How to Conduct User Experience Research?

How to Conduct User Experience Research?

Hello everyone, before moving on to our main topic, How to Conduct User Experience Research, I believe it is also important to answer the question of What is User Experience? User experience (UX) encompasses everything a person experiences and feels before, during and after using a product, system or service. Now that we know what user experience is at its most basic, let’s move on to our main topic, How to Conduct User Experience Research.

UX research, or design research as it is sometimes called, serves many purposes throughout the design process. UX research encompasses a variety of research methods used to add context and insight to the design process. The main purpose of design research is to inform the design process from the perspective of the end user. 

Based on this information, we can say that UX research is the step where we analyze how the product or service can be used by end users and clearly identify the needs of the end user.

The most basic point of doing a good UX research is to listen to users. In any application, game, website or project, it is the key key to doing the research of the project correctly that we are shaped completely according to the end user of the product, not according to ourselves. Data directly from user experience research is like muscle memory; the more research you do, the more data you accumulate. But just like muscle memory, to reap the lasting benefits that are unique to you, YOU need to be part of the hard work, so even if you’re working and researching with external teams, you need to be in the middle of the process.

Why is UX Research So Important?

User experience design can be treated like an engineering process. Currently, this is one of the most important factors that distinguish user experience design from graphic design. For this reason, since it is handled like an engineering project, planning and feasibility studies are required. 

Regardless of the size of your project or business, it is very, very important to do UX research correctly. Especially in small-scale companies or low-budget projects, it is very important for them to discover innovative but correct ways for the project to reach exactly the right people in the most appropriate way. 

How to Categorize User Experience Research?

• Quantitative Research: It is conducted with very large user populations and deals with “how much” of the product and behaviors, not “what they are”.
• Qualitative Research: It is not concerned with the quantity of results and can be conducted with smaller audiences. It aims to find out the real reason for the research topic and to draw detailed and deeper meanings.
• Attitudinal Research: Investigates what users think.
• Behavioral Research: Investigates why people do what they do.

What are the 5 Basic Steps of User Experience Research?

• Objectives: Defining the purpose of our project/service/game.
• Hypotheses: Making assumptions about who are the users we want to reach and who we can reach.
• Methods: Choosing which methods should be applied.
• Implementation: Creating the data pool obtained with the selected methods.
• Synthesizing: Bringing together the data we have obtained and successful methods.

What are the Basic Methods of Researching User Experience on a Low Budget?

Yes, I know that many of the methods I mentioned above can be incredibly costly when done really professionally. For this very reason, you can do the methods I will describe below with affordable costs.

1- Online Research: Although we normally say that it is the right thing to create large and precisely the user masses we need and analyze the data of these masses, it is impossible to establish such a pool if we do not have a budget. So what can we do then? Of course, we can examine all the user research done independently of the field on the internet and gather the audiences we need in a common pool and bring them into a form suitable for the niche of our own project. For this, it is very important that the person or people who will do this research are experienced, and a serious insight and empathy ability is a must for these people.

2- Usability Testing and Focus Group Formation: Now, how are we going to set up a professional test team from our target audience, I seem to hear you say, don’t get confused right away, in fact, there is a very simple way to do this, which is to create volunteer test teams. So how can you reach people who are both from your audience and volunteer? Of course by creating a community on social media. If you manage to gather those who believe in you and what you will do, you can create a nice test team consisting of them for free and you can do these tests by creating them from the relevant audience.

3 -A/B Testing: Yes, I know, you say, how can I find a budget for this, but believe me, the method of this is actually through the community, just like the Usability test. Only this time we need to present our project to our community with two different experiences and that’s it. Normally, in active projects, we can realize our costly and risky process, which we reach by presenting version A to one part of the users and version B to the other part of the users and collecting feedback, or by presenting two different versions to the same audience at different moments in advertising campaigns, in a risk-reduced and cost-free way.

4- Online Surveys: Regardless of whether the team or the company of the producer of the project is large or small, one of the most widely used methods is always online surveys. If you plan to position the surveys in the right way and plan them in a way that encourages people to fill out the survey rather than disturbing people, you can collect incredible quality data from people. The right questions will reveal your customer’s needs, wants and pain points. It is important to remember that the value and quality of the results from online surveys and research varies depending on the type of questions asked and the quality of your target audience.

5- Online User Interviews: The obvious advantage of one-on-one interviews is that you can focus on specific topics and get detailed information and targeted feedback. The focus group I just mentioned, where you can get feedback from the audience you have established with the focus group creation, does not actually cause you financial problems and can also enable you to see more niche problems.

6- Competitor Analysis: In this method, within the scope of the relevant project, the relevant products and services of the competitors in the current and target audience of the project are examined, along with their strengths and weaknesses, the channels and motivations through which users reach those products and the channels and services offered by the product owners to their users are completely analyzed. In fact, we can easily say that this analysis is similar to SWOT analysis.

7- Analyzing Analysis Data: Yes, if we need to examine analytical data, two tools come to the fore, the first is Google Analytics and the other is relatively inexpensive tools such as Hotjar. So what questions can we answer from the data obtained with these toolar?

