UX Research

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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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    User research is a crucial part of the design process. It helps to bridge the gap between what we think users need and what users actually need. User research is a systematic process of gathering and analyzing information about the target audience or users of a product, service or system. Researchers use a variety of methods to understand users, including surveys, interviews, observational studies, usability testing, contextual inquiry, card sorting and tree testing, eye tracking

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    studies, A-B testing, ethnographic research and diary studies. By doing user research from the start, we get a much better product, a product that is useful and sells better. In the product development cycle, at each stage, you’ll different answers from user research. Let's go through the main points. What should we build? Before you even begin to design you need to validate your product idea. Will my users need this? Will they want to use it? If not this, what else should we build?

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    To answer these basic questions, you need to understand your users everyday lives, their motivations, habits, and environment. That way your design a product relevant to them. The best methods for this stage are qualitative interviews and observations. Your visit users at their homes at work, wherever you plan for them to use your product. Sometimes this stage reveals opportunities no one in the design team would ever have imagined. How should we build this further in the design process?

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    You will test the usability of your design. Is it easy to use and what can you do to improve it? Is it intuitive or do people struggle to achieve basic tasks? At this stage you'll get to observe people using your product, even if it is still a crude prototype. Start doing this early so your users don't get distracted by the esthetics. Focus on functionality and usability. Did we succeed? Finally, after the product is released, you can evaluate the impact of the design.

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    How much does it improve the efficiency of your users work? How well does the product sell? Do people like to use it? As you can see, user research is something that design teams must do all the time to create useful, usable and delightful products.

Table of contents

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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:

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

  2. 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.

Two Approaches to User Research

© 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:

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  2. Test – Evaluate your designs.

  1. 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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    In this presentation, we look at how user research fits into your design process and when to do different types of user studies. If you decide to invest time in doing user research, it's important that you time it so that you get as much out of your efforts as possible. Here, we look at when you should do different types of user research and how research fits into the different work processes.

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    Before you can decide when to do user research, you have to clarify *why* you're doing user research. You need different kinds of insights at different times in your design process. Let's have a look at the overall reasons for doing user research. You can do user research to ensure that you have a good understanding of your users; what their everyday life looks like; what motivates them, and so on. If you understand the people who use your product, you can make designs that are relevant for them. This type of research is typically *qualitative interviews and observations*.

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    You can also do tests of the user experience to ensure that your design has a high level of usability. Finally, you can evaluate on the impact of your design – for instance, on the number of customers or efficiency of work processes. As you can probably see, the different types of research fit into the design process in different ways. Let's start by looking at how each type of research fits into a simplified timeline for product development. Afterwards, we'll look into how user research fits into different types of development processes.

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    Research to ensure that your design is relevant to your users will typically be interviews and observations at the user's home or another relevant context. Since research to ensure that you create relevant products is meant to influence what type of product you will develop, most of this research takes place at the *start* of the development process, either *concurrently* with ideation work or *before* any concept work is done. You can also do research to validate your design direction, once you've developed some concept ideas

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    that you can show prospective users or during early product development. After release, you can do the same type of research to understand how customers are using your product, to explore if they need other features or offer opportunity scoping for your next project. And that, of course, leads you back to the beginning of your next product development process. Research to ensure that your designs are easy to use is mostly done as usability tests. It's important to start usability testing as early in the design or development process as possible

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    so that you have time to make changes to your design if the tests show that changing the design will benefit the product. If you use paper prototypes or similar materials, you can do early user testing before you have an interactive interface. User testing works well in an iterative process where you continually do user tests to ensure that your design is easy and pleasurable to use. Finally, research to measure the impact of your design mostly takes place *after* your product is released. The studies can then lead to new development and design changes.

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    If you're working on web-based products such as apps and web pages, it makes sense to keep evaluating on the user experience after your first release. One thing is a simplified timeline, but when you can do user research and how much research you can do really depends on what type of development process you work in. You can fit user research into most work processes depending on how ambitious you are. But it's easier in some work processes than in others. Let's take a look at what a work process that's optimized for user research looks like.

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    *User-centered design* is an overall term for work processes that place the needs and abilities of the user at the center of the development process. It's been described in different terms, but overall it's an iterative process where the first step is *user research* to ensure the relevance of the product. The second step is to *define* concepts based on user insights. The third step is *design and development*. And the fourth step is *user-testing the solution*. Ideally, this iterative process continues until evaluations show that the product is ready to be released.

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    After release, evaluations of the customer experience might lead to further development. By the way, design thinking is one of the most well-known user-centered work processes. As you can see, the steps involved in design thinking are almost identical to the overall steps of the user-centered design process. When you work in a user-centered process, user research is an integrated part of that process. But, in reality, many work processes are either not like that or deviate from the basic process in different ways.

