questions. I recommend two to three open-ended questions depending on the length of your overall survey.

Post-Survey Actions

After collecting and analyzing the data, you can send follow-up communications to the respondents. Let them know the changes made based on their feedback, thank them for their participation, or even share a summary of the survey results. This fulfills the Transactional Model’s feedback loop and communicates to the respondent that their input was received, valued, and acted upon.

You can also meet this suggestion by providing an email address for participants to follow up if they desire more information post-survey. You are allowing them to complete the loop themselves if they desire.

Applying the transactional model to surveys can breathe new life into the way surveys are conducted in UX research. It encourages active participation from respondents, making the process more interactive and engaging while enhancing the quality of the data collected. You can experiment with applying some or all of the steps listed above. You will likely find you are already doing much of what’s mentioned, however being explicit can allow you to make sure you are thoughtfully applying these principles from the field communication.

Usability Testing

Usability testing is another clear example of a research method highlighting components of the Transactional Model. In the context of usability testing, the Transactional Model of Communication’s application opens a pathway for a richer understanding of the user experience by positioning both the user and the researcher as sender and receiver of communication simultaneously.

Here are some ways a researcher can use elements of the Transactional Model during usability testing:

Task Assignment as Message Sending

When a researcher assigns tasks to a user during usability testing, they act as the sender in the communication process. To ensure the user accurately receives the message, these tasks need to be clear and well-articulated. For example, a task like “Register a new account on the app” sends a clear message to the user about what they need to do.

You don’t need to tell them how to do the task, as usually, that’s what we are trying to determine from our testing, but if you are not clear on what you want them to do, your message will not resonate in the way it is intended. This is another area where a dry run in advance of the testing is an optimal solution for making sure tasks are worded clearly.

Observing and Listening as Message Receiving

As the participant interacts with the application, concept, or design, the researcher, as the receiver, picks up on verbal and nonverbal cues. For instance, if a user is clicking around aimlessly or murmuring in confusion, the researcher can take these as feedback about certain elements of the design that are unclear or hard to use. You can also ask the user to explain why they are giving these cues you note as a way to provide them with feedback on their communication.

Real-time Interaction

The transactional nature of the model recognizes the importance of real-time interaction. For example, if during testing, the user is unsure of what a task means or how to proceed, the researcher can provide clarification without offering solutions or influencing the user’s action. This interaction follows the communication flow prescribed by the transactional model. We lose the ability to do this during unmoderated testing; however, many design elements are forms of communication that can serve to direct users or clarify the purpose of an experience (to be covered more in article two).

In usability testing, noise could mean unclear tasks, users’ preconceived notions, or even issues like slow software response. Acknowledging noise can help researchers plan and conduct tests better. Again, carrying out a pilot test can help identify any noise in the main test scenarios, allowing for necessary tweaks before actual testing. Other forms of noise can be less obvious but equally intrusive. For example, if you are conducting a test using a Macbook laptop and your participant is used to a PC, there is noise you need to account for, given their unfamiliarity with the laptop you’ve provided.

The fidelity of the design artifact being tested might introduce another form of noise. I’ve always advocated testing at any level of fidelity, but you should note that if you are using “Lorem Ipsum” or black and white designs, this potentially adds noise.

One of my favorite examples of this was a time when I was testing a financial services application, and the designers had put different balances on the screen; however, the total for all balances had not been added up to the correct total. Virtually every person tested noted this discrepancy, although it had nothing to do with the tasks at hand. I had to acknowledge we’d introduced noise to the testing. As at least one participant noted, they wouldn’t trust a tool that wasn’t able to total balances correctly.

Under the Transactional Model’s guidance, feedback isn’t just final thoughts after testing; it should be facilitated at each step of the process. Encouraging ‘think aloud’ protocols , where the user verbalizes their thoughts, reactions, and feelings during testing, ensures a constant flow of useful feedback.

You are receiving feedback throughout the process of usability testing, and the model provides guidance on how you should use that feedback to create a shared meaning with the participants. You will ultimately summarize this meaning in your report. You’ll later end up uncovering if this shared meaning was correctly interpreted when you design or redesign the product based on your findings.

We’ve now covered how to apply the Transactional Model of Communication to three common UX Research methods. All research with humans involves communication. You can break down other UX methods using the Model’s factors to make sure you engage in high-quality research.

Analyzing and Reporting UX Research Data Through the Lens of the Transactional Model

The Transactional Model of Communication doesn’t only apply to the data collection phase (interviews, surveys, or usability testing) of UX research. Its principles can provide valuable insights during the data analysis process.

