Every product is designed to serve a particular group of users. But designing a product is not all about serving the purpose. There are products in our daily life that we rarely pay considerable attention to, but there has been a team behind designing those intricate and minor details which when optimized can create a major difference in our experience of that product as a user.
Designing a product, not to merely fulfill our needs but optimizing it to make our entire experience fun, effortless and delightful is a difficult task and involves intense research work.
What is UXR and Why does it matter?
UXR or UX Research is the foundation of any user-experience design work. While designing a product, there are many questions in the background that help designers determine if a particular design will suit their target audience or not. Hence, researching what the users want becomes essential in this case. It helps us reduce the probability of building the wrong thing and ensure to build a solution relevant to our users.
Well-informed research separates vague, unascertained designs from designs that are focused on enhanced solutions to solve every problem that a user might face during their product experience. It also helps us give a direction to build our design and gain insights into deriving solutions based on evidence.
There are many ways one can conduct research, whether you are working for an organization with a ton of resources or a freelancer who has just begun their journey.
But every product varies from the other, so how do you decide which research method to opt for to get the best results?
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Unable to decide which research method to use:
It’s important to realize why you wish to conduct research before digging into how you will do it.
- You have a target audience to build a product for, consequently, if you don’t engage with them to know what they want, your designs are going to be based on mere assumptions and will not serve to solve user-specific issues.
- Without a goal you can build an expensive and well-researched product but does your audience require those extra details? You can easily save yourself time and cut down on unnecessary costs if you narrow down your design research to meet the client’s needs.
- You have to build more efficient and user-centric designs which are adding value to enhance the user’s experience.
Once you determine what insights are you seeking from users, it’ll be easier to decide which research approach would suit your project. Asking questions such as:
- Who is your target audience?
- What do they expect from the product?
- How do they currently do things?
- How would they like to do them?
will help you narrow your research approaches to those that suit your project’s demands.
Types of UX research methods:
There are mainly two types of research methods, quantitative and qualitative, depending on what type of data you intend to collect. Quantitative user research answers the question, of how many, whereas qualitative user research answers the question, of why. For preparing informative research, it is recommended that you use a combination of quantitative as well as qualitative research methods.
Quantitative UX Research Methods:
Eye-tracking:
Eye-tracking is worth being conducted to understand whether your form design is optimized for quick scanning i.e. if users can scan the form and understand all required fields at a glimpse.
Web Analytics:
Web analytics help you understand a user’s behavior on a website and can provide insights into how users interact with the design. It can reveal navigation, design, and other issues about the product.
Heat-mapping:
Heat mapping allows you to track and analyze visitors’ navigational patterns to determine the areas of maximum user engagement with the user interface.
A/B Testing:
You don’t have to base your design on your instincts or personal preferences. A/B testing is a technique that lets you provide the user with variants of the same design, to help them choose which one serves better.
Benchmarking:
UX benchmarking is useful to evaluate the user’s experience of your product and compare it with other available products. It lets you judge better where your design is compared to others.
Qualitative UX Research Methods:
User Interviews:
Interviewing people can be time-consuming, but after you’ve narrowed down your interviewees to a specific target audience, questioning them can give you many meaningful insights into your product design. It lets you deep-dive into how your design might affect the user’s experience.
Usability Tests:
It helps you determine problems and opportunities with your design by observing how a user interacts with it.
Card Sorting:
The card Sorting technique aims to understand how people understand and categorize information. It comes in handy when sorting ample amounts of data for a better understanding of the audience. It is used to understand Information Architecture on websites.
Field Studies:
Field studies help you understand things better directly in the user’s environment than conducting some research from your office.
Surveys & Questionnaires:
These are great ways to get a large amount of data from a targeted group of people. These are helpful to get the product or service-related information and receive feedback about their feelings and thoughts about the product.
What are Behavioural Research and its impact?
While conducting research, it’s essential to be able to differentiate between behavioral and attitudinal analysis. Attitudinal research tells you the user’s stated beliefs about the product but oftentimes it differs from their behavior in a particular situation. Researching to gather behavioral data can help build real-time efficient products.
Behavioral research is a crucial part of UX. It gives you an original sense of how people interact with your product in the real world. It involves methods such as A/B testing and eye-tracking.
Conclusion:
You now know,
- Why is UX research the foundation of UX design?
- How can choosing an appropriate research method for your project give you insights into making your designs efficient in the real world?
It’s important to analyze user’s behavior to enhance their experience through the product. Building a user-centric design will not just benefit customers but also businesses.