RED ACADEMY UX Foundation — Lesson 2

User Research Methods

The Importance of Research

During this class we covered different points of research. We had an exercise about a group of friends going to a restaurant on a Friday night. What do you expect to see on its website? The list was quite extensive. It was interesting to hear what’s important for each and every one of us. We researched about 8 different restaurants after coming up with a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves. Majority of the websites did not cover the list, but had some very interesting features. One thing we all agreed upon — do not use auto replay music on the background.

Available Tools

There are many different tools available for User Research. User interviews will help to research a potential user. Keep asking “why”? and you will get to the bottom of a problem. User interviews become necessity when developing an app or a website. List of questions is extremely important.

Surveys will help you to understand your personas, direction of a design or assess a live website.

I am interested in developing an app that will connect parents of young kids who require a daycare, after school care and everything that related to being a parent in Toronto and area.

Here is my first survey I sent to 5 different people: