Understanding Users Through Research

Fundamental things you need to know about user research.

Have you ever wonder why designers should understand their users? Why conducting research is considered an effective methodology to understand users? We will discuss some basic information that answers those questions.

Why designers should understand their users?

As a designer, knowing your target users is a basic yet crucial thing and it is the key to a great user experience. When you understand your users deeply, UX becomes a market differentiator because it gives customers the sense that the product is tailored to them. The better you understand your users, the more likely you are to design and build a service that works well for them.

A good designer does the design for the end user and not for herself.

Why conducting research is considered an effective methodology to understand users?

We cannot only rely on our knowledge and intuition to predict what users need and want. If we only rely on our knowledge, we might not think from the users’ point of view. Skipping user research is a fatal error as user research provides an essential foundation for design strategy. It helps you to create an optimal product for users. Most importantly, you’ll have the data to back your strategy and design decisions.

User research, source: https://unsplash.com/s/photos/user-research

Benefits of conducting user research:

1. To acquire an essential foundation for design strategy
2. To create optimal designs that are truly relevant to your users
3. To create designs that are easy and pleasurable to use

Types of Research

Many people assume that the only valid sort of research is the kind that yields the supposed ultimate in objectivity or what can be called quantitative data (numbers). Meanwhile, we all know that numbers are subject to interpretation and can be manipulated at least as dramatically as words.

Data gathered by the hard sciences like physics are simply different from that gathered on human activities. Any attempt to reduce human behavior to statistics is likely to overlook important nuances, which can make an enormous difference to the design of products.

Broadly speaking, research is divided into 2 types: quantitative research and qualitative research.

Quantitative research involves the process of objectively collecting and analyzing numerical data to describe, predict, or control variables of interest. The goals of quantitative research are to test causal relationships between variables, make predictions, and generalize results to wider populations.

Quantitative reserach can only answer questions about “how much” or “how many” along a few reductive axes.

Qualitative research is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting non-numerical data. Qualitative research can be used to understand how an individual subjectively perceives and gives meaning to their social reality. Qualitative data is defined as non-numerical data, such as text, video, photographs or audio recordings.

Qualitative research can tell you about “what”, “how”, and “why” in rich detail that is reflective of the actual complexities of real human situations.

Social scientists have long realized that human behaviors are too complex to rely solely on quantitative data to understand them. Design and usability practitioners have developed many qualitative methods for gathering data on user behaviors to a more pragmatic end which is to help create products that better serve user needs.

What is the value of qualitative research?

Qualitative research helps us understand the domain, context, and constraints of a product in more useful ways than quantitative research does. It also helps us identify patterns of behaviour among users and potential users of a product much more quickly and easily than would be possible with quantitative research.

Qualitative research helps us understand:

• Behaviors, attitudes, and aptitudes of potential product users
• Technical, business, and environmental contexts of the product to be designed
• Vocabulary and other social aspects of the domain in question
• How existing products are used

Qualitative research helps the progress of design projects by:

• Providing credibility and authority to the design team
• Uniting the team with a common understanding of domain issues and user concerns
• Empowering management to make more informed decisions about product design issues that would otherwise be based on personal preference

Types of qualitative research that are more prominent in use:

• Stakeholder interviews should occur before any user research begins because these discussions often inform how user research is conducted. It is usually more effective to interview each stakeholder in isolation rather than in a group because a one-on-one setting promotes candor on the part of the stakeholder.
• Subject matter expert (SME) interviews provide valuable perspectives on a product and its users, but designers should be careful to recognize that SME’s represent a somewhat skewed perspective.
• User and customer interviews are slightly different to each other. For consumer products, customers are often the same as users, but in corporate or technical domains, users and customers are slightly different.
• User observation/ethnographic field studies when combined with interviews, might be the most effective technique for gathering qualitative user data. The combination allows designers to ask clarifying questions and direct inquires about situations and behaviors they observe in real-time.
• Literature review should be done in parallel with stakeholder interviews. The design team should review any literature pertaining to the product.
• Product/prototype and competitive audits should also be done in parallel to stakeholder interviews and it is often quite helpful for the design team to examine any existing version or prototype of the product, as well as its chief competitors.
• Focus group is a standard technique in traditional product marketing. They are useful for gauging initial reactions to the form of a product, its visual appearance, or industrial design.

Focus group, source: https://unsplash.com/photos/wD1LRb9OeEo

• Card sorting is a technique to understand how users organise information and concepts. It is basically performed by asking users to sort a deck of cards, each containing a piece of information related to the product. Most importantly, to enhance the value of a card sort study is to debrief the subject afterwards.
• Task analysis refers to a number of techniques that involve using either questionnaires or open-ended interviews to develop a detailed understanding of how people currently perform specific tasks.
• Usability and user testing is a collection of techniques used to measure the characteristics of a user’s interaction with a product, usually to assess the usability of the product. Usability testing requires a fairly complete and coherent design artifact to test against. User feedback gathered from usability testing is most useful when you need to validate or refine a particular interaction mechanism or the form and expression of a specific design element.