UX Research Trends — Recon19
In October 5th, I had the opportunity to represent Gympass in a very special event, one of the few focused on UX Research. The Recon19 took place in the middle of New York City: the first and only free user research conference that brings together influential people in the UX Research community to exchange experiences and trends.
After so much information, exchange, network and a deep material, I’m writing down here my personal takeaways from the conference! (personal takeaways! If you also went and had a different experience, feel free to leave a comment! Also, the main part of these learnings is credit from what the speakers said, so thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge).
For me, the trends about UX Research inside companies, for the next years are:
- Teams with a higher maturity level
For me, it’s about how to detach old ways of running research and be more strategic.
The teams are getting bigger and the contexts are getting even more complex, so we need to be prepared to deal with that. I made an article only about this point, because for me, it was personal learning since I’m building the UX Research team here at Gympass.
2) Emotional UX Research
Bill Albert and Jessica Marriott from Bentley University presented a super interesting case about running research focused on emotions. They mentioned the “six dimensions of emotional UX”. It made me question the quality of information we’re delivering since there’s a big gap between what people are saying and what they are actually feeling.
So, in the future, UX Research should be more high tech and behavioral rather than attitudinal.
While this is not a reality for most of the companies, I realized a few tools that can help us to be more effective in that sense:
- Heatmaps
- UX Research labs equipped with appropriate cameras to better register facial expressions and body language
- Screen recordings tools (such as Smartlook, Crazy Egg, etc)
- More investment in observation
And also, as Bill and Jessica said, we should start thinking about “What emotions are relevant for your business?”
3. UX Research for accessibility
The digital projects should all go into a direction about diversity and inclusion! We see that a lot of times in the real world people with disorders or special needs are not taken into consideration. It should be mandatory for the tech revolution creating digital products to provide the best user experience for everyone.
Research for accessibility emerged because of this, to find ways to make sure that design solutions are fitting in different user conditions. So it’s focused on testing colors, components size, and information hierarchy in that context.
For me, the most interesting thing was to realize, in the Bloomberg study case, that when we’re focused on accessibility, it’s possible to create new brand guides if it’s necessary.
The challenges about this subject, on my side, is how to do the right user recruitment for this kind of test and how to work with this demand in smaller teams. But this is a trend that I’m really hoping to stick!
4. Innovation Research
This topic is about the union of service design and UX Research. For me, this relationship is pretty obvious, because I understand user experience as microservice design in a product journey, but for the market, it is not.
So I think will be more common to see UX Researchers in strategic positions as “Innovation researchers”, a professional that looks into the whole context and connects all the stakeholders and experiences.
This research is focused on minimizing resources and costs in an entire organizational ecosystem, bringing pain points to the spotlight and creating new solutions for old problems. The most important thing for this to happen is to put research at a strategic level, so putting what was the second plan into to main plan and consolidating the area as important for the business such as marketing, branding, software engineer, etc.
5. UX Research Labs?
A room with all the equipment needed to run and record the session + room to observe + waiting room.
I was quite impressed by the Bloomberg UX Research lab, it’s not a common thing in Brazilian companies yet. It reminds me of my time running market research but in the future, with a high tech structure and surrounded by digital context.
I saw these labs as a way of minimizing the production costs of doing any research. And it also brings the team to pay attention in test sessions and group discussions in a war room destined to that.
But I’m really worried about how users really feel being in a research lab, so for me, this trend is a paradox. I question if the users will feel comfortable about telling the truth in a super controlled environment. Maybe investing in UX research tools such as A/B tests, screen recorders and survey feedback could be more effective. But I’m open to the discussion!
6. UX Research + AI
How will be the UX Research future if artificial intelligence keeps growing?
This is the question we discussed in a forum during the Recon19.
We’ve been seeing so many gaps between the usage of artificial intelligence and the user experience (Remember the amazon facial recognition system case?) that I see this growing as an opportunity. If artificial intelligence leaves behind the discovery process, it will probably fail. So it’s our role as UX researchers to be more present in artificial intelligence discussions.
In the forum, we left with a conclusion: to avoid bias and mistakes while building tech solutions with artificial intelligence, we should have a multicultural and diverse UX team working on it. It looks easy but it’s not, considering that in the Brazilian UX market, 60% of the professionals are men, 54% lives in the capital São Paulo and only 5% are not white.
(Source: Panorama UX, Saiba Mais, 2017 and UX para Minas Pretas)
So how are we creating the future of the digital user experience?
