Popular User Research Methods in UX: A Quick Guide
One of the most fundamental tangents of any sturdy product development process is what we know about our users. After all, good app & website design cannot feasibly happen in an isolated bubble of perspective, particularly one with little to no direct input from the users that will be using the product. With that in mind, here’s a quick guide for aspiring designers looking for a cheatsheet on some of the most fundamental UX research methods out there.
Quantitative vs Qualitative Research
The first distinction we need to make is between Qualitative & Quantitative research in UX, so let’s do that.
Qualitative Research embodies a field of study that is focused on discovering and analysing the emotions behind why users do what they do. Basically, qualitative studies focus on the “why”. Why did a user miss a call-to-action on your main landing screen? How did the user feel about the experience of navigating your website? What did the user have to say about the way you were displaying information to them?
There are particular ways to understand your user’s needs, emotions, and feelings, of course, common UX deliverables ensure that much.
Qualitative Research Methods
Here’s a list of ways you can perform qualitative UX research for your next project:
- Interview sessions with users where you ask them open-ended questions (Why/How?)
- Usability Testing, where you hand users a prototype to operate and then closely monitor their emotional responses, behaviour, and actions as they navigate their way through the prototype.
- Other non-numerical ways of collecting data that corresponds to people’s emotional states, needs, motivations, and goals when using a digital product.
On the other hand, Quantitative Research is when we attempt to put a number on the usability of our product. This sort of research focuses on the “What” of how users operate. What number of hours do users spend using your app on a weekly basis? What would users rate the overall experience of your app to be, from 1–10?
Just like qualitative research, there are many ways to perform quantitative research.
Quantitative Research Methods
Here’s a list of ways you can perform qualitative UX research and deliver quick results:
- Benchmarking
- Card Sorting
- Psychometric Methods (Surveys & Questionnaires)
- Desirability Studies
- Eye Tracking tests
Popular UX Research Methodologies
It would take much longer than your standard Medium article to list all the ways you can perform UX research and even then, I’d probably miss out on a few. But there are certain research methods and deliverables that have gained prominence recently, and lots of these methods were either originated, or are endorsed by companies like Google, Apple, and AirBnB. Depending on the type of design bootcamp you enrol in or where you get your design education, you may have heard of many of these research methods.
Heuristic Evaluation
You’ve probably heard of heuristic evaluation at some point if you’re actively involved in design academia. It’s basically a process where a product, such as an app or website is evaluated on its usability in a variety of ways and against a set of established standards. One of the most common set of standards used for heuristic evaluation comes from the Normal-Nielsen group and is used by UX designers worldwide.
Card Sorting
Card Sorting is a pretty popular research methodology where users group a website’s information structure with cards that contain pieces of information about the website’s navigation, logical layout, and flow. Simply put, users are asked to group cards based on certain similarities they find in the various information pieces and then name these groups. Read more about card sorting here.
Focus Groups
These are basically close-knit, highly specific group interviews/discussions with potential/current users to uncover and understand their attitudes, needs, desires, and motivations. Learn more about focus groups here.
Usability Studies
Usability studies usually involve getting users to actually use your prototype and closely monitor and analyse the feedback they give your throughout the process. Depending on the design tool, such as Figma or XD, you can send users a prototype link and have them record the experience as they navigate through it.
User Personas
User Personas are often the bread and butter of a good UX research process. Lots of designers find that it’s much easier to understand the contextual issues they’re dealing with when designing if they have visible, clear representations of their users to refer to. That’s where personas come in.
A bunch of good user personas often “personalise” the design process, particularly because they identify common friction points that the average user faces. This is pretty important, because it allows designers a full view of the issues they’re trying to solve through their creative pursuits.
User Stories
User Stories are quick, handy representations of what users are looking for when they go to a website or use an app. For example, for a user logging into a real estate application, a user story may look like “As a potential homeowner, I want to view different property listings so I can get a good idea of the property prices in my area”. The key takeaway from this is that the “structure” of a user story generally goes “As a [the user’s role/description] want to [the user’s goal], so I can [the desired outcome].
A/B Testing
This is a popular research method where you create two distinct variations of a website, app, or feature, and then allow users to use both of them while comparing and contrasting the pros and cons of each variation.
You’re basically looking to test which variation ultimately proves to be more usable for the people you’re targeting. A/B Testing is generally done keeping in mind certain metrics and which variation performs better in light of those metrics.
Surveys & Interviews
There are dozens of different types of surveys & interviews you can conduct for your UX research processes, such as field-studies, contextual interviews, one-on-one interviews, and more. You can find lots of information about these processes once you start navigating the world of UX. Again, the fundamental rule with surveys and interviews in UX, regardless of whether they’re qualitatively or quantitatively oriented, is that you’re looking to uncover user needs, motivations, hopes, desires, fears, and create potential opportunities for improvement in your products based on the feedback you receive.
Concluding Thoughts
UX Research is by no means an exhaustive process. You can find dozens of different research processes depending on where you are in the design process. Again, the reliability of these research processes varies, and you can generally choose to opt for methods that have stood the test of time. Another important factor is to learn exactly what research method to apply in what context, which I’ll be writing a separate article for, very soon. This concludes our brief discussion of some of the most common UX research methods out there. Happy researching!