• How long do users complete a transaction?
• Where do users click?
• Which functions do users enjoy using?
• Where in the project do users enjoy spending time?
• In which ways do users reach you?
• How much time do users spend on your project?

Finally, I would like to emphasize that budget is not everything! By leveraging the power of digital tools, inexpensive research methods and close observation of customer interactions, a business can get the raw data and insights it needs to improve the user experience for its target audience without going over budget.

What are Common User Research Techniques?

Persona Study: Persona is the definition of the current or targeted user audience with all relevant details. In addition to demographic and segmented information such as names, ages, education levels, relevant and indirect habits, behavior frequencies and all details that may be relevant to the subject. These definitions are utilized at every stage of the products and services to be offered.

Prototype Testing: Build a working or pretend working version of your product idea and test it with prospective customers to find out what they think.

Get Out Of The Building: Steve Blank notes that entrepreneurs wait too long to gauge real customer interest and fail because of it. The entrepreneur should get out on the street as soon as possible and clarify the product functionality that the target audience is interested in with the right questions. So go out and reach out to users.

Product Benchmark: Which products do your potential customers who will use your product currently use? What are the prominent functions in these products? With the Benchmark study, you can make a good start to the product process where you are looking for answers to these questions. You can reach the right result by analyzing your competitors correctly and increasing your own advantages and reducing your deficiencies according to the results of this analysis.

Netnography: You can track what your existing customers are talking about rival products on forums and social media, and what additional features they want to be added. With this method, you can not only understand what is being said about your potential competitors, but you can also use it to get involved in a digital community where your customer base is located and get to know them closely.

Ethnography: Ethnography studies are observations made by user experience researchers by becoming a part of users’ lives over a certain period of time (this interval can often continue until the targeted purpose is achieved).

A/B Testing: Since I have explained what it is at more than one point in my article, I will not explain it again here.

Analytics Data Analysis: Since I have explained this above, I am not writing it again here.

Feedback Analysis: Don’t just listen to your customers in tests. With the help of a feedback tool, you can collect comments from users and make improvements on it.

Usability Analysis: I explained this above, so I won’t write it again here.

Mental Model: It is a successful representation of research results. By grouping the research results, you get an idea of how the user sees the product. Then the product functions are matched with the parts of this model. A good mental model allows the team to see the product through the user’s eyes.

In-depth and Contextual Interviewing: If you go to the field and interview users while developing your product, and even if you do this in the place where the project will be used, you can produce great results.

User Experience Drawing: By bringing together the data you get from your potential users, you can turn the data in their heads into a drawing. You should not confuse this with the Wireframe design that we will enter after all the processes, this is a research method we do to make it easier to understand the analysis data.

5 Second Test: Five second tests are a type of research that helps you measure the first impression a design leaves on the user. It is used to test whether the design communicates its purpose and main message to the user. Why five seconds? Studies have found that users take only a few seconds to decide whether to stay on a site. In this time, it is important to convey the desired message to the user in a short time.

First Click Test: Just like with physical products or when meeting someone, the screen(s) and first clicks users see when they first open your website or mobile app are very important. These first clicks also have an important place in user experience research. According to the first clicks, how much users understand the product and clues for the information architecture of the design are obtained.

Shadowing: It is a method of monitoring users without their awareness, especially when they are realizing the targeted purpose, and recording the entire experience when necessary. Thus, all behaviors of users can be detailed down to the smallest details by re-monitoring these records.

Why UX Research Matters

In today’s digital product landscape, the real value of UX research is the ability to reduce uncertainty about what users want and need, which has benefits for the product, the business and of course the users themselves. This research data speeds up the product design process, accelerates the product development process, eliminates the cost of redesign and refactoring, and increases user engagement and enjoyment of the product/project/game.

What are the 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions During User Experience Research?

1. What is your first impression of this product/service/game?
2. Are you interested in this product/service/game?
3. When, where and on which platform do you use/play this product/service/game?
4. Do you trust this product/service/game?
5. Is there anything preventing you from using this product/service/game?
6. Is the interface easy to understand?
7. What are the difficult and easy aspects to achieve?
8. What are your favorite and least favorite things about the design/experience?
9. Would you recommend this to others?
10. Do you think this product/service/game is similar to another This product/service/game? 

What are the Most Common Basic Mistakes in User Experience? 

While talking about research methods and user experience, it would not be right not to mention the most common mistakes superficially, so I will leave the most common problems below. If you go through a proper research process, you will not encounter the following problems.

• Creating a Complex Interface
• Not Perfecting User Experience on Every Platform
• Inadequate Information Architecture
• Not Doing Enough Research
• Not Creating the Right User Data
• No Usability Planning
• Conducting Incorrect Market Research
• Not Using the Right Methods
• Not Understanding the Product/Service/Game Correctly

Video

If you want to listen to my explanations on this subject and reinforce this subject by examining examples, I recommend you to watch my Youtube video, which I prepared in Turkish but also has English subtitles.

Closing

You can contact me via my e-mail address and the contact section of my website and send me your questions on How to Conduct User Experience Research. You can also browse my consultancy page to get consultancy from me on this subject. 

In this article, I tried to answer the question of How to Conduct User Experience Research. See you in my next articles.