First steps in user research

At some point in time, we all had to start with user research and asked ourselves: How to do it? This is for all of you currently being at this point. We have developed a small guide to get started with user research based on our experience. Here are the first steps to get started in user research:

Motivation

Our motivation is to enable you as user research beginners to get started and to present to you the enormous topic as simple and yet correct as possible. In the last few years, the field of user experience (UX) has grown more and more. An important part of UX is user research. It is the methodical study of target users, including their needs and pain points, so makers and creators have the sharpest possible insights to make the best products. All of this together looks like a massive subject, but it can be broken down into small individual parts and easy first steps.

Typical situation

From our observations the background and professions are diverse. In addition, many user researchers are either career changers or work part-time. And up to now — in many cases, the research team just started and consists of only one person. Probably you? 🙂

These circumstances lead to the three common obstacles of user research:

“We don’t have time for this, we can do it later”

Time is always a problem, but especially when you are the one keeping an eye on the user research and doing the work. In addition to all the stuff you have to do — which is not user research. In addition to the free time available, research also simply needs time. And many would like to have the results yesterday. But if you do a little bit of research regularly, you will gradually create a research database that is full of valuable information.

“We currently have no budget for this”

How do you explain to your supervisor, who thinks you’re just “collecting some feedback,” that you need a budget for user research? Also, investing in user research now saves more money than having to rework later what could have been done better from the beginning if you had listened to the users. Additionally, it makes sense to save the information you have found out, so you can avoid new, expensive research sessions for the next projects and can reuse earlier results.

“It’s not worth it anyway”

It’s hard to tackle this — but not impossible. In the first steps, you’ll most probably get a small impact because you only can invest a small fraction of time. Due to overhead, you won’t get a good ROI, and thus it’s hard to get more time for the next research. This already shows that it will be a hard road. But it’s worth taking the first step.

Clarify your goals

First of all, you need to clarify your goals. Why do you do user research? What do you expect and what do others expect? What are the aims of your research and how can you get it? These are just some of the questions that help to define your goal more clearly.

Check what you already have

After you have clarified your goals, you have to check what you already got and what you have to gather. One of the simplest ways to gather information is to use existing sources or existing tools, which you already have used. Why don’t you just use your conferencing tool for remote testing? It’s good to go!
Another grateful way to gather information is to use freebies and trials because here you can learn something, gain information even for free!

In the user research context, there are many different ways to get information, for example through existing data like old reports, new reviews, sales, and support feedback. But also through occurrences, you might not have thought of — yet! At trade fairs, during customer visits, or even through questions at sales webinars, you get new impulses and information. These can also be used in crafting valuable insights.

Check the restrictions

Next, you need to find restrictions and fix them. For example, you should think about how to get in contact with your participants. We have already dived deep into the topic on how to recruit participants for usability testing in another post. To see what is possible, the budget should be planned and, of course, maintained. You need to clarify how much budget is available and what costs need to be covered with it. User research often collapses due to the fact that no or not enough money is provided by the company managers. As mentioned in the paragraph before: if there is no budget — you can start with tools and data you already have.

Last but not least if you prototyped your product or website, check your company’s restrictions. Opinions and regulations often differ on what and how much of a new product can be shown, mainly due to competition and the concern that a new idea will be replicated.

Check the urgent topics

What to focus on? To provide valuable insights there should be an upcoming demand. So look out for things becoming urgent in the next few weeks. But how do you know what is urgent? If you use Google Analytics or any other analytics tool, use their data to make a hypothesis and prove or disprove it. Try to identify relevant topics on the roadmap to work ahead and deliver on the spot. This will also help you avoid always being late based on your research because decisions or efforts have already been made.

You can also speculate on a roadmap from UX/UI designers. What input do UX/UI designers need and on what features?

Do research

Get started. Make it a habit. And perhaps have a sneak peek into our article about continuous user research to see where you are heading and what could be a long-term goal. Use what you have to prove that user research is necessary and valuable. And by valuable, I mean actionable. All the insights you worked out will help, whether it’s about a product or a website.

The simplest form of user research is user testing sessions. Here a product or a website is tested by different participants. The first thing to do is to invite participants. Depending on what you are examining and what the resources are you can start with a big variety of participants. E.g. for some basic usability issues, you don’t have to exactly target your user group. It is best to have a variety of different people to get as many different opinions of the product as possible.

We use a simple scheduling tool to define several slots on one day where we want to do the interviews. Let the participants choose suitable slots. Be careful not to invite too many people. You’ll need some time before and after an interview to organize notes, reset the prototype and be able to react to delays.

While your participant is testing the product, you should write everything down. Your tester has problems finding their way around or thinks the layout is not suitably chosen? Write it down! You can also ask specific questions, but it is important to formulate these as open questions and not to unconsciously bias the tester. Ideally, the test session should be filmed or recorded so that you do not miss any details and can review it later on. Make sure you have the consent of the user in this case.

Show impact

Now it’s time to show the results you’ve gotten from your studies and what changes you recommend to be made to the product or website to create a better user experience. Here, above all, it is necessary to be as transparent as possible. Your user research is worth nothing if they don’t believe your work. Based on your great results, they will let you do more research and you have the ability to push boundaries through your results. This means that after small successes, bigger ones are possible and the limits (in terms of time and budget) in which you are allowed to operate become bigger.

To have proper traceability on what impactful insight is based on which facts and present this in a comprehensible way — the atomic UX research framework is worth considering. It also helps to structure the way you document and build a sustainable system from the start.

Getting stakeholders on board

The next step is to show what you’ve got to your stakeholders. For this, it is convenient to use the recordings you made during a user testing session. It can also be very helpful to let stakeholders help with the evaluation and allow their own interpretation of the results. This can be done in the form of workshops. This gives them an understanding of the issue and helps to eliminate mistrust if necessary.

Boosting ROI

To put it in a nutshell, unfortunately, at some point it’s all about ROI. From the business manager’s point of view, it is often only evaluated in terms of costs. An investment in user research must pay off, and preferably immediately, not only in the long term. Even if user research actually brings great benefits, it is not easy to grasp numbers, only insights to make the right decisions in the future.

It is especially advisable during user research, as soon as the first insights are available, to share them with colleagues and make them available. This way you show that you are generating knowledge and also reach within the company. This has the added benefit of multiplying the value of your insights and thus the ROI.

Sparking mindset

As we experienced mostly all user researchers have a side goal: to spark the idea of a user-centric approach in others. And that’s where internal testing comes in. You give your colleagues an insight into user research and what you actually do. Show some of the original sayings or a video from the internal testing sessions. This way, your colleagues will be able to experience first-hand how effective user research is and that it even is a lot of fun.

Closing Note

Phew. These were the first steps. These were important steps!

After all, it’s pretty cool what you’ve done and the others should see it the same way so that the first steps will be followed by big steps very soon.

PS: And if you get stuck: It’s always great to have someone to ask your open questions. And in my case, I would recommend one of our co-founders at Usertimes. And guess what — he is open to give you some input, too. So feel free to pick a slot here.