New to UX research? quick guide for managing your first study

If you are someone who just started your role as a UX researcher or someone from academia who is entering the field, or even if you are a designer who wants to level up your research skills. Here is a quick guide that will allow you to thrive in your first research studies

Step 1: Ask the WHY of the whole project

• Understanding the need for the study goes beyond acknowledging the business requirements. It is important to dive deeper into the need for the research at an early stage to manage stakeholders' expectations and get the most out of your project. In addition, you are helping your stakeholders by reflecting on what need/problem the team is trying to solve.
• Product teams usually tend to solutionize features when there is a low UX maturity level within the company. Including UX research in the early stages of the discovery process will allow the team to focus on the user need instead and be more efficient in later development cycles.

Step 2: Choosing the right research method

Once the team is able to answer what is problem/need they are trying to solve, here is a quick way to know what methodology to use:

If the question is about Why & How to fix it, you will need a qualitative approach. If the question is about How many & How much, you will need a quantitative approach.

The second dimension you need to address is if the question is related to users’ attitudes or is it about users’ behavior. In other words:

Once you already know in which quadrant your questions are located, you will be able to determine which methodology to use. Don’t worry, this process will become automatic in your brain once you start having more exposure and experience as a researcher.Here there is a good variety of some of the methods:

A brief overview of some research methods. As you progress in your career, you will find that you will feel more comfortable with some of the research methods. That’s completely fine, however, try to always learn new ways or tools of doing it, as well as learn new methods from the other side of the spectrum.

Step 3: WHO is the target sample?

Is the sample users or non-users? what is their geographic location? Are you looking for people who shop online? or that bets online? amongst other variables that are key for your project.

Try to be as specific as possible when asking your stakeholders so that you ensure the great quality of the sample.

Depending on your methodology recruitment may take up a significant portion of your allocated research time. Therefore I recommend you set expectations with stakeholders early in the research process in order to manage your time effectively.

Step 4: WHEN? Timelines & dates

If you are the first “UXer” within the whole company or the UX maturity level is very low. You will notice that stakeholders will ask you for delivery ASAP. Here are my tips on how to overcome those situations:

• Always aim for impact: During that kick-off session, ask your main stakeholders what priority, OKR, or KPI is this work going to be related to. Is important that everyone in the team understand what will be the outcome of this research. If this is not clear from the beginning, or this is not even relevant for the business strategy, you always have the ability to push back on it, or even put it on the backlog and discuss it with your manager. Remember that your time is precious, that’s why you need to use it where the impact is.
• Negotiate methods: In emergency situations, some answers need to be addressed quickly. (e.g, “we just launched the new feature and it’s performing worst and we don't know why or how to fix it!” 🤯. Sometimes you are able to change the research method for another one or a tool that gives you that answers quickly, however, always advise what could be the possible trade-offs when changing methodology. This could be: budget, quality, communication of the findings etc.
• Ensure transparency of the steps: If your team uses Jira, notion or any other way to organize their sprints, I highly suggest giving access to your stakeholders so that they have visibility of the process. If part of your work is blocked by something (e.g, low recruitment, something went wrong with a survey)always communicate to your stakeholders. Sometimes, things can go wrong, and this is when you need to remember the most, that you are a team and that you are aiming for the same goals. Keep them updated in these situations and try to find alternative solutions. That way they will always support your work ( and ask you for even more!)

Final note: Is my research ever going to be done 😳?

Yes and No. You will know at which stage of the product lifecycle your research is depending on the questions you are trying to solve. If your team has a very general question (e.g, “How can we ensure that new users feel secure sending money with us?”), that means you are way early in the discovery phase. If the team has very specific questions (e.g, “ Is our express checkout new feature building trust on new users?” ) That means you are monitoring phase. The way in which you know that your research is done is when you had saturated findings on a particular stage. Let me know if you want me to deep dive into this topic. In the meantime, here is a Research cheat sheet from Nielsen Norman Group that could also help you.