User Research - the why, what, and how?
Everything you need to know about the user research
“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”
—Tim Brown, CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO
User research is the methodic study of target users. It enables companies to understand user expectations, behaviors, needs, and motivations through methodical, investigative approaches. Insights are then used to make informed design decisions, leading to a superior experience for end-users.
User research puts the end-users in the center of everything. It humanizes the entire design process and brings in empathy.
The reach of user research is fairly widespread in the overall design process. It deals with various aspects of understanding users and creating data-informed design decisions.
Why user research
Beginning with empathy for the end-users has certain benefits in terms of making a product relevant, creating a superior user experience, and ensuring business outcome-
Product Benefits
User research is all about gathering data about the end-users. It’s about finding the right problems to solve and ensuring that the product is relevant for the target users.
Business Benefits
User research is a great tool for lean development. By thoroughly understanding the end-users and validating the requirements based on end-users’ needs, businesses can eliminate a lot of waste in the product development process, speeding up the overall process and increasing user satisfaction.
User Benefits
User research makes sure that the product is relevant for the end-users and designed to add value to them. Simply put, user research speaks the user’s thoughts—preventing any biases and influence from an outside authority. It also acts as a bridge between users and the company.
Here are various outcomes user research may bring to the table -
Increased conversion rates
Increased engagement
Increased sign-ups
Increased NPS (net promoter score)
Increased customer satisfaction
Increased referrals
Increased purchase rates
Improved loyalty to the brand
Reduced customer service calls
Minimized development time
Reduced production costs
User research methods
UX researchers typically use various user research methods. Broadly, these methods can be divided into 2 groups - Qualitative and Quantitative.
Qualitative method is sometimes called “soft” research. It helps find the answers to the questions like “why didn’t people see the call to action” and “what else did people notice on the page?” and often takes the form of one-on-one interviews.
Quantitative methods are any research that can be measured numerically. It answers questions such as “how many people activated the profile” or “what percentage of users clicked on a CTA?” It basically tells you what is happening with the product.
Here is a quick summary of the differences between the two -
Now let’s jump in to see some of the widely used qualitative methods -
Card Sorting: Allows users to sort a site’s information into a logical structure that will typically drive navigation and information architecture of the site/product. This is often used to ensure that the site structure aligns with the users’ mental model.
Contextual Interviews: It’s about observing users in the real-world context, giving you a better understanding of how users perform certain tasks.
First Click Testing: First Click Testing allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the linking structure of your site, including the navigation, to discover how users get around the site and complete their intended task.
Focus Groups: Moderated discussion with a group of users in order to gather insight from users’ needs, ideas, and desires.
Heuristic Evaluation/Expert Review: A group of usability experts explores and evaluates a website against a list of established guidelines.
Interviews: One-on-one discussions with users to understand their attitudes, desires, and experiences. You can read more on how to effectively conduct customer interviews here.
Parallel Design: A process that involves several designers pursuing the same effort simultaneously but independently. The ultimate design combines the best elements from each of the designs.
Personas: The representation of the ideal user - often includes demographics, activities, likes, and dislikes, etc. Though the persona's personal details may be fictional, the information used to create the user type is not.
Prototyping: This allows the design team to explore ideas before implementing them by creating a site's mock-up. A prototype could be low-fidelity or high-fidelity, depending on the context and need.
Surveys: A series of questions asked to multiple users of your website, helping you learn various aspects of users’ preferences.
System Usability Scale (SUS): SUS is a technology-independent ten-item scale for subjective evaluation of usability.
Task Analysis: Involves learning about user goals, including what users want to do on your website, and helps you understand the tasks users will perform on your site.
Usability Testing: Identifies user frustrations and roadblocks while performing certain tasks within the site or the app where a “real-life” user performs tasks on the site being studied.
Use Cases: Describe how users use a particular feature of your website. They provide a detailed look at users’ goals, how users would interact with the site, including the steps users would take to accomplish each task.
And, here are some of the widely used quantitative methods -
A/B testing – You test two or more versions of your design on users to find the most effective one. A/B testing is widely used in the industry for experimentation purposes. It is valuable for testing assumptions you’ve drawn from qualitative research.
Analytics – With tools such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel, etc., you measure various metrics in terms of user acquisition, activations, engagement, retention, referral, and revenue.
Desirability Studies – You measure some aspects of your product (e.g., aesthetic appeal) by typically showing it to participants and asking them to select from a menu of descriptive words.
Surveys and Questionnaires – It’s an effective method of gathering data from a large set of users.
The exact user research method varies and will largely depend on the type of product you’re creating and the available resources at your disposal. So before starting any user research, it’s vital to identify key goals you want to achieve and what metrics you’ll track along the way.
Here is an example of different methods in use in the various phases of the product development cycle -
One important point to note here is that the qualitative and quantitative methods complement each other and never an either-or option. Both are useful in making data-informed decisions. In many cases, it’s recommended to pair qualitative methods with quantitative to get the best results.
Here is one more example depicting the most commonly used methods (both qualitative and quantitative applied together) in the product and service lifecycle -
Conclusion
Lack of user empathy is the leading cause of many product failures. User research brings user empathy in the overall design process.
The experience that a person goes through while using a product is very much subjective. Therefore, to provide a greater user experience, it is imperative to understand the needs and goals of potential users, the context, and the user journey. By selecting appropriate user research methods and applying them rigorously, designers can shape a product’s design and can come up with products that serve both customers and businesses more effectively.
Sincerely,
Arkapravo
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Reference -
That’s all for this post - the last one for the year 2020 😊 I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the subscribers and readers for the support. 💙
I wish all of you a very happy and prosperous new year 2021🎉.
Talk to you in 2021.
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A few more outcomes from the user research would be
1.Increased engagement levels
2.Increased stickiness
3.Referrals