In our guide, you can learn what User Experience research is, why it’s important, what methods to use and how no-code can help you on the way. Let’s dive deeper.
Common UXR Methodologies
Typical research activities include (but are not limited to): interviews, usability testing, user feedback, A/B tests, product analytics, etc. You can run most of them with the user research tools, which we covered in our long read here.
At the end of each research activity, you generate a set of insights and evidence of users’ behavior and goals. With this real data, you can know exactly where to focus your attention and how to prioritize your product plan.
UXR, in many ways, is based on methods used in marketing and product research but has a unique focus on design deliverables and design outcomes. - by Lisa Dziuba, Product Marketing Manager
Why user experience research is important?
When adopting User Experience Research practice, you reduce risks, leapfrog the competition, and impact customers’ lives more importantly. All that in return allows focusing attention to what really matters and gives you criteria to help make more educated decisions. Among the top advantages of user research are:
1. Makes you better than the competitors
Good research is like a cheat code. Doing it regularly and the right way will give you a disproportionate competitive advantage to innovate. With it, you also win much more new customers and increase the loyalty of existing ones.
When you start building MVP, you can base your initial features set on real feedback from users, having fewer guesses and more data. Your chances of building something significantly better than other options of the market dramatically increase, if you incorporate UXR into your lean development.
You can overplay competitors not only by knowing how to be better but also by delivering your product faster, which you can do with the help of no-code tools.
2. Decreases risks of product mistakes
Time and money are always limited. When you know customers' real problems, you can focus your efforts on the right things. This way, you will positively impact your ultimate results without wasting effort on low outcomes. You can also decrease product risks by cutting developmental costs and timing with no-code development. Faster and cheaper releases = more chances to find the product value people want.
3. Helps with the insights-driven planning
With all of the things you could be doing, research gives you clear visibility on what should be done first. User Experience Research helps you get a better strategy and planning.
4. Creates a customer caring culture
When people feel someone cares about them, they trust and love you more in return. By listening to your customers and reacting to their feedback, you build a strong following that is ready to support you and move you forward to a much higher level.
5. Sets marketing on user needs
Talking to people helps you learn things related to the research and understand the context of customers’ lives, preferences, and needs. So when you communicate with them later, you can speak “their language” and get right into their hearts.
6. Cultivates user empathy in your team
By observing user research sessions, your team builds a strong empathy for your customers. They see that whatever they are doing affects real people’s lives. You can read more on building user empathy inside your team:
Make things people want > make people want things. - by Dmytro Kovalenko, Product Designer
User Experience Research Methods
When you think about what methods to use for your UX research, you should start by defining the purpose of your study. The next step would be identifying the product cycle step, goals, time, and budget available. Key things to remember here are the ways to classify your UXR purpose to help you select the best suiting method:
- There are 2 stages of UXR — Generative and Evaluative. Generative for exploring unknown user problems and opportunities. Evaluative for validating your solutions to learn how well they solve those problems.
- There are 2 kinds of UXR based on data type — Qualitative and Quantitative. Qualitative for getting deeper is not so obvious, but more quality insights, such as the severity of the problems. Quantitative for more comprehensive data to learn how many people have certain experiences.
- There are 2 ways to classify UXR based on the user’s perspective — Attitudinal and Behavioral. Attitudinal focuses more on what people say, think, or believe in. Behavioral is focusing more on what people do and how they actually behave.
Top 8 User Experience Research Methods
Many old research methods are available, and new ones keep being invented regularly. So, how do you choose the right one? We’ve gathered some of the top ones you can start adopting in your process right away:
- Interview. Generative, Qualitative, Attitudinal. A researcher meets with participants one-on-one to discuss in-depth what the participant thinks about the topic in question.
- Field Studies. Generative, Qualitative, Behavioral. A researchers meet with and study participants in their natural environment, where they would most likely encounter the product or service in question.
- Concept Testing. Evaluative, Qualitative, Attitudinal. A researcher shares an approximation of a product or service that captures a new concept's key essence (the value proposition). The goal is to determine if it meets the target audience's needs. It can be done one-on-one or with larger numbers of participants, and either in person or online.
- Usability Studies. Evaluative, Qualitative, Behavioral. This method covers usability studies conducted remotely using screen-sharing software and remote control capabilities.
- A/B Testing. Evaluative, Quantitative, Behavioral. It is a method of scientifically testing different designs on a site by randomly assigning groups of users to interact with each of the different designs and measuring the effect of these assignments on user behavior.
- Eyetracking. Evaluative, Quantitative, Behavioral. In this case, an eye-tracking device is configured to precise measure where participants look as they perform tasks or interact naturally with websites, applications, physical products, or environments.
- Customer Feedback. Evaluative, Qualitative, Attitudinal. This method gives open-ended and/or close-ended information provided by a self-selected sample of users, often through a feedback link, button, form, or email.
- Surveys. Evaluative, Quantitative, Attitudinal. It is a survey in which participants are recruited from an email message or triggered while browsing a site or application.
To learn more methods and dive deeper into the topic, feel free to visit probably the most comprehensive resource in the field – Nielsen Norman Group. When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods.
