What’s the deal with user research anyway?

Or how to respond when someone says: “Oh you’re a UX researcher! Wait, so what do you do exactly?”

A little while ago, a fellow user researcher on my team received some pretty intriguing feedback from a participant who was tired of feeling like part of a ‘crowd sourced’ software solution:

“I realize people are happier if they have the perception of choice, but I don’t like to feel I’m part of a psychological experiment.”

Later, the participant further revealed that:

“I just don’t believe any company actually wants to make my life better so much as they want me to think that they do. What they really want is to make sure I keep writing the cheques.”

Naturally, that didn’t sit well with the user research team. But we couldn’t deny that the participant did make some valid points. From the end user’s perspective, there can be an undeniable lack of transparency into how their feedback influences a product, leaving them with the feeling that the insights they’ve provided might just dissipate into the ether.

And who can blame them? I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to explain what UX research is to friends, family, or even co-workers. Or the number of times that I’ve been confused with our support department, with people expecting that I had set up a call to help them with specific problems they were experiencing.

Another scenario I keep coming across is when others think they know what a UX researcher does, but might not be aware of the guiding principles behind the practice. Put in simple terms, user research “focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.” To do this, researchers rely on a wide repertoire of techniques, from observations to usability tests, surveys to interviews, workshops and more, all designed to elicit feedback from which meaningful insights can be synthesized.

But while this might explain what user research is on some fundamental level, it only really scratches the surface of what truly motivates us as researchers.

Guiding others towards designing and building for people

One of our biggest responsibilities as UX researchers is to guide our project teams (designers, developers, product managers, etc.) to design and build for people. Not “users”, but people. This is an important distinction: we don’t define people within the context of the tools they’re using, but rather as humans for whom those tools represent only a small part of their lives.

And, our research insights don’t mean much unless they become recommendations that actually get implemented. So the way we share them is just as important as where they come from: while a detailed test report has a place and time (for example, at the end of a project or extended study), more often than not this format can be intimidating and deter others from adopting our findings. Instead, we need to consider our audience and the format of the study itself:

• How involved were non-researchers in the project?
• What do they intend to do with the results and recommendations?
• How do they disseminate and consume other information on daily basis?
• Why was this research conducted in the first place?

More often than you’d think, a poster, light talk, story, or short video can help us communicate our findings much more effectively than a lengthy report.

Empathy is at the core of what we do

On the surface, research techniques might seem accessible with little training, but a good researcher needs to possess or at least develop certain key qualities. Natural curiosity — this vital need to ask questions and find answers — is at the core of all research. But where UX research differs from other types of research that are also driven by curiosity (see: academic) is that it can’t be successful without another key ingredient: empathy. As Indi Young describes it, empathy isn’t just about feeling the same emotions as another person:

“It’s about understanding how another person thinks — what’s going on inside her head and heart. And most importantly, it’s about acknowledging her reasoning and emotions as valid, even if they differ from your own understanding.”

As UX researchers, we not only talk to people, but also listen with intent; that type of listening where you’re completely focused and absorbed by what others are saying, rather than just waiting for your turn to speak. We explore, understand and, in that very moment, adopt another person’s perspective. We look past preferences and seek to understand behaviours. We take note of emotional reactions, but also dig deeper to find the reasons that elicit them in the first place.

So, what do we do with your feedback?

If you’re participating in user research, you might find yourself asking this question. Perhaps you’ve given feedback on a feature, but upon its release, you found that it differs widely from what you expected, or that your feedback seems to have been discarded altogether. At this point, you might start to wonder why you participated in the first place. Sure, you may have received some compensation for your time, but that’s not the real reason you agreed to take part in a study: you actually care about the product and genuinely wanted to help.

The reality is, while we treat all feedback with equal importance, the insights we distill from it are ranked on two different scales:

• Frequency: How many participants experienced the same problem, or expressed the same view?
• Severity: To what extent did this problem prevent those participants from accomplishing a given task?

After careful analysis accounting for these factors, we prioritize issues that emerged in our research, and make recommendations. And though we try to resolve as many of these issues as possible, there is a chance that technical limitations or project conflicts get in the way, at least for the time being. However, a good researcher will continue to follow up on those, even months after the fact, to make sure that participants’ feedback is thoroughly incorporated wherever possible.

So with that in mind, here’s how my aforementioned teammate eventually responded to our disillusioned participant’s concerns:

“More than anything — we want this to be a partnership — we’re here to build a product for you that helps you to run your business, and we need to have ears to the ground so we can tell whether this is working or not. We try our best to make that happen for you, so please let us know if we’re successful or not.”

Please do. We’re always curious to hear about what you’re thinking.