Writing UX Research Objectives — Using S.M.A.R.T. Goals Method
Before we learn about the S.M.A.R.T. goals method, it’s important to know why we need a research objective. When we understand its importance, then we can see why applying the S.M.A.R.T. method makes sense.
A research objective is the driving force behind every method and task in your research plan. Research objectives define what method to use, not the other way around. They clearly describe what you intend to achieve with your research that your stakeholders can expect to see. Research objectives help you keep focus by including only the most relevant insights. You don’t need to report every single insight you find, just the ones that relate to your objective.
In my 7 years in research, I have written many different kinds of research objectives for various research projects. I will admit that early in my career my objectives were not clearly defined. This often led to a disorganized project or results that were subpar, at best. Over time I have refined my research objectives in order to improve the outcome of my research. The best method was adopting the S.M.A.R.T. goals method. This method is often used within project management to define goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.
Using the S.M.A.R.T. method has helped me provide consistent and clear results when defining research objectives. Let’s take a look at each of the areas and how it can be applied to defining research objectives.
Specific
Vague or broad objectives can oftentimes lead to more questions than provide answers. As mentioned before, the research objective is the driving force behind every task and method you plan to use. By being specific in your research objective, you provide clear direction and help to control the research. What I mean by “control” is not to be a super controlling, micro-manager, but to control your environment from extraneous variables. The more specific you can be with your objective, the better chance you have of measuring and tracking the results of your objective.
So how do we get specific?
The 2 ways I have found in narrowing a research objective are through listing assumptions or hypotheses. Assumptions are a list of generalized questions or statements that you assume may be the cause or solution to your problem. A hypothesis is a testable (and backed up by research) statement using a controlled IF_THEN_BECAUSE method. Order your lists by importance to help you decide which specific objective to use first. You can also group your lists by similarity to see if a single objective will answer multiple assumptions/hypotheses.
Measurable
It is said that every $1 invested in UX is $100 to the business. Showing the ROI of UX Research is important. You will very likely throughout your UX career work with stakeholders who do not see the value in UX Research or want to see tangible results. We spend a lot of time educating and advocating the importance of research and showing ROI is a solid way to show that importance.
One way to help you measure success of your research is by listing out KPIs (key performance indicators) for your objective. KPIs are a quantifiable way to gauge the performance of something. A KPI could be tracking conversion rates, revenue growth, task completion rates, or a sentiment scores. Choose KPIs that are only relevant to your objective. If you are finding it difficult to come up with KPIs for your objective, try defining your objective more. As mentioned before, your objective must be specific.
It is important to have your list of KPIs implemented first before you begin your research. To accurately gauge the impact of your research, you want to measure your objective before, during, and after your research project using your KPIs.
Achievable
Can you actually perform the research? Is the objective even possible to achieve? Capability and capacity are 2 areas to understand if an objective is even possible.
Capability: The skills and knowledge needed to carry-out a specific task. This area isn’t necessarily a critique on your experience as a researcher, but it is also important to consider other capabilities like;
- Tech Capabilities: Do we have the technology to carry out our objective?
- Results Capabilities: Is it even possible to achieve 100% task completion rate?
- Physical Capabilities: Do you or your users have the ability to perform the research?
- Outcome Capabilities: Do we have the capability to execute changes based on our findings?
Capacity: A finite limit to reaching your objective. This is often an area that can surprise UX Researchers the most without the proper planning.
- Financial Capacity: Can we afford to carry out our objective?
- Time Capacity: Do we have enough time to complete our objective?
- Resource/Team Capacity: Do we have enough people/resources needed to complete our objective?
Be realistic about the outcome. What is a plausible goal to hit? Use previous research or benchmarking to help set an achievable objective.
Relevant
It is important to think about how your objective relates to the problem. It is also just as important to relate your objective to a business goal? How will this drive the company’s bottom line? How is your objective relevant to your stakeholders? The objective should be used as a way to sell your research in order to get stakeholder buy-in; Make them care about this research project by showing how it affects them.
Keep in mind who you are presenting your findings to. Speak to your audience’s needs when writing your objective. An example may be you pitching to your CEO about performing research to speed up the customer signup process. She may not understand why a faster signup process is important until you show that faster signups mean faster sales. Or that faster signups mean more people can signup (less time with sales rep), leading to increase in sales volume.
Timely
Don’t just set an arbitrary deadline. Time is money. People are counting on you to provide results and you likely have a stack of other research to get to. Think about timing details (setup, implementation, analyzing, presenting). What type of deliverables do you plan to give your stakeholders? If a customer journey map, how long will it take you to design one? Do you need a buffer if there are scheduling conflicts?
When creating a timeline, it is often helpful to start with your end date and work backwards. You know you have to deliver your results by [x] date, which means you need time to create the presentation. Before that, you need time to analyze results before it can go into the presentation. There is also the time to execute research to collect results and the time to plan your research.
Knowing all that will go into your research will help you be more accurate in achieving your objectives. You are planning ahead and anticipating what you need for success.
Example
Now that we the S.M.A.R.T goals method as it pertains to defining a research objectives, let’s apply it!
Say you are the Lead UX Researcher for a dating app that markets to retired singles (ages 65+). The app is having a hard time with their low conversion rates. Here is your problem statement:
“[Dating App Name] is maintaining a 10% conversion rate of new subscribers; leading to an estimated loss of $500,000 in monthly revenue. After evaluating our existing data for any technical constraints that may limit a user’s ability to subscribe, our findings came up inconclusive. Further research is needed in order to problem-solve the gap between monthly new visitors and monthly subscribers.”
A potential research objective could be:
“Within a 3 week period, we will provide insights that will lead to an increase in monthly new visitor subscriptions from 10% to 20%; leading to an additional $600,000 in annual revenue.”
Let’s break this down to look at how the S.M.A.R.T. method was used.
Specific: We used “monthly new visitor” to clearly define our audience and a specific objective of increasing subscriptions among this audience.
Measurable: We gave ourselves 2 target goals that we can track over a period of time; increasing subscriptions from 10% to 20% and an additional revenue goal of $600,000. We have a clear list of KPIs we can use to track these target goals against our main objective.
Achievable: We did not say we were going to completely solve the problem with 100% conversion rate — we are very likely not going to hit that target. When looking over historical data, 20% conversion rate was the highest we have seen in a single month. Since we know that percentage can be achieved, we chose that as our monthly goal.
Relevant: Our stakeholder is the CEO and money is always top of mind for her. It may be obvious to most of us that an increase in subscriptions lead to more revenue. However, we really wanted to show the impact on revenue that this research project could solve by showing that our objective could lead to an “additional $600,000 in annual revenue”. Remember, you want to have your stakeholders be invested in your research, so find what is important to them and sell it!
Timely: We know that we will be able to complete our research and present our results within 3 weeks. Notice we did not say we were going to solve the problem in 3 weeks, but simply provide insights. This way our stakeholders can expect to see our findings and recommendations within 3 weeks. To help solidify this timeframe, we even scheduled a placeholder meeting on the stakeholders calendar for our final presentation.
I want to hear from you. Can you think of another research objective using the S.M.A.R.T. goals method? Message me or comment with your objectives.
