{"id":6898,"date":"2022-06-22T15:39:53","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T15:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/?p=6898"},"modified":"2024-02-21T16:19:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T16:19:55","slug":"what-is-user-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/what-is-user-research\/","title":{"rendered":"What is user research?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The objective of user experience design is to create products and services that users will feel good about using. But how do we know what users want? How can we empathise with them or understand their goals and objectives while also knowing which problems they want our products to\u00a0 solve? That\u2019s where user research comes in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">User research is the process of researching your product\u2019s current or potential users. User research helps UX designers to understand their users so that the products they create are more likely to satisfy them while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/business-needs-and-user-needs\/\">meeting business objectives<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, there are all kinds of studies that can be conducted to get to know your users, from very simple to very complex. There are also different research methods that can be used. Knowing how, when and why to conduct user research can vary based on a number of factors, including time and budget, and it\u2019s valuable to be able to judge when and what kind of user research is most important.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this post, we\u2019ll discuss the ins and outs of user research by reviewing the following:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When to conduct user research<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Qualitative vs. quantitative user research methods<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recruiting participants<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Analysing data<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Synthesising and sharing user research\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<section id=\"promotion\" class=\"promotion-content-raw inlinepromo inlinepromo_professional-certificate-in-user-researchp-1 my-4\" style=\"\">\n\t<div class=\"w-container\">\n\t\t<div class=\"row align-items-center\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-12 promotion-info\">\n                <a class=\"link-content\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/courses\/user-research?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=%20blog_panel_text&utm_campaign=blog_promo\" style=\"\">\n                    <p>[GET CERTIFIED IN USER RESEARCH]<\/p>\n                    <span>Take our Professional Certificate in User Research<\/span>\n                <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<h2><strong>When to conduct user research<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">User research isn\u2019t something that should be done once and forgotten about. You should conduct user research throughout the design process, with your methods varying based on the questions you need answered at different stages of the design process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, in the discovery phase, your goal should be to conduct user research that helps you get to know, understand and empathise with your users and their needs. At this stage you haven\u2019t designed anything, so you should investigate users\u2019 preferences, attitudes and priorities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the design phase, your goal should be to conduct user research that sheds light on whether your solutions work as well as you hope. At this stage you\u2019re looking to validate the usability of your designs and to understand what parts of the experience might confuse users.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">User research can also be conducted after a product launch, usually by monitoring metrics like user analytics and complaints. These things can point to how well the product continues to meet users\u2019 needs and may also point to the parts of a product that require redesigning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Take a look at some of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/best-ux-research-tools\/\">best UX research tools<\/a> on the market right now to help you with these different methods.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Qualitative vs. quantitative user research methods<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">User research can employ either qualitative or quantitative methods. The choice of which one you use &#8211; or whether you decide to use both &#8211; will depend on what research question you want to answer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Qualitative research<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> involves learning about users\u2019 opinions, thoughts and feelings about a given topic. Usually the data collected comes in the form of words and text and helps answer questions about why users do things, how they do them or what their specific preferences are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Qualitative research methods include ethnographic studies, where you observe people in the context of their own space, one-on-one interviews, surveys using open-ended questions or focus groups. This method can be very time consuming; for example, ethnographic studies can last several days. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In contrast, a focus group can be conducted in an afternoon. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Either way, it\u2019s almost always necessary to have at least one in-person facilitator available to moderate qualitative research. However, only a few research participants are needed to uncover meaningful results. Qualitative research tends to be most useful in the discovery phase of the design process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Quantitative research<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> produces measurable data in the form of numbers. It\u2019s more concrete than qualitative research and answers questions about what people do, such as how often they use a product, how much time they spend with the product or how many pages of a product they view.