UX Research | How to create high impact products

What is UX Research?

The main objective of the UX Research process is to understand the problem before trying to solve it and there are some reasons to apply a Research process.

First of all, to understand the user and the problem.

Secondly, it’s useful to empathize with the users, and finally you generate knowledge, which will be your best argument to justify your design decisions.

“You can’t create an excellent User Experience if you don’t understand the users and their needs. The UX Research it’s one of the most essential components of UX Design.”

Areas | UX Research

Generative

To Identify goals, needs, behaviour and mental models.

Evaluative

To detect situations and problems looking how it works a product.

Qualitative

To understand reasons and motivations (Insights).

Quantitative

To quantify data and generalise the results.

Generative-Qualitative methods

Ethnography

The ethnography is the study of the people or a group through the observation. The main function of this method is to observe the behavior and habits of the user who is the object of the study.

User Interview

The user interview consists of asking a user questions about a topic. It’s a study very useful to delve into a specific topic.

Focus Group

The Focus group is an “informal technique that can help you assess user needs and feelings both before interface design and long after implementation”. In a focus group, you bring together 6–9 users to discuss about different but related topics.

Generative-Evaluative methods

Lab testing

Is a place that simulate a natural environment to make usability testing with users. Users are observed while interacting with a product or system.

Remote testing

Is a technique similar to Lab testing, but the difference is that the user is making the test online and the communication between “tester” and researcher is through videocall software.

Quantitative-Evaluative methods

KPI monitoring

“Refers to the tools and methods that we use to monitor performance metrics. Measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) involves capturing specific data and converting it into useful metrics that can be measured and reported in easily digestible charts and dashboards.”

Funnel analysis

A funnel analysis is a method of understanding the steps required to reach an outcome on a website and how many users get through each of those steps.

Likert Questionnaries

“Is a psychometric scale commonly involved in research that employs questionnaires. It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research, such that the term (or more fully the Likert-type scale) is often used interchangeably with rating scale, although there are other types of rating scales.”

*TIP: When you are researching the most important thing it’s to make good questions, cause this will be the guide of our project.

To start your project, there are 4 main questions you need to ask yourself:

• Who is our user?
• How can I evaluate my design?
• In what exact moment does the user feel frustrated?
• What´s the user value of the feature?

Some Research Techniques will be explained on the following articles.

Stay tuned!