The Transactional Model instructs us to view any communication as an interactive, multi-layered dialogue — a concept that is particularly useful when unpacking user responses. Consider the ‘message’ components: In the context of data analysis, the messages are the users’ responses. As researchers, thinking critically about how respondents may have internally processed the survey questions, interview discussion, or usability tasks can yield richer insights into user motivations.

Understanding Context

Just as the Transactional Model emphasizes the simultaneous interchange of communication, UX researchers should consider the user’s context while interpreting data. Decoding the meaning behind a user’s words or actions involves understanding their background, experiences, and the situation when they provide responses.

Deciphering Noise

In the Transactional Model, noise presents a potential barrier to effective communication. Similarly, researchers must be aware of snowballing themes or frequently highlighted issues during analysis. Noise, in this context, could involve patterns of confusion, misunderstandings, or consistently highlighted problems by users. You need to account for this, e.g., the example I provided where participants constantly referred to the incorrect math on static wireframes.

Considering Sender-Receiver Dynamics

Remember that as a UX researcher, your interpretation of user responses will be influenced by your understandings, biases, or preconceptions, just as the responses were influenced by the user’s perceptions. By acknowledging this, researchers can strive to neutralize any subjective influence and ensure the analysis remains centered on the user’s perspective. You can ask other researchers to double-check your work to attempt to account for bias.

For example, if you come up with a clear theme that users need better guidance in the application you are testing, another researcher from outside of the project should come to a similar conclusion if they view the data; if not, you should have a conversation with them to determine what different perspectives you are each bringing to the data analysis.

Reporting Results

Understanding your audience is crucial for delivering a persuasive UX research presentation. Tailoring your communication to resonate with the specific concerns and interests of your stakeholders can significantly enhance the impact of your findings. Here are some more details:

• Identify Stakeholder Groups Identify the different groups of stakeholders who will be present in your audience. This could include designers, developers, product managers, and executives.
• Prioritize Information Prioritize the information based on what matters most to each stakeholder group. For example, designers might be more interested in usability issues, while executives may prioritize business impact.
• Adapt Communication Style Adjust your communication style to align with the communication preferences of each group. Provide technical details for developers and emphasize user experience benefits for executives.

Acknowledging Feedback

Respecting this Transactional Model’s feedback loop, remember to revisit user insights after implementing design changes. This ensures you stay user-focused, continuously validating or adjusting your interpretations based on users’ evolving feedback. You can do this in a number of ways. You can reconnect with users to show them updated designs and ask questions to see if the issues you attempted to resolve were resolved.

Another way to address this without having to reconnect with the users is to create a spreadsheet or other document to track all the recommendations that were made and reconcile the changes with what is then updated in the design. You should be able to map the changes users requested to updates or additions to the product roadmap for future updates. This acknowledges that users were heard and that an attempt to address their pain points will be documented.

Crucially, the Transactional Model teaches us that communication is rarely simple or one-dimensional. It encourages UX researchers to take a more nuanced, context-aware approach to data analysis, resulting in deeper user understanding and more accurate, user-validated results.

By maintaining an ongoing feedback loop with users and continually refining interpretations, researchers can ensure that their work remains grounded in real user experiences and needs. “

Tracking Your Application of the Transactional Model to Your Practice

You might find it useful to track how you align your research planning and execution to the framework of the Transactional Model. I’ve created a spreadsheet to outline key factors of the model and used this for some of my work. Demonstrated below is an example derived from a study conducted for a banking client that included interviews and usability testing. I completed this spreadsheet during the process of planning and conducting interviews. Anonymized data from our study has been furnished to show an example of how you might populate a similar spreadsheet with your information.

You can customize the spreadsheet structure to fit your specific research topic and interview approach. By documenting your application of the transactional model, you can gain valuable insights into the dynamic nature of communication and improve your interview skills for future research.

You can use the suggested columns from this table as you see fit, adding or subtracting as needed, particularly if you use a method other than interviews. I usually add the following additional Columns for logistical purposes:

• Date of Interview,
• Participant ID,
• Interview Format (e.g., in person, remote, video, phone).

By incorporating aspects of communication theory into UX research, UX researchers and those who work with UX researchers can enhance the effectiveness of their communication strategies, gather more accurate insights, and create better user experiences. Communication theory provides a framework for understanding the dynamics of communication, and its application to UX research enables researchers to tailor their approaches to specific audiences, employ effective interviewing techniques, design surveys and questionnaires, establish seamless communication channels during usability testing, and interpret data more effectively.