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Quantitative research methods include surveys that ask multiple choice or yes\/no questions, first-click tests, A\/B tests and eye tracking. These methods can be fairly simple to implement because they can often be automated with participants following prompts on a computer screen, therefore it\u2019s not always necessary to moderate the studies. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the other hand, in order to get enough data to reach statistically meaningful conclusions, it\u2019s necessary to include more participants. Quantitative research is often most useful in the design phase when it can quickly uncover if certain UX solutions are working as intended.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Qualitative and quantitative research have different strengths and weaknesses, and consequently can complement each other. Studies that employ both qualitative and quantitative research methods are called <\/span><b>mixed methods research<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. This kind of research enables you to gather measurable data while also gaining insight into why people make certain choices.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<section id=\"promotion\" class=\"promotion-content-raw inlinepromo inlinepromo_professional-diploma-in-ux-designp-1 my-4\" style=\"\">\n\t<div class=\"w-container\">\n\t\t<div class=\"row align-items-center\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-12 promotion-info\">\n                <a class=\"link-content\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/courses\/ux-design?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=blog_panel_pdux&utm_campaign=blog_promo\" style=\"\">\n                    <p>[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]<\/p>\n                    <span>Take our Professional Diploma in UX Design course<\/span>\n                <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<h2><strong>Recruiting participants<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/find-users-usability-test\/\">Recruiting the right participants<\/a> is essential to user research. However, the process of finding participants and getting them to agree to take part in your study can be challenging. There are several methods you can utilise but they all start with the same basic requirement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before you can recruit participants, you must decide on the characteristics of the people you want to include in your study. This should be based on the kinds of users your product is targeted towards. You\u2019ll then create a screening survey, called a screener, that will enable you to gather information about potential participants so you can identify those who best represent the users for your product and weed out those who don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To create a screener and recruit participants take the following steps:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First define the demographic and other important characteristics of the participants you want to recruit. For example, if you\u2019re creating a tool to monitor heart health in men, your participants will be very different than if you\u2019re building an app for recent high school and college grads to connect with potential roommates. However, make sure you don\u2019t get overly restrictive in your criteria, as it may cause you to exclude more participants than necessary.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\">Next, you\u2019ll construct your screener by creating a series of questions that help you decide if each potential participant is a fit for the study. You can use a survey tool such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.surveymonkey.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SurveyMonkey<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qualtrics.com\/uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Qualtrics<\/a> to construct the screener, so it can automatically screen candidates based on their answers to your questions.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6900\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-22-at-11.31.54.png\" alt=\"SurveyMonkey\" width=\"2608\" height=\"1056\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-9541 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-22-at-11.35.27-1-1.png\" alt=\"Qualtrics\" width=\"2124\" height=\"1244\" title=\"\"><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\">Finally, you must decide on a recruitment strategy. There are several ways to do this but they each have pros and cons. You can hire a professional recruiting agency that will find and vet participants for you. While this is the least time-consuming recruiting option, it\u2019s also the most expensive.On the other end of the spectrum, you can recruit people through your social media channels, through online forums related to the product you\u2019re designing or even turn to colleagues and fellow employees. This is more cost-effective but it will take more time. However, the biggest potential drawback is that participants\u2019 responses may be biassed. Because they are likely to know you and possibly even be familiar with the product you\u2019re working on, it may prevent them from providing the most honest answers in your study.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The recruitment strategy you choose will also depend on the kind of study you\u2019re conducting as the number of participants you need can vary widely. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/how-many-test-users\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nielsen Norman Group suggests<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> recruiting only five people for a qualitative usability study. For quantitative studies, you\u2019ll need at least 20 participants to ensure your results are statistically significant but a number closer to 35 is ideal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Analysing data<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once you\u2019ve conducted your study, you\u2019ll be left with a great deal of data. In order to make that data useful you\u2019ll have to draw meaningful conclusions from it. This starts with analysing the data. If you\u2019ve conducted a qualitative study, your analysis will also be qualitative and if you\u2019ve conducted a quantitative study, your analysis will be quantitative.