What is UX Research?

User experience (UX) research, also called User Research, is research that focuses on
understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through various observational techniques
and feedback methods.

What are the goals of UX Research?

Broadly speaking, UX research is concerned with foregrounding human experiences to better
understand how to design better tools, processes and procedures that impact everyday life.
Some of the fundamental goals for UX research are:
➢ Advocating for the user.
➢ Understanding user perspective, motivations, and goals.
➢ Gathering user feedback and input.
➢ Using insights drawn from data to guide project direction and decision-making.

What are some dimensions of UX?

For every product and process that a person uses, their experience can be measured on three
distinct dimensions.

Usability - The ability to which a person is able to adequately use a tool (or product,
navigate a process, or get from point-a to point-b, etc.).
Consider asking: Can someone use this? Is it easy, is it simple, is it straight
forward or intuitive?

Functionality - The extent to which the tool, product, process, etc., supports the user’s
specific needs.
Consider asking: Is this tool (or process, etc.) doing what it needs to do? Is it
meeting user needs?

Practicality - The reality of whether or not the tool (or process etc.) is practical for the
user, given the various outside forces and variables that play into their lives.
Consider asking: Is it realistic that the user would use this? How well does this
(tool, process, etc.) fit into their lives? How feasible is it that users would adopt
this (tool, process, etc.)?
Types of UX & Design Research
UX research often leads into, or incorporates aspects of design research. Briefly, design
research is concerned with developing strategic approaches to design. What this looks like in
practice may vary depending on the project, but always involves investigating the human
experience and dreaming up new ways of sparking inspiration and creative solutions to novel
problems.

There are many different types of both design and UX research, and we will cover some of the
more popular types below.

Evaluative Research
Evaluative research is a secondary form of research where the goal of the research is to
evaluate a process, product or tool. Typically, evaluative research is framed around a specific
problem that researchers want to solve. In evaluative research, there are two approaches:
Summative, and Formative.

Summative Evaluation - Seeks to understand the outcomes or effects of a process,

product or tool. Summative research is often used to help evaluate whether or not
changes to a product positively impact user experience, or performance.

Formative Evaluation - Seeks to help inform the design and direction of research
decisions, of the process, product, tool or even person being tested. Formative
evaluation typically helps us understand how and where we can help improve the design
process early, and often.

Exploratory Research
Exploratory research is exactly what it sounds like - it is a form of research where the goal is to
explore a problem-space or domain where little is known about it. The goal of exploratory
research is to help researchers gain a deep understanding of the topic and the people involved,
the tools they use, and the processes that support them, such that researchers can pick a
direction to dig further.

Exploratory research helps researchers test their assumptions, as well as learn from
participants and users by actively involving them in the research process. Some benefits of
exploratory research include:

Flexibility - It is flexible, and can help generate and answer questions of all kinds (what,
why, how).

Novel Opportunities - Opportunity to define new terms to describe observations and

phenomenon or classifying concepts.
 Scoping - Helps generate research questions and establish research priorities.

Generative Research
Finally, generative research is when researchers gather all existing knowledge, insights and
data collected from other forms of research to generate novel solutions to problems outlined and
defined from said existing research. Generate research is an ideal space for ideation, the
process of exploring themes and insights to see spark inspiring design solutions.

Doing UX Research

Asking the Right Question

Defining your Goal

The first step in UX research is understanding your goal, and part of that might mean
defining your problem. This process usually involves getting to know your users, but as any
UX researcher can tell you, people can easily list ideas and solutions for whatever problem
they’re encountering. However, defining the actual problem, now that is the hard part.

There are a number of ways to better define your goal / problem, and it starts by asking: what
do you want to know? And further, why do you want to know it?

To help answer these questions, consider asking the following questions:

➢ Who are your users?
➢ What are their behaviors, goals, motivations, needs?
➢ What assumptions have you made about them?
➢ How do they currently behave (around what you want to explore)?
➢ What are the tools and products they use to perform this behavior?
➢ Where do they have problems with their workflow / experience?
➢ How do they feel during this process?

Once you’ve started answering these questions, your problem and goals will begin to take form.
From there, you can begin to generate research questions that you want to answer through your
UX research.

