UX Research

UX research subsets

UX research can be divided into two subsets. We'll discuss both of these below.

Qualitative research

This includes user interviews and ethnographic field studies. Qualitative research offers a deeper understanding of why users do what they do, what are their motivations, goals, what makes them act or not act on something. These researches focus on the user's behavior and their rationale.

Quantitative research

This includes surveys and analytics. Quantitative research is about gathering measurable data about what users do, click, use, like, and don't like. With this method, we can discover patterns among large user groups. Doing both qualitative research and quantitative research is the perfect action plan to discover problems, develop the right solutions. This combination will grow your chances of developing a successful and useful design and product.

Various UX research Methods

There are lots of methods out there that you can use. Knowing them all will help you with what would be the best approach for each project you have. For example you can use methods such as card sorting, tree tests, kickoff team meetings, heuristic evaluations, competitive analysis, literature research for both new and old products.

You can also use methods such as stakeholder interviews, field studies, diary studies, subject matter experts interviews (SME), product/prototype audits, A/B tests, focus groups, usability tests for more elaborated researches.

Exercise: UX research

We will use "competitive analysis" methodology for this exercise.

Let's choose a topic first: guitar shop. You want to develop a guitar online shop in America.

Find out who is your competition. Open an incognito web page and using Google Search, Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram, search for terms related to "buy guitar" + "your country/city" and see who is in the top searches.

Choose the first 3-5 businesses that repeat in all the searches.

What are your competition's weak spots and strengths? By inspecting their websites, blogs, and social media, write down a list containing their weak spots and strengths.

Maybe their use of colors is bad, maybe their CTA buttons could have a better placement, maybe their pages are too full of ads that drives a bad user experience. Research and find out.

Read online what customers are saying about your competitors, about their products, what do their customers love / hate about them.

Learn if you have any chance at beating your competition. If your competition is big and financially loaded, like Amazon, HelloFresh, Whole-foods and your product does the same "things", that often means that it will be very hard to win customers over, and it would be a better decision to find another field.

Develop a strategy plan on how can you beat your competition. Once you find out the pros and cons of your competition, you can make changes or develop based on your findings. E.g. If the competition's users complain about customer support, offer amazing customer support, and make sure people know about this.

Conclusion

It's a good idea to learn about each method, what it does, and when to use it. Knowing what research methods are available to you will help you do a good research job even when you are working “on a budget”. Depending on your company budget, there’s a long list of methods to choose from, and this will make your life easier in the long run.