What is your UX research process?

“So what is your research process from start to end?”

This was a question asked to me during the thesis project, by jury members. This was a question asked to me in almost all the interviews. This was a question asked to me once I had joined a company for documentation so non-researchers could understand the research work and use it when doing internal research. This was also a question asked to me by a few researchers who were new to UX research and who wanted to understand the industry level process.

Well, there is no one right answer to this as it would depend on the type of study, context, researcher handling the project, team size, budget, time etc. But there is a high-level process that I follow and I will be sharing it today. This might be helpful for people who are new in the industry or new to UX research.

Here comes my 10 step process for research!

1. The Entry Point -

What is that we want to research? A research topic is something that could come from anyone.

• It could come from team members who want to understand something better. These teams could be the product team, business team, research team etc. In my experience, it is usually the product team as they are constantly engaged in building products for users and are curious to understand the user’s perspective of the product
• It could come from researchers who want to further dive into some aspects of some previous research or have a new area of inquiry
• It could be around a need that came from users’ end and is to be understood better
• It could be around speculation or innovation

It could come from anyone and anywhere but “Is it something to be researched on or not?” is a decision the team could take based on the time constraints, availability of resources, data in hand etc.

2. Scoping -

Scoping of a project involves defining the objectives of the research, objectives of the business, possible outcomes and outputs expected.

What is the need for scoping?

It is important to scope out the research study as soon as possible as it helps in understanding the purpose of the research, understanding expectations of different stakeholders from the research, aligning the purpose and expectations for everyone at the beginning of the study and understanding the major areas of focus for the study. This helps in avoiding later confusion, brings everyone on the same page and saves everyone’s time and energy. This also works as a guiding document when researchers feel lost or overwhelmed while researching.

3. Planning -

Planning of research involves planning the end-to-end research. It involves the following -

• Methodology of research and the reason for using it
• Timelines and Trackers
• User Profiles & Numbers (If interacting with users)
• Stakeholder Profiles & Numbers (if interacting with stakeholders)
• Recruitment Process
• Logistics (recording equipment, accommodation, transportation etc)
• Expected output lists

Planning is important as it helps in getting clarity and defining a clear strategy to move forward by taking various factors around research into consideration.

Even for planning the research well, we will need some context of the product/system and might have to do some basic desk research to get a better understanding of the audience, geography, user profiles, rough estimate of secondary data available to be looked into etc. and therefore, there would be some overlaps between planning and research conduction.

Also like any other life’s plan, a lot of things might not go as per the plan. For example, recruitment didn’t go as per the plan, the users recruited turned out to be different from what we were looking for, some users were unwilling to talk, there were last-minute cancellations from users’ end, stakeholders came back with new expectations from the research in the middle of research etc. All these could add to the timelines and researchers might have to tweak the plans or work with the limitations depending on the context, situation and limitations.

4. Conducting -

Once the planning is done the research is conducted. This is where all the plans get into action and we either go on the field, do remote sessions, talk to stakeholders, do secondary research by looking into competitors or the existing data etc. Though the secondary and primary research could happen in parallel, there could be a lot of back and forth.

The major amount of secondary research is usually done before primary research and in the beginning as it helps in -

• Understanding the context better
• Uncovering what we already know about the problem at hand
• Creating hypothesis
• Crafting better questions for stakeholders and users

Secondary Research is also usually faster and economical as compared to Primary Research. And to conduct Secondary Research we need to decide where to look for data and why? This could be in-house materials/logs, product analytics, past research is done, competitor study etc.

Primary Research on the other hand would be helpful in better understanding the WHY of the problem, getting a deeper understanding of problem areas and validating our hypothesis generated from secondary research. If done after Secondary Research the time invested in Primary Research could be used wisely for uncovering the WHY behind the problem areas which would have already been identified during Secondary Research.

