Research methods
This are my notes from Google UX professional certificate
Categorization & common methods
There are two ways we categorize research methods. The first way is based on who conducts the research. The second way is based on the type of data collected.
- Primary research is research you conduct yourself. For example, you might interview users, survey users, or conduct a usability study to hear from users directly.
- Secondary research is research that uses information someone else has put together. Secondary research can be information from books, articles, or journals.
Most of the time, secondary research is done at the very beginning of the product development lifecycle, before any ideation happens. Secondary research is often done by product leads, not UX designers.
Another way to categorize research methods is to think about the type of data collected. Data can be collected through qualitative or quantitative research.
- Quantitative research focuses on data that can be gathered by counting or measuring. It is often based on surveys of large groups of people using numerical answers. This type of research often answers questions like: How many? How much?
If you want to know how the majority of users are experiencing a product, you should use quantitative research.
- Qualitative research focuses on observations. Qualitative research is often based on interviews, where we focus on a smaller number of users and understand their needs in greater detail. This type of research answers questions like: Why? Or, how did this happen?
If you want to know why users are having a bad experience with your product and how to improve it, you should use qualitative research.
Quantitative research gives you the “what” and qualitative research gives you the “why.”
All four of these types of research can intermix. Primary and secondary research can be both qualitative and quantitative. For example, an interview is qualitative research. An interview conducted by you is primary research. If you review an article about an interview conducted by someone else, it’s secondary research. It’s important to be able to identify the difference between these types of research because the data you collect forms the basis of your design decisions.
Common primary research methods
Interviews are a research method used to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions, thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Interviews can be performed one-on-one or in a group setting, like a focus group.
Interviews can take the form of qualitative and quantitative research. A qualitative research method includes open-ended questions that require participants to explain their answers by providing more details. A quantitative research method includes only close-ended questions, like questions that require only “yes” or “no” responses or set multiple choice questions.
Use interviews when your questions require a detailed response. Define questions that are open-ended (how was your experience using the app?) to allow the user to share more about their experience and prevent the user from answering Yes or No. If the answer is short, ask Why?
- How was your experience using the app?
+ It was good.
- Why?
With user interviews you usually want to know the reason behind it, so yes/no questions are usually too narrow and can bias the response (for participants it’s easier to say Yes than to reason Why).
Best practice is to conduct at least five user interviews during your research. As you conduct your interviews, you’ll start to find similarities in the feedback that users provide about what works and what doesn’t work about your product. This is exactly the kind of feedback you want!
Advantages
- You’re better able to understand what a user thinks and why.
- You can adjust your questions or refocus the discussion based on the user’s answers.
- You have the ability to ask follow-up questions in real time to better understand the user’s experience.
- You have the ability to ask questions specific to a user’s needs.
- You’ll receive direct suggestions from the user.
Disadvantages
- It’s time-consuming to interview each user.
- It’s expensive to pay participants and to rent space for the interviews.
- The sample sizes are smaller, due to time and money constraints, which can be risky when launching a new product.
- Group interviews can be affected by the bandwagon effect, or going along with the group’s opinion instead of thinking creatively, which can discourage open discussion by people who have an opinion that doesn’t align with the majority of the group.
If you want to learn more about interviews, check out an article about user interviews from the Nielsen Norman Group.
A survey is an activity where many people are asked the same questions in order to understand what most people think about a product. Surveys are a great way to measure the success of your product, during development and after it’s launched. For example, sending surveys after a product is released can help you measure the effectiveness of your product and provide a foundation for future improvements.
Surveys allow us to hear from a larger number of users than we can during interviews. Surveys include a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions. You can design surveys to include open-ended questions for qualitative research, which allow research participants to clarify their survey responses, as well as close-ended questions for quantitative research, which generate numerical data.
Surveys are most useful after you have some initial understanding of the users’ pain points and want to solidify that by surveying a larger number of people.
Advantages
- You can learn more from a larger sample size.
- You are able to gather results and insights quickly. Surveys are a fast-way to get insights.
- Surveys are usually inexpensive because they don’t take as much time for participants to complete, and they can be done remotely.
Disadvantages
- Surveys often do not allow for in-depth feedback; most questions will have responses drawn from a set of multiple-choice answers. Feedback from users is limited.
- There are some types of research questions that won’t work in a survey format.
- Surveys usually do not allow for personalization.
If you want to learn more about surveys, check out usability.gov’s article about online surveys.
A usability study is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users. The goal of a usability study is to identify pain points that the user experiences with different prototypes, so the issues can be fixed before the final product launches.
Usability studies help demonstrate if a product is on the right track or if the design needs to be adjusted. There are lots of ways to test usability, both in person and online. It’s a good idea to record your usability sessions, either audio or video, so you can reference the user data as you make design decisions later on in the process.
Qualitative research is based on observations, and a critical part of conducting usability studies is observing how participants interact with the product you’ve designed. Focusing on qualitative research during usability studies can generate more personal insights by assessing the behaviour of users as they experience the product. Quantitative research can also be used when conducting usability studies to understand participants’ impressions of the product.
During a usability study, you get a chance to see how your end users interact with your new product or feature, and afterward you can interview the users to learn more about their experience. The usability study data is then used to improve the UX of the design. If the product has already launched, a post-launch usability study might include data like success metrics and key performance indicators, which are commonly known as KPIs.
Key performance indicators are critical measures of progress toward an end goal. The KPIs for an app or new product launch might include things like how much time the user spent on a task or the number of clicks they used to make a purchase.
Advantages
- You can learn from first-hand user interaction and observation.
- Usability studies can challenge your assumptions about your product by demonstrating a completely different result than you were expecting.
- Users can provide in-depth feedback.
Disadvantages
- Usability studies only measures how easy it is to use a product.
- This type of research can be expensive, especially if it’s conducted in person, because you have to bring users into a lab and reimburse them for their time.
- There can be differences between a “controlled” usability study in a lab versus how a user experiences the product in their real life.
If you want to learn more about usability tests, check out the Nielsen Norman Group’s article on usability testing.
Secondary research methods
Secondary research can be completed at any phase of the project, since you’re using information from outside sources. In other words, secondary research is not a direct result of your product or the user you’re designing for. The information you discover during secondary research might lay a foundation for your primary research, so you have a better idea of where to focus your efforts. Or, secondary research might supplement the findings from your primary research for a project, to reiterate or strengthen your conclusions.
If we’re just getting started with a project, we might use secondary research to know the stats, facts, and figures that already exist about our users. Chances are, a credible study on this already exists. Finding one can save your team time and money. Plus, why redo work that’s already been done? Another good thing about secondary research is that it’s immediately accessible.
But there are also drawbacks to secondary research. Secondary research doesn’t allow you to observe users interacting with your product. So you will not have feedback on how users feel about your product.
Advantages
- Secondary research is generally cheaper and faster than primary research. This means you’ll save time and money.
- You can often find secondary research via online searches and subscription research publications.
- Secondary research can be a good supplement to findings from your primary research.
Disadvantages
- You will not learn from any first-hand user interaction.
- You will not receive user feedback specific to your product.
- Secondary research can be misleading and generalizing if not done appropriately.
If you want to learn more about secondary research, check out an article about secondary research from Formplus.
The research method we choose is decided by the question we are trying to answer.
If you want to explore research further, check out this user-experience research methods article from NN Group. It will guide you through choosing the best research method for you out of 20 popular options.
