Foundations of UX Research
Hello everyone, my name is Joshua Hezer and I am a UX researcher in Aleph. This article will discuss the basics of UX research – what, why, when, and how.
UX research is something worth exploring, even if you are not a researcher. You can make use of it for your professional career, and even in your own personal life.
For example, when we learn how to ask a good question, we can utilise this skill when we talk to our working buddies, and our family and friends. Let’s start with what.
What is UX research?
UX research is defined as the systematic study of target users and their requirements, to add realistic contexts and insights to design processes. When we design something, we often become obsessed with the beauty and aesthetics we envision. That is the ideal design or product according to us. But, what about the real user?
In reality, we cannot and shall not assume the perspective of the real user, the one who will use it. This is why having realistic contexts and insights from the real user is very important.
UX research will help place people at the centre of design processes and/or products. We use user research to inspire our design, to evaluate our solutions, and to measure its impact. In general, research can be categorized into two methods: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative methods seek to measure user behaviour in a way that can be quantified and used for statistical analysis. Take surveys and formal experiments as examples.
Qualitative methods are more exploratory and seek to get an in-depth understanding of the experiences and everyday lives of individual users or user groups. In-depth interview and usability testing are great instances of such. As UX researchers, we are more inclined in the execution of the qualitative side of things, which I will specifically discuss as we go on.
Why is it important to conduct UX research?
There are three points that I would want to highlight: relevant design, pleasurable design, and measuring Return of Investments (ROI).
- Relevant design
UX research increases the probability that the design/product truly meets users’ needs. Through UX research, we can understand our users better, see things from their point of view and discover their pain points. If we design a product that functions well and is really beautiful but does not meet our users’ needs. What’s the point? From US Small Business Administration, we know that ⅓ of new companies fail within the first 2 years and ½ fail within 5 years. Many reasons can be attributed to the failures, but one of the reasons is the product does not meet the market’s needs. It is not relevant. - Pleasurable design
Although aesthetics is not the most important thing, creating a design that is not only useful but easy and pleasurable to use will increase the chance for users to choose our product. Well, a product can be easily copied, but when it comes to experience, unlikely so. The goal of creating a pleasurable design/product is to make an emotional connection with the users. Once our users have an emotional attachment with our product, they will not easily move to our competitors. There are so many examples out there where customers can be very loyal with a certain brand, even with the competitors offering the same solution/product at a better price. - Measuring ROI
Who does not want to know whether their design/product is giving an ROI? One of the best avenue to find out is through conducting UX research after the product has been launched. Crafting design will not have results immediately, but only when the product reaches our users. The ROI for UX design usually can be observed through quantitative research and data, such as click rate, conversion rate, net promoter score (NPS) etc.
Those are the three things that come to mind when I think of the reasons to conduct UX research.
When to do UX research?
Whenever we develop a product or service, usually there will be 3 stages: ideation (concept development), development, release. UX research can be conducted during all stages of the product development cycle. What differentiates the research are actually the purpose itself.
- First, we will talk about the research before ideation/concept development. This research will help us find the problems or pain points that users have. Research at this stage will usually use in-depth interviews (qualitative research).
- The second is after the ideation and during development, where the research aims to test the solution/product that we have just created. From the insights gain, the team will continue to iterate and attempt to improve the experience for the users. At this stage, a usability testing (UT) will be conducted; either moderated or unmoderated.
- Last but not least, after the product has been released. The purpose is to understand the ROI from the UX design. The type of research will usually be quantitative, i.e. by comparing the conversion rate, retention rate, or the number of clicks between the previous design and the updated design.
How to conduct UX research?
Planning
Before conducting the research, it is important to plan and prepare the research in the right way. A research plan will have several elements:
- Research objectives;
- Research method;
- Timeline;
- Target participants;
- Location of the interview;
- Equipment needed;
- Interview script;
- Consent form;
- Non-Disclosure Agreement (when we will show something confidential).
Interviewing
The interview session will be divided into 3 parts (most of the time): beginning, middle and end. When we begin an interview, the main goal is to make the participants feel comfortable and to build rapport. Therefore, do not ask sensitive questions. Start with helping the users understanding the scope of the interview, how their response will be used and get to know your interviewee through background questions.
In the middle section of the session, our main goal is to find the answer to the research questions. Although we have an interview script, it is important to keep the conversation as natural as possible and feel free to ask the questions not in the order we originally planned for. When the participants have given their answers, it is important to ask the follow-up questions to get a deeper understanding or to clear out our assumptions. The last thing to note is that we have to drive the conversation back when it is out of the topic.
At the end of the interview, wrap up the conversation. We need to ask if there is anything the participants would like to add and thank them for taking the time to do the interview.
Analysis
The most common way to do an analysis for a qualitative interview is through thematic analysis. A thematic analysis strives to identify patterns of themes in the interview data. The process contains six steps:
- Familiarization
- Generating initial codes
- Searching for themes
- Reviewing themes
- Defining and naming themes
- Producing report
This is the formal way to do it which you can also find in Wikipedia. But to make it very simple I will use a simple 3 steps: Categorize > Find connection > Report.
- Categorize – Put the same information that you compiled from the interviews in a category. The number of categories you have will depend on the depth of the interview. The longer and deeper the interview, the more categories you will likely to accumulate. Usually, we make use of a Miro board, but you can do it with an excel or even sticky notes if you are working offline.
- Find connection – Look into each and every category to find the link, the silver lining. The connection can be found inside the category and also between categories. This is an iterative process, so when you are finding the connection, you may end up going back to categorizing the information, which is totally okay.
- Report – Present what we have found during the research to the stakeholders. The most important thing when we report is to make sure we deliver the insights in a way that is engaging and understandable. It needs to be engaging because the stakeholders may not be present during the interviews and therefore do not hear directly from the users. Our job is to represent that voice.
Alright, I hope this article has helped you to understand the foundations of UX research. You can check out my session previously via Aleph’s YouTube.
I am more than happy to receive feedback and have a discussion since I am still learning myself. Feel free to reach out to joshua@aleph-labs.com. And if you are interested in what Aleph is doing, you can go to https://www.aleph-labs.com/ or check out our social media for more information.
