Stop Lying About User Research.
In any UX fundamentals class you will quickly learn — and probably already know that user research is a pivotal element of user-centered design.
Take the user away from the design and we miss the entire point of UX.
Human perspective must be in all steps of the problem-solving process from the start to finish. But that does not mean all research is created equal. Recently I have seen a lot of chatter and writing about designers wasting time by doing “pointless user research.” Designers I follow and respect have only been adding fuel to the flames in agreement. But, the thing is… They have a point. Junior designers sometimes focus on the wrong areas of the UX Design process, relying too much on irrelevant or poorly executed research. But we need to be careful not to beat around the bush when it comes to the role of user research in our work.
Poorly executed research is and always will be a waste of time.
Hell. Even Senior UX Designers get user research wrong. It is not just juniors making common mistakes by not understanding proper techniques or practices.
The type of research you do or even who you recruit is highly dependent on project needs, and is not a one size fits all solution. What does that mean for Juniors? Be careful when it comes to research throughout the design process.
Tread Thoughtfully with Research
Research is tough. As much as the importance of user research in the design process is drilled into our brains. The user is not always right and poor research can unrelentlessly ruin products and features. User feedback must be taken with a grain of salt. We can even look way back to 2001 when Jakob Nielsen published an article titled:
First Rule of Usability? Don’t Listen to Users.
What the hell Nielsen? Why would you — Oh we did clickbait back then as well. In summary he says that to design the best UX, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Stating that self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations. Data you get can lead you in the wrong direction.
It is not uncommon to see highly requested products or features from users come to market and fail. I invested in a media company that tried to pivot toward social networking. It failed miserably.
Here is what a user said during a test, “I’ve spent a few hours on the [Redacted] networking site today and you all did an amazing job. I already like it better than any other social networking site I belong or have belonged to. It’s informative, thought-provoking, and professional.” One month later the site averaged a depressing 2 to 4 user-generated posts per day and the company burned through money.
To add insult to injury the user was not even active on the site they claimed they liked better than all other social media…
“We must learn what users really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”
We can learn a lot from research, running surveys, conducting interviews, competitive analysis, and beyond. But, we can also very easily get bad information that results in a bad product or feature. When we ask the wrong questions we get the wrong answers.
However, interviews conducted properly and user testing where we get to see user actions happen in real-time can help collect meaningful data. We just need to make sure we are conducting it correctly. Let us walk through some common misconceptions about the types of research we conduct as UX Designers and then common research methods that can be conducted.
Marketing Research is not User Research
A/B Testing is not user research.
A/B testing in and of itself gives us no qualitative data. I would not even call it a research method that UX Designers use. A/B testing is done mainly by marketers to see how many conversions they can get, it does not mean the experience is good.
I have personally taken A/B screen design tests from Google Bootcamp students for fun and what I see most of the time is very far off from the reality of what research should be. I commonly encounter the same web design concept with different-looking visual design elements and layouts. And the first thing I find myself asking is: What I am supposed to be doing or finding on the screen? How am I a user supposed to judge which design is better by just looking at it? You want me to tell you which one looks prettier and call that research?!
However, there are times when A/B testing is fine to try optimizing a screen and choosing which one performs better (especially in e-commerce). Although I cannot say I have done it myself in a professional setting.
Focus Groups are not sound user research.
In my years working in UX Design and with researchers I have never once seen a user focus group conducted. The closest I can think of is talking to stakeholders in groups. Then we might have a group of decision-makers telling us what the needs are or what they think is important to be built. Even then we would encourage people to write their individual ideas on sticky notes and post them on a board.
Groupthink kills critical thinking.
Demographic research is… demographic research.
Demographic research is fine, I have done it before to make sure we know who our audience is. If you are going to build an app for a target demographic you better have the research to show that a certain demographic is going to need and use the app. Otherwise, everything you designed is a waste of time.
It can also better help you craft what the personas should look like, based on real findings. Demographic research can be helpful, but a lot of the time if we are building a similar product or redesigning one where we already know the audience, then we would already have this information available.
Actual User Research Methods
Although I will not delve deep into the complexities of research and when to do it. I’ll list common research methods in UX Design that are done throughout the process.
Surveys, User Interviews, Field Studies, Stakeholder Interviews, Diary Studies, Competitive Analysis, Personas, Task Analysis, Journey Mapping, User Stories, Card Sorting, and of course Usability Testing.
To name a few (or a lot).
User Research is much more than “Data”
Data science can be helpful in compiling data and numbers, but the truth is user research is conducted by… User Researchers.