As the field of UX research continues to evolve, integrating communication theory into research practices will become increasingly essential for bridging the gap between users and design teams, ultimately leading to more successful products that resonate with target audiences.

As a UX professional, it is important to continually explore and integrate new theories and methodologies to enhance your practice . By leveraging communication theory principles, you can better understand user needs, improve the user experience, and drive successful outcomes for digital products and services.

Integrating communication theory into UX research is an ongoing journey of learning and implementing best practices. Embracing this approach empowers researchers to effectively communicate their findings to stakeholders and foster collaborative decision-making, ultimately driving positive user experiences and successful design outcomes.

References and Further Reading

• The Mathematical Theory of Communication (PDF), Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W.
• From organizational effectiveness to relationship indicators: Antecedents of relationships, public relations strategies, and relationship outcomes , Grunig, J. E., & Huang, Y. H.
• Communication and persuasion: Psychological studies of opinion change, Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelley, H. H. (1953). Yale University Press
• Communication research as an autonomous discipline, Chaffee, S. H. (1986). Communication Yearbook, 10, 243-274
• Interpersonal Communication: Everyday Encounters (PDF), Wood, J. (2015)
• Theories of Human Communication , Littlejohn, S. W., & Foss, K. A. (2011)
• McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory (PDF), McQuail, D. (2010)
• Bridges Not Walls: A Book About Interpersonal Communication , Stewart, J. (2012)

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Research: How Ratings Systems Shape User Behavior in the Gig Economy

• Arne De Keyser,
• Christophe Lembregts,
• Jeroen Schepers

A study reveals surprising differences between displaying an average score or individual reviews.

Platform providers typically display ratings information to the user in two ways. Incremental rating systems, employed by platforms like TaskRabbit and Airbnb, offer a detailed view by listing and often providing insights into every individual review score. Averaged rating systems, used by platforms such as Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, present an overall score that aggregates all individual ratings. Over a series of nine experiments, researchers found that the way low ratings are communicated shapes user experience and behavior in a number of ways. Their findings offer implications for companies choosing between incremental or average ratings systems.

Rating systems, integral to the platform economy, profoundly influence human behavior and choice. Platforms like Uber, Airbnb, Turo, and Upwork rely on these systems not just as reflections of past performance, but as proactive tools for ensuring quality and encouraging proper conduct on both sides of a transaction from service providers (such as drivers and hosts) and users (like riders and guests).

• AK Arne De Keyser is a professor of marketing at EDHEC Business School. His research focuses on customer experience, frontline service technologies, and circular services.
• CL Christophe Lembregts is an associate professor of marketing at RSM Erasmus University. His research focuses on facilitating informed decision-making by investigating responses to quantitative information.
• JS Jeroen Schepers is an associate professor of frontline service and innovation at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research centers on frontline employees, artificial intelligence, and service robots.

Partner Center

• Solar Eclipse 2024

10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

A total solar eclipse will sweep across North America on Monday, April 8, offering a spectacle for tens of millions of people who live in its path and others who will travel to see it.

A solar eclipse occurs during the new moon phase, when the moon passes between Earth and the sun, casting a shadow on Earth and totally or partially blocking our view of the sun. While an average of two solar eclipses happen every year, a particular spot on Earth is only in the path of totality every 375 years on average, Astronomy reported .

“Eclipses themselves aren't rare, it's just eclipses at your house are pretty rare,” John Gianforte, director of the University of New Hampshire Observatory, tells TIME. If you stay in your hometown, you may never spot one, but if you’re willing to travel, you can witness multiple. Gianforte has seen five eclipses and intends to travel to Texas this year, where the weather prospects are better.

One fun part of experiencing an eclipse can be watching the people around you. “They may yell, they scream, they cry, they hug each other, and that’s because it’s such an amazingly beautiful event,” Gianforte, who also serves as an extension associate professor of space science education, notes. “Everyone should see at least one in their life, because they’re just so spectacular. They are emotion-evoking natural events.”

Here are 10 surprising facts about the science behind the phenomenon, what makes 2024’s solar eclipse unique, and what to expect.

The total eclipse starts in the Pacific Ocean and ends in the Atlantic 

The darker, inner shadow the moon casts is called the umbra , in which you can see a rarer total eclipse. The outer, lighter second shadow is called the penumbra, under which you will see a partial eclipse visible in more locations.

