How to Avoid Common Mistakes in UX Research

Part 1

Research can be scary. On the one hand, we are talking about statistical significance, deep qualitative understanding, anthropological principles, or psychology. On the other side, research seems easy. We can quickly pick a method, do some interviews, go fast and deliver results that impact the business. Designers conducting user research are constantly pressured to assess whether their research is good enough or whether they have delivered as expected.

Research shouldn’t be reserved for experts, nor something you do in a night as part of a process checklist. It’s still possible and easy to conduct great UX research if you consider a couple of details I want to talk about today.

Quantifying everything

People like numbers, especially those that drive business, validate assumptions and tell them that moving forward is ok. They offer credibility and security and drive action. In UX research, however, even if it has a quantifiable part, the qualitative part doesn’t get as much credit (and credibility) if it doesn’t say what we want to hear.

More and more Designers and Product managers tend to quantify such insights as quickly as possible to increase credibility, seeking false confidence on account of (still) small samples.