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Quantitative analysis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> requires statistical evaluation of your data. You will have to organise the numerical data you\u2019ve collected into a dataset, usually on a spreadsheet where the rows represent the answers of each participant and the columns represent each question they\u2019ve answered. Then, using statistical software like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/analytics\/spss-statistics-software\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SPSS<\/a> or formulas on a Google or Excel spreadsheet, you\u2019ll analyse each of the variables you\u2019ve collected information about. For example, if you\u2019re researching how well a new tool for finding and booking hotel rooms works, you might analyse your data to see how long it took participants to find a hotel they liked, what parts of the tool the participants used the most and whether and when users abandoned the booking experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6902\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-22-at-11.38.05.png\" alt=\"booking.com\" width=\"2274\" height=\"1376\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p><b>Qualitative analysis<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is more subjective and time consuming than quantitative analysis but can lead to even greater insights. Once again the first step is to organise your data. Although qualitative data will primarily be in the form of words &#8211;\u00a0 either based on your research notes, transcripts of interviews or written answers to open-ended questions &#8211;\u00a0 you\u2019ll likely want to use a spreadsheet where each row includes the data gathered from one participant.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You\u2019ll then review the data looking for patterns and recurring themes. One of the best ways to do this is to develop codes for each theme you find. A code is essentially a descriptive label that you can assign to each chunk of text that brings up the described topic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>For instance, to go back to the hotel booking tool, if one of the patterns you notice is participants continually mentioning a desire to know whether the hotels they can book have on-site restaurants, you can use the code \u201crestaurant\u201d to label the text everywhere this issue appears. You can do this manually or with a qualitative analysis tool such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qsrinternational.com\/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NVivo<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dedoose.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dedoose<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6903\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-22-at-11.39.43.png\" alt=\"booking.com restaurant finder\" width=\"2218\" height=\"954\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once you\u2019ve coded your data, group your codes into larger categories called themes, which will provide insights into the data. For example, if you have codes like \u201crestaurant,\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201csee menus\u201d and \u201ccomplimentary breakfast,\u201d they can all go under a theme labelled \u201con-site food access\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Synthesising and sharing user research\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After you\u2019ve analysed your data, you need to synthesise it so you can communicate your key findings and insights to make recommendations to stakeholders and clients. Remember, this should trace back to your research goals, the reason you conducted user research to begin with. Any insights that meet those goals should be prioritised in any compilation of your research findings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>For example, if one of your research goals was to learn what features people prioritise most when looking for a hotel,\u00a0 share those findings first. Then share the insights that resulted from those findings and make recommendations about how those insights should influence the design of the hotel booking tool you\u2019re creating.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/how-to-synthesize-research-data-cabcfcab074e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meghan Wenzel recommends<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> using a framework where each research finding is followed by three bullet points:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> one for the insight the finding leads to<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">one for your recommendation based on the insight<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and one for an action that can be filled in later by the design team when it determines how best to fulfil the recommendation<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, if your finding is that your participants expressed a desire to find hotels with on-site restaurants, your insight would be that people need to be able to quickly determine which hotels in the city where they are travelling have restaurants. Your recommendation could then be to ensure information about on-site restaurants is salient and easily accessible for each hotel. This can then be followed by more details into the finding, including quotes, examples and further information from your research.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This should all be formatted so that it can be shared and easily understood by your stakeholders and clients. Regardless of whether you explain the information in a live presentation or send it to stakeholders as a document to read on their own time. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, make sure you prioritise the voices of your research participants so stakeholders can develop empathy for them. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sharing your findings should also be the jumping off point for discussing the design solutions you\u2019ll implement in your user experience. Make full use of these discussions, ensuring that\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the insights and recommendations that come out of user research are put to work.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The objective of user experience design is to create products and services that users will feel good about using. But how do we know what users want? In this piece we take a look at the benefits of user research, how to conduct and then implement it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":10020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6898"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12372,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions\/12372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}