The total eclipse starts at 12:39 p.m. Eastern Time, a bit more than 620 miles south of the Republic of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, according to Astronomy . The umbra remains in contact with Earth’s surface for three hours and 16 minutes until 3:55 p.m. when it ends in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 340 miles southwest of Ireland.

The umbra enters the U.S. at the Mexican border just south of Eagle Pass, Texas, and leaves just north of Houlton, Maine, with one hour and eight minutes between entry and exit, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) tells TIME in an email.

Mexico will see the longest totality during the eclipse 

The longest totality will extend for four minutes and 28 seconds on a 350-mile-long swath near the centerline of the eclipse, including west of Torreón, Mexico, according to NASA.

In the U.S., some areas of Texas will catch nearly equally long total eclipses. For example, in Fredericksburg, totality will last four minutes and 23 seconds—and that gets slightly longer if you travel west, the agency tells TIME. Most places along the centerline will see totality lasting between three and a half minutes and four minutes.

More people currently live in the path of totality compared to the last eclipse 

An estimated 31.6 million people live in the path of totality for 2024’s solar eclipse, compared to 12 million during the last solar eclipse that crossed the U.S. in 2017, per NASA .

The path of totality is much wider than in 2017, and this year’s eclipse is also passing over more cities and densely populated areas than last time. 

A part of the sun which is typically hidden will reveal itself

Solar eclipses allow for a glimpse of the sun’s corona —the outermost atmosphere of the star that is normally not visible to humans because of the sun’s brightness.

The corona consists of wispy, white streamers of plasma—charged gas—that radiate from the sun. The corona is much hotter than the sun's surface —about 1 million degrees Celsius (1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit) compared to 5,500 degrees Celsius (9,940 degrees Fahrenheit).

The sun will be near its more dramatic solar maximum 

During the 2024 eclipse, the sun will be near “solar maximum.” This is the most active phase of a roughly 11-year solar cycle, which might lead to more prominent and evident sun activity, Gianforte tells TIME.  

“We're in a very active state of the sun, which makes eclipses more exciting, and [means there is] more to look forward to during the total phase of the eclipse,” he explains. 

People should look for an extended, active corona with more spikes and maybe some curls in it, keeping an eye out for prominences , pink explosions of plasma that leap off the sun’s surface and are pulled back by the sun’s magnetic field, and streamers coming off the sun.

Streamers “are a beautiful, beautiful shade of pink, and silhouetted against the black, new moon that's passing across the disk of the sun, it makes them stand out very well. So it's really just a beautiful sight to look up at the totally eclipsed sun,” Gianforte says.

Two planets—and maybe a comet—could also be spotted

Venus will be visible 15 degrees west-southwest of the sun 10 minutes before totality, according to Astronomy. Jupiter will also appear 30 degrees to the east-northeast of the sun during totality, or perhaps a few minutes before. Venus is expected to shine more than five times as bright as Jupiter. 

Another celestial object that may be visible is Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks , about six degrees to the right of Jupiter. Gianforte says the comet, with its distinctive circular cloud of gas and a long tail, has been “really putting on a great show in the sky” ahead of the eclipse.

The eclipse can cause a “360-degree sunset” 

A solar eclipse can cause a sunset-like glow in every direction—called a “360-degree sunset”—which you might notice during the 2024 eclipse, NASA said . The effect is caused by light from the sun in areas outside of the path of totality and only lasts as long as totality.

The temperature will drop 

When the sun is blocked out, the temperature drops noticeably. During the last total solar eclipse in the U.S. in 2017, the National Weather Service recorded that temperature dropped as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. In Carbondale, Ill. for example, the temperature dropped from a peak of 90 degrees Fahrenheit just before totality to 84 degrees during totality.

Wildlife may act differently 

When the sky suddenly becomes black as though nighttime, confused “animals, dogs, cats, birds do act very differently ,” Gianforte says.

In the 2017 eclipse, scientists tracked that many flying creatures began returning to the ground or other perches up to 50 minutes before totality. Seeking shelter is a natural response to a storm or weather conditions that can prove deadly for small flying creatures, the report said. Then right before totality, a group of flying creatures changed their behavior again—suddenly taking flight before quickly settling back into their perches again.

There will be a long wait for the next total eclipse in the U.S.

The next total eclipse in the U.S. won’t happen until March 30, 2033, when totality will reportedly only cross parts of Alaska . The next eclipse in the 48 contiguous states is expected to occur on Aug. 12, 2044, with parts of Montana and North Dakota experiencing totality.

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