To conduct the Primary Research, the creation of the following is needed — Research Guides, Note-taking Guides, Consent Forms and any other Scripts. The Research Guides could be structured, semi-structured or unstructured depending on the study. How to record and note-take should be planned and backups should be kept for recording equipment.

While the primary research is highly dependent on identifying the right user profiles, the recruitment process, interview scheduling and participants availability. The secondary research is dependent on the availability of data relevant to the problem at hand. Therefore, which research to focus on more is dependent on the above factors and the time provided for research.

You can check out these articles for a detailed understanding of a few aspects of conducting research: When to use which user-experience research methods — by NN group, User Interviews — by NN group and Harness the Power of Secondary Research in UX — by Nikki Anderson.

5. Analysis

Also once you are done conducting the research, finish and clean up the notes and collate all the data in the required place (I prefer using Miro, excel, drives etc. and this could vary depending on the researcher) properly so that analysis could be done.

In this step, we try to identify and uncover any themes, patterns, data buckets emerging in the overall data collated and to cluster them. Some of the analysis methods could be affinity mapping, journaling etc.

Check out this article for a detailed understanding of qualitative research analysis: How to Analyze Qualitative Data from UX Research: Thematic Analysis — by NN group

6. Synthesis

One of the most important goals of the research exercise is to make meaning of the data collated and patterns identified, to identify the interconnections in the diverse clusters that emerged and to bring out the story that emerged from the analysis.

The synthesised data could comprise diverse data forms like empathy maps, user stories, customer journeys, quantitative findings etc. depending on the nature of researched and identified data.

7. Dissemination

Another important goal of the research exercise is to disseminate the research findings to the right stakeholders, which can then be used for guiding future product decisions, hence making products or services better for the end-user. Since the research was conducted, analysed and synthesised by a few members, it is important to share the findings with larger audience because -

• Just sharing the research report might not give enough clarity, they might end up assuming a lot of things
• The report alone cannot tell the full story or evoke empathy
• The report cannot help clarify the doubts
• Worst case scenario, no one reads the report and hence none of the findings gets implemented

To better clarify the purpose of research, tell the story of the users and their challenges, it becomes important to present the research. The dissemination of research could happen in the form of presentations, which could also include bite-sized share-outs post-presentation, workshops etc.

8. Documentation

Documenting what we did and how we did is important as it works as a referring document for the team during the design phase, it could work as a referring document for future research and design, it helps in understanding the reasoning behind the design solutions at later stages, and most importantly it also helps in understanding the users better.

It could be possible that while researching you have to share the findings on the spot and the team chooses not to document the research. However, if it is an existing product/service/system, and if the research is documented it would save time and resources in future as others will not have to do the same research again, they can go through the existing documentation and build on top of it.

9. Implementation

What was the purpose of doing this whole research? Why did we invest so much energy and resources in it?

Well, the research insights will contribute to better product design and strategy, they will help understand the audience better, they will help in making smarter decisions etc. Which part of your research gets implemented at which stage could be a decision dependent on the product roadmaps, product cycles, finding criticality, integration matrix etc.

10. Repeat the loop or Start a new one

After completion of the research, researchers might move on to the next phase of previously done researches e.g., deep-diving into some interesting findings from the past research or they might move on to a new research problem altogether.

All the above steps have their challenges and limitations which researchers handle on a day-to-day basis.

Communication throughout the process is key, keeping the stakeholders (Product Managers, Clients, Project Managers etc.) informed and updated regarding the process is important. This helps in stakeholders’ buy-in for the research and when they are aware of the process or have participated in some parts of it the advocacy of research gets easier.

Conclusion

Well, this is the process that I follow and this could vary from researcher to researcher. Which steps get more or less focus would depend on the researcher, study at hand, number of resources, time constraint etc. Also, some of the steps in the process will overlap or happen in parallel again depending on various factors.

If you have any suggestions or questions around the process shared, I would love to hear them!

So, what is YOUR UX research process?