If people we research are seen as just data values in the interactions we design, then we lose the human aspect of the users. Data Scientists do data mapping, User Researchers talk to people, learn about people, and gain insights in order to help people. No one should be seeing user research as a form of data mining, but instead as a way to gain human insights. We can watch people and their behavior in ethical ways, but we need the human aspect of the data. UX Designers need the: Why?
Most key takeaways will come from qualitative research, what was the user thinking and why? Why did they do that action? What are their needs? What are the pain points? How did they feel? Why did they struggle?
If you take the time to talk to professional User Researchers you might find it interesting to hear their backgrounds. Many researchers I have spoken to have had academic backgrounds in psychology, cognitive science, and anthropology. Not data or computer science. Why? Because users are not just data points, users are people and must be studied as such.
Let’s Focus on Correcting User Research Instead of Trashing it
It is not a surprise juniors may not be doing the best research, because they are not taught best practices in UX Design courses and bootcamps. My first time doing research through user interviews I had so many leading questions that I had to scrap a couple of interviews. But, a Senior Designer came over and sat down with me to help write questions in order to create open-response answers, crafting a way for the interviewee to tell me a story. I was able to fix how I worded questions, and I got amazing answers.
Hell. Even the first time I did something as “simple” as competitive analysis I did it completely wrong.
But I was able to learn from more experienced designers how to conduct research correctly. Research includes a lot of learning. But also a lot of failing.
Research enthusiast or not, we need to know who the users are and what they are thinking.
“If we do not know who the user is, we do not know what quality is.”
-The Lean Startup
I know in college my surveys would extend to about 30 people and our user testing to maybe 6–10 people. Make sure you recruit a lot of people, and screen who you talk to. Would they actually be users? This is even a common problem in the industry when we define such a specific target demographic. Recruiting people can get tough. However, the truth is, if you only interviewed two or three people and then they are also just your friends, you have pretty low credibility.
Learn More About Research and Get Help!
There is so much to learn about user research itself. Taking research templates or interviewing whoever you feel like is not good research. Asking people which design looks better is not good research.
You can build the most beautiful site in the world. But we have to know who our users are. That is what UX Design is.
UX Designers are here to make experiences for a certain demographic(s) of humans. Not ourselves.
When a job recruiter asks you why you made a certain design decision, or changed part of your design. You better have a good human-centered design answer.
Advice to Junior Designers When it Comes to Research
You cannot skip the research. If that is the case maybe you can call yourself a UI or Visual designer at most — and that is a perfectly fine way to break into the industry! But, as UX Designers we have to take research into account. With that being said our end goal is a design, not just ideas. User Experience includes usability, testing, research, ideating, but also design, and prototyping. If you cannot design screens and prototype them, you are missing a large part of the UX Design process, and design as a whole.
However, do not let research get in the way of design, let it help. UX Designers are not researchers. At the end of the day, research is not the whole picture but instead an important part of the process.
Focus on Iterating Designs and Doing Testing as Research
Testing different iterations of your design will help you see and understand if users can use the design how it was intended by the designer. It will arguably be the most important research you do. So focusing on testing is important.
Focus on Solving Problems, Not Pleasing Everyone
“As Mark Cook says, ‘Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.’”
-The Lean Startup
You do not need to build every feature to create a successful design, you need to solve the users problems.
Collaborate More
When you work on actual projects with other people it will not be uncommon for small companies to skip user research and for larger companies to have a user research team do the work for you. Collaborating is a key element in UX Design and is important for landing a job. See what it is like to have different ideas, expertise, and research findings floating around.
Work with Clients
When you work with clients you will be designing for an actual business. Without a client, you are advocating user needs to yourself… which is not the best resume experience. In actual work, you will balance both business needs and user needs.
Go Ahead and Fail.
Sure you can conduct research, but when you do it, reach out to other designers, senior designers, or researchers and learn what you might have missed or why the research you did or are about to do might not be as relevant or helpful as you thought.
I see no issue with new UX Designers doing bad research as long as you gain insight on to how it could improve next time. In fact, recruiters would love to see you learned from project to project. But, when you fail make sure you learn from it.
Keep in Mind That Bad UI Design Leads to Bad UX Design
My first time doing UX Design I did everything from user research to UX design, to visual design, and even sometimes front-end development. But the truth is, in large companies, there will be a dedicated user researcher to deal with the more research-heavy areas.
If you build something unattractive visually, ignore best practices, ignore basic interaction design principles and visual design principles, and have usability issues in your design but justify it on the basis of user research. Then you do not care about user experience.
It may be a good idea to focus on UI Design and Prototyping early in your career, but you have to have some research and testing to show the design is human-centered and works.
References:
“First Rule of Usability? Don’t Listen to Users.” Nielsen Norman Group, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/first-rule-of-usability-dont-listen-to-users/.
Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Crown Business, 2011.