Choosing your Method

Research methodology relies entirely upon the research goals, questions, and problem space.
You cannot know what method to use, if you do not first know what question you’re attempting
to answer, or what problem you’re attempting to solve. The reason for this is because you first
need to know what type of data you need to gather.
Attitudinal vs. Behavioral Data
Another important consideration for researchers is what kind of data they are going to capture,
which relies on first knowing what question they’re asking or the problem they’re attempting to
solve. In UX research, there are typically two kinds of data that are captured: attitudinal, and
behavioral.

Behavioral - Methods that measure what people do, their actions, behaviors, and
processes.

Attitudinal - Methods that measure what people say, how they feel, and their
perceptions.

Additionally, there are two ways of capturing this data, those are Qualitatively, or
Quantitatively. Briefly, qualitative data is thematic data, data that cannot easily be quantified.
Conversely, quantitative data is numeric, making it ideal for scenarios where the goal of the
research is to make inferences or to draw strict conclusions from the data. Conceptually,
quantitative data can tell researchers what a user has done or is doing, whereas qualitative data
can tell a researcher why they are doing it. Below is a helpful matrix to illustrate how these
various dimensions interact in UX.

Methods by Research Phase

Neilson and Norman, two pioneers in the UX research field, created an incredibly handy and
simple framework to help guide researchers through their UX research. Most UX research
methods can be mapped to a four-phase design cycle:
 Phase 1 - Discover
The goal of these methods is to highlight unknowns, recognize the limits of our
understanding, and to learn from users what they need.

Phase 2 - Explore
The goal of these methods is to gather data that can help define the problem space and
dive deeper into user needs to determine the best way to approach solutions.

Phase 3 - Test
The goal of these methods is to test designs and solutions to determine the impact of the
changes, as part of the Usability, Functionality, and Practicality dimensions.

Phase 4 - Listen
The goal of these methods is to gather feedback from the users, gather data and
analyze trends that will continuously allow for better understanding of the problem space
and phenomenon.

It is important to note that UX research does not always start in Phase 1. In many teams and on
many projects, research cycles might start in Phase 2, or 3, or even 4. However, because the
phases are actually a cycle, to make the most out of the research, it is generally recommended
that you complete all phases, regardless of where you start.

For a full breakdown of methods in UX research, I recommend the UX Cheat Sheet by Nielson
and Norman as a starting reference point.

Conducting the Research

The types of questions you’re asking and the types of methods being used will determine how
the research is conducted. However, it is generally recommended that regardless of the type of
research or methods being used, to try and pilot your study.

Piloting is basically a practice run. It provides a perfect opportunity for researchers to

test their process, their materials and guides, and will help iron out any kinks in the
process. One of the easiest ways to pilot research is to simply dry-run with a fellow
researcher or team-mate, or a friend. Gather feedback, iterate and make changes as
necessary.

Performing Analysis
When analyzing your data, it’s important to consider who this information is going to be most
helpful to. If you’re trying to answer specific questions that will be reported back to a team, ask
yourself, what information do they need to help them move forward? It wouldn’t be a smart
investment of your time to do additional analysis if that information weren’t going to be used to
answer your research questions, to inform your design, or be helpful to any teams you might be
working with. Finally, try to organize your findings in such a way that they are easily readable,
that is, illustrate meaning. It should be immediately apparent to anyone who reads your analysis
what the takeaways are.

Presenting Your Work

Tell a Story
The goal of your presentation should be to follow a narrative, to tell a story from not just
beginning to end, but towards the future. With that in mind, consider addressing the following
questions:
➢ Who was the work for?
➢ Who was involved?
➢ What was the problem / question?
➢ What did you do?
➢ How did you do it?
➢ Why did you choose to do it that way?
➢ What was the outcome?
➢ Were there actionable results?
➢ What are the next steps?

Consider your Audience

An important consideration in presenting your work is to consider to whom you’re presenting.
Different teams have different goals, and may need different types of information. You should try
to frame your findings, your suggestions, and your overall work in such a way that it can easily
be transformed into actionable next steps. One commonly used method is to summarize
findings as Key Takeaways, short, succinct and cogent bullet-points that provide enough
information about the results that external parties could build from your work with relative ease.

Executive Summary
While not always necessary, it never hurts to start your presentation with a single page or slide
of the main, or key takeaways and insights that were gathered from your research. Any
recommended next steps should be included here as well. This component can be pivotal,
especially for anyone who may need to quickly review your research at a later date.