User Research methods in designing an effective User Experience
I just had an interview with a startup company for a UX/UI Designer role, one of the interviewees asked this question whether there are any pros and cons to downloading insights from internal stakeholders first before talking to the end-users.
My response was that we need to gather alignment of what the business wants to achieve, what works and doesn’t, identify gaps and then validate these insights we have with customers through user research. This way we can that happy place where business goals and user needs are met.
Afterwards, I pondered on this question– wished could provide a better response. 🤔🙄😑
In the dynamic field of UX/UI design, effective user research methods are crucial for creating innovative and user-centric solutions. This article provides a comprehensive guide to user research methods, drawing from diverse perspectives and addressing common challenges faced by designers.
The Importance of Starting with the Customer’s Perspective
A notable example from Amazon underscores the importance of starting with the customer’s perspective when ideating new products or features. Rather than internally generating ideas and attempting to convince stakeholders, Amazon prioritizes understanding customer needs and preferences. For instance, the creation of Amazon Prime stemmed from a deep understanding of customers’ desire for quality products at competitive prices and fast delivery.
Human–Centred Research Methods
I’ve been approaching customer experience projects with the Design Thinking framework. This method starts with understanding the people we are designing for and aligns users’ needs with what the business wants to achieve.
DISCOVER
I kicked-off the project by creating a research plan to help guide the research directions. Study the existing website or apps performance and analytics to gather rough data before talking to stakeholders. Held interview with clients and target users to learn from their perspectives and experiences. I also conducted contextual enquiry sessions with them to observe user behaviours while using the app.
Contextual Inquiry– Contextual inquiry is a type of field study that requires in-depth observation and interviews of a small sample of users to gain a solid understanding of user behaviours in context. The researcher observes the user as s/he performs the task and asks questions to understand how and why users do what they do.
This research method takes place in users’ natural environment– like their home, office or somewhere as they conduct their activities the way they normally would. Typically we conduct contextual inquiry during the early discovery stages for a new feature, product or improving an existing product. This research data is so critical in shaping design choices such as requirements, personas, features, architecture, and content strategy.
There are wide-range and more in-depth user research methods such as ethnography research, diary/ camera study. The art is to know when to use the right user research methods for your project. You can read this article from the Nielsen Norman group website to give some perspectives and hopefully guide your decision to choose the right methods for your research.
This primary research mostly is about gathering qualitative data, and when there are emerging trends/patterns– we would validate the pattern with surveys to collect the quantitative data.
DEFINE
At this stage, I collected lots of research notes and recording. Wrote key insights, observations, quotes on sticky notes with one information per note and stick them on a physical wall or digital wall (like Mural or Miro). Synthesized the data– spend time to deeply understand the problem we can solve. The key is to be patience– don’t rush to solutions too soon because you would miss out on the bigger picture to create an innovative outcome. and the fun part of this process is when you start seeing emerging patterns and mapped insights and opportunities.
Persona–
I created user personas based on the evaluated data, sketched storyboards and created a Customer Journey Map (CJM) to visualise the users’ experience problems at each touch-point.
The business tends to target a certain audience based on the business goals, however, we can map the insights from research and opportunity to uncover new target user.
IDEATE
Continued to explore ideas and generate solutions using the How Might We, Design Studio or Crazy 8s methods. Both– Design Studio or Crazy 8s methods utilise sketches, sharing and building on each other’s ideas. These three methods have the divergence purpose to produce an innovative solution.
Feature Prioritisation–
During the ideation, we came up with many great ideas. To prioritise the most suitable ideas to meet the end-users needs, we used an Impact vs Effort technique to define the “low hanging fruit” features.
This technique allows us to visualise the feasibility of each idea from the brainstorming session and facilitate discussion among the team.
Hypothesis and How to Make Our Solutions Works
We create the hypothesis to converge and create future CJM, storyboard and user-flow to make the solutions work. I also utilise these visual artefacts to communicate the user’s needs and goals with other team members and stakeholders. This way allows my team and I to prioritise features– build prototypes– and test the solutions with the user focus at the centre of the process.
What I experienced so far is that user-flow works well when communicating with engineers/ developers. Product owners/ founder, marketers like to see CJM.
Card-Sort–
I also conducted card sorting sessions with five participants to measure users’ mental models in organizing topics into groups. This technique helps to design a high-level content structure that suits your users’ expectations.
There are 2 types of card-sorting– open and close card sortings. Learn more about the differences on the Nielson Norman Group site.
PROTOTYPE — TEST — ITERATE
These 3-in-one processes work hand-in-hand, you can do one without the others. I usually start prototyping using paper. The paper prototype has the benefit of testing and validating solutions earlier, it also enables rapid iteration– easier to make changes. Benefit aside, I enjoy creating this textile and analogue artefacts– it has a crafty feeling to it.
After testing this low-fidelity prototype with 5 users, I moved to design digital wireframe in Figma. I will talk more details about designing interaction and UI experience in another article. For now, let’s focus on user research methods and processes. 🙂✌️
Before facilitating the prototype testing activity, I created a test plan outlining the goals, user stories and tasks, set the evaluation metrics such as time on tasks and task ratings. Recruited 5 users/target users, conducted prototype testing following the plan. The benefit of creating this plan is to guide your prototype testing activity with users, and know precisely what you want to validate and measure to improve the application.
In my previous project with CX Insight, I followed Steve Krug guidelines and script to facilitate testing session, which I personally find very helpful. Recorded the testing sessions and entered user feedback in Google spreadsheet to produce test report for the team and internal stakeholders. During the prototype testing session with users, I had a support from one of my team member to record and fed users’ feedback to the front-end-developer live in the background, to continue iterating and ready for the next testing session due to super tight schedule.
Retro
The retro is not often being practice in real business but I suggest it’s an activity you will want to keep as a habit after every process/ sprint. Retro will help you improve the way to tackle the next sprints.
Questions I asked after every design sprint as a reflection such as– did we answer customer’s need? Did we meet the business goal? What went well? What could we have done better?
Okay, guys, that’s all for now about user research methods. Hope you’ll find some useful information. Otherwise, please email your feedback so that I could improve my content and support each other to grow. Never give up!🙌
References:
Empathy map is taken from one of my case study articles: UX for A Social Platform: How to Encourage Positive Consumer Action
Disclaimer: The information in this case study is based on my own experience so far. The nature of this article to share knowledge and experiences for those who want to learn more about UX research methods and processes.
