Learn about User Research
Your first challenge is to do as much self-education as you can. This means learning about how UX Research works in practice and getting a feel for how product design, product development, and human-centered design work. Depending on your background, this can help you:
- Get a feel for the lingo: you might already know some of the key concepts, but user researchers might just use different terminology
- Understand how to map your experience to the responsibilities of a UX Researcher
- Let hiring managers know you are invested in developing as a UX researcher even if you don’t have a ton of experience at the moment
One of the exciting things about user research is that it intersects with a lot of other disciplines. The consequence of this is that there are several key areas to get familiar with.
Consider reading these books about User Research:
- A nice overview of UX Research with lots of links to other resources (Guide to User Research)
- Beginners Guide to Finder User Needs is a great, free eBook by Jan Dittrich
- Understanding User Needs (2nd edition) by Baxter, Courage, Caine
- Handbook of Usability Testing (2nd edition) by Rubin and Chisnell
- Measuring the User Experience by Tullis and Albert
- Just Enough Research by Erica Hall
- It’s Our Research by Tomer Sharon
- Practical Ethnography by Sam Ladner
- Rosenfeld Media has several books on specific topics that are quite useful on UX Research and design.
Other UX Research Resources:
- The Norman Nielsen Group has tons of good resources as well (link). It represents a relatively narrow range of what many UX researchers do, but the materials are really excellent.
- Dollars to Donuts Podcast where Steve Portigal interviews research leaders at various companies (link). Also look for YouTube videos of his presentations. We particularly like this one, but there are many worth watching.
- Mixed Methods Podcast (more interviews of UX Research leaders) and Medium
- EPIC has some useful articles as well, mostly focused on applied ethnography (link)
- Many of the research teams at more established companies have great resources to share (e.g., Steelcase, Facebook). This can help you to understand how research is done at different organizations and get a sense of how they operate.
Design and Design Thinking
It is important to learn about the broader world of design since a significant part of many UX research jobs is partnering with design. There are a lot of great resources to learn about UI and UX:
- Design of Everyday Things by Norman
- Don’t Make me Think by Krug
- Designing with the Mind in Mind (2nd edition) by Johnson
- Go on YouTube and look at some presentations by Jared Spool. This is a good one.
- UX Booth, UX Magazine, UX Planet and other online publications have a lot of good resources.
- Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. all have considerable resources for learning about UX, Design, and Research. Do an internet search for them to find topics you might want to get more insight about. There are lots of great resources for Google’s Material Design System including case studies.
- I’ve seen several good UX/HCD podcasts over the years, so try a few out and see if any grab you. UX Podcast is a good place to start and a great way to get the European perspective, which tends to index a bit stronger on the service design model.
Product Team
- If you think you will ultimately work at a tech company, it is important to get a sense of the roles that make up a product team. There is a LOT of diversity (even within companies), but this article lays things out really clearly.
A few things to keep in mind:
Because UX Research is still a bit of an emergent field, nomenclature is far from standardized.
- A few names for the UX Researcher role: design researcher, UX strategist, user researcher, consumer insights, experience researcher, ethnographer, digital anthropologist… the list goes on!
- You might hear all of the following terms that refer to very similar things: moderator guide, interview guide, protocol, discussion guide, interview schedule.
- Just like titles, org structure and how research works can be very different from company to company (and even team to team in bigger companies).
- Smaller companies are less likely to have dedicated researchers, but this is starting to change as they see the value.
This article was written by Laith Ulaby and Grace Vorreuter as part of a series on getting started in UX. If you would like to see the rest of the articles click here.
