2. Table of Content What is User Research?
Types of User Research
Data Gathered During User Research
Why do we need user research
How it Helps Business
How to build a User Research Culture
3. “To be a great designer, you need to look a
little deeper into how people think and act.”
—Paul Boag, Cofounder of Headscape Limited
4. What is User Research?
User experience research is the systematic investigation of your users in order to
gather insights that will inform the design process. With the help of various user
research techniques, you’ll set out to understand your users’ needs, behaviours,
attitudes, and pain-points.
5. “User research focuses on understanding user expectations,
behaviors, needs, and motivations through methodical,
investigative approaches. Insights are then used to ensure that all
product design decisions do benefit the user”
6. Types Of User Research
Qualitative
Research
Quantitative
Research
Descriptive data which looks more at
how people think and feel. It helps to
find your user’s opinions, problems,
reasons, and motivations.
Statistical data that can be measured and
analysed, looking more at the statistics.
Quantitative data is used to quantify the
opinions and behaviours of your users.
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8. Fast and low cost testing
methods such as on the street
videos, field observations,
reviews of paper sketches or
online tools for remote usability
testing.
Guerrilla Testing
9.
10. One on one interviews that follow a preset selection of questions prompting the user to
describe their interactions, thoughts and feelings in relation to a product or service, or
even the environment of the product/service.
Interviews
11. Participatory groups that are led through a discussion and activities to gather data on a
particular product or service.
Focus Groups
12. Observations of users
completing particular tasks in a
controlled environment. Users
are often asked to describe
out loud their actions,
thoughts and feelings and are
videoed for later analysis.
In-Lab Testing
14. Questionnaires with a
structured format, targeting
your specific user personas.
These can be a great way to
get a large amount of
data. Surveymonkey is a
popular online tool.
Survey
15. Visual mapping of
data showing how
users click and scroll
through your
prototype or website.
The most well known
online tool to integrate
would be Crazyegg.
Heat Mapping
16. Measures the gaze of the
eye, allowing the observer to
‘see’ what the user sees.
This can be an expensive test
and heatmapping is a good
cheaper alternative.
Eye Tracking
17. Comparing two version of a
web page to see which one
converts users more. This is a
great way to test button
placements, colours, banners
and other elements in your UI.
A/B Testing
18. User research rarely relies on just one form of data collection, and
often uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods
together to form a bigger picture. The data can be applied to an
existing product to gain insight to help improve the
product experiences, or it can be applied to an entirely new product
or service, providing a baseline for UX, design and development.
20. Research helps in designing with real insights
and facts not guess work!
21. Benefits of User Research
•To build an empathetic, user-focused company that aligns the product and business
strategy with the core needs and goals of users
•To understand how people perform tasks and achieve their goals in order to design an
effective and pleasurable UX
•To create a shorter development time upfront, with a clear vision of what you are trying
to build
•To solve differences in opinion of “what should we do now?” by replacing it with the
phrases: “lets test it” or “lets see what the research showed us”
•By constantly employing user research, we can track the ROI of UX to see where our
ideas and iterations are working, and where we need to improve
22.
23. “When you know your customer inside and out,
that’s when you’re able to come up with ideas,
messaging and tactics that will change the
growth trajectory of your business”
24. How It helps Business
• Increase user satisfaction: deliver exactly what your target wants
• Decrease costs in the long term: save on development and redesign efforts
• Get qualitative feedback which helps you to improve user’s interactive experience increasing
conversion rate
• Understand what best supports user’s goals and motivations: focus on the features that really
matter to your target
• Gain a competitive advantage: stand out from the crowd, be always 1 step ahead of your
competitors, create a “wow” effect
• Shorten the learning curve for new users: make your product easy-to-use
• Have not only beautiful design, but smart one: putting your user in the center of your design
strategy
26. User research made Samsung
change its TV design strategy to
focus on making more
minimalistic designs that fit into
the customer’s home doubling
their market share in just two
years. Although TVs have not
gotten smaller, everything
extraneous has been removed.
As we see here, the TV functions
as a gallery-sized moving picture.
27. Amazon encourages developers to
do continual A/B testing of different
versions of user interfaces so that
they are always updated on how
different variations of their designs
are performing, and they have
provided a software tool to help easily
set up tests. Amazon is the largest
internet retailer in the world. so, you
could argue that Jeff Bezos’ strategy
has been something of a success.
28. WikiWand is a good example of a company that makes a living from providing a great user
experience. Their product is a plugin which changes the design of Wikipedia articles to make
them more appealing and user friendly.
29. How to Build a User Research Culture
In many organisations, user research creates friction. It directly challenges the intuition of others, often at the
highest levels. It slows product development. It costs money. It has no clear ROI.
Build a team of internal allies
Change begins by building relationships
with other internal advocates.Working
with multiple departments quickly shifts
the conversation from a design- or UX-
centric language to the broader goals of
user research—customer
satisfaction and brand advocacy.
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30. Create a framework for user research
The goal is to define a set of user research
principles to guide your organisation.
At Yahoo, they identified four principles:
timely, believable, actionable, and
surprising. (“Believable,” for Yahoo, meant
“statistical valid or credible” not “aligned
with intuition or experience.”)
Share user research with your team
Where do you keep customer journey maps?
What about user personas? For most
organisations, they’re buried in file folders or
isolated within small teams. That reinforces
the idea that user research is, for example,
“marketing’s job,” rather than a company
focus.
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31.
32. Prototype a change based on user
research.
A prototype validates an improvement in the
user experience. While prototyping is far
easier in the digital space—a redesigned app
UI is cheaper to mock up than a prototype
for the phone it operates on—a bare-bones
approach can yield a persuasive impact.
Build a proof of concept for your
prototype.
A great prototype isn’t necessarily a profitable
one—it may not address the underlying UX
issue or may be implemented incorrectly, two
failures that can torpedo anticipated benefits to
the user experience and the bottom line. A
proof of concept tests the business value of a
prototype.
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