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    So, how do you approach user research if you don't work in a clear-cut user-centered process? If research is not an integrated part of your work process and it's not up to you to change the way of working, you can still do user research, but it's up to you to decide when and how. So, let's look at some rules of thumb for deciding if, when and how to do user research. The sooner in your process you can do research, the bigger the impact of your research will be.

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    If you can do research before development starts, you can help ensure that you work on products that are relevant to your users. If you can do research early in development, you have more time to make changes to ensure great user experience before your product is released, and so on. Sometimes, you work in projects where you're not involved in all phases of the development. But you can still do smaller research projects that influence the part of the project you *are* working on. If you're a UX designer who's not involved in early concept development, it still makes a lot of sense to do *iterative user testing* of your designs.

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    If you don't have a process for how to handle research results, you should stick to research where you also have influence on any design changes that your research brings about. If you *are* involved in planning your development process, make sure that you schedule in some time to do user research. That way, you can be *proactive* with your research rather than reactive, so you don't have to scramble for resources when you suddenly need research to support your design decisions.

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    Sometimes, you don't have the resources to do all the user research you'd like to do. In that case, think about which type of research will have the *biggest impact* on your particular project and prioritize doing those studies. If you have influence over how you plan your development, iterative processes are almost always preferable when it comes to getting the most out of your user research. Iterative processes make you open to changing the end goal of your design based on the results of your user research.

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    In many projects, your time and resources to do user research are scarce. Luckily, you can do a lot with a little. You can, for instance, do user tests with paper prototypes rather than with fully interactive prototypes that require software programming. Just remember that the *validity* of your research is always the most important thing. So, if your time and resources for doing research are so limited that your results won't be sensible, it's better *not* to do any research. Best case = you'll waste your time and nothing comes from it.

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    Worst case = insights that don't really represent the user will impact important design decisions. Similarly, if you're working on a project that could benefit from user insights but you don't have the time or resources to make any design changes based on your research, you should save your research efforts for another time when they make more sense. So, what's the take-away? User research fits into the development process on all stages, depending on why you want to do user research. When you should do research, and what type of research you can do, depends on what your work process looks like.

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    If you work in a user-centered design process, user research is an integrated part of the process. If you *don't* work in a user-centered design process, it's up to you to make smart decisions about when and how to do research.

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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 - from natural observation to laboratory experimentation

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

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

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    When developing a product or service, it is *essential*   to know what problem we are solving for our users. But as designers, we all too easily shift far away from their perspective. Simply put, we forget that *we are not our users*. User research is how we understand what our users *want*, and it helps us design products and services that are *relevant* to people. User research can help you inspire your design,

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    evaluate your solutions and measure your impact by placing people at the center of your design process. And this is why user research should be a *pillar* of any design strategy. This course will teach you *why* you should conduct user research and *how* it can fit into different work processes. You'll learn to understand your target audience's needs and involve your stakeholders.

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:37

    We'll look at the most common research techniques, such as semi-structured interviews and contextual inquiry. And we'll learn how to conduct observational studies to  *really understand what your target users need*. This course will be helpful for you whether  you're just starting out in UX or looking to advance your UX career with additional research techniques. By the end of the course, you'll have an industry-recognized certificate – trusted by leading companies worldwide. More importantly, you'll master *in-demand research skills* that you can start applying to your projects straight away

  4. 00:01:37 --> 00:01:44

    and confidently present your research to clients and employers alike. Are you ready? Let's get started!

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

Is UX research a good career?

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.

How much does a UX researcher earn?

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.

UX research vs UX design: What’s the difference?

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

Is there a difference between UX research and user research?

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.

What are UX research methods?

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.

Get your master bundle of 17 “User Research” templates
User Research

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

Do you need a degree to become a UX researcher?

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

What is the UX research process?

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

User Research – Methods and Best Practices

What are the UX research tools?

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.

Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX

User Research – Methods and Best Practices

How can you build a UX research case study?

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.

Will AI replace UX research?

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    Instead of sidelining human designers AI might become a valuable partner in the design process AI will not replaces. A person using AI will. You've probably seen this already. And I just want everybody in to think of themselves as the person who will use AI to win the AI race and and thrive in the AI age My personal take on this is that it's far from being able

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    to replace designers because of a couple of reasons: The first one being that I can't yet figure out what problems to solve. So essentially, AI can't understand that there is this person that has their own particular background, history, experiences, personality quirks, irrational behavior, so their entire psychological landscape and this person has these needs and these needs manifest themselves in a certain environment in a context.

  3. 00:01:00 --> 00:01:18

    And so AI can't yet make those connections. And it doesn't have systems thinking capabilities in the way that us humans have, plus empathy and other things You can already integrate AI into your design workflow to stay ahead of the curve, enhance your capabilities and futureproof your career.

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.

How to conduct UX research in agile teams?

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.

Why is UX research important?

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

User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

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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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