Your User Experience Journey: Research.
“People ignore design that ignores people.”-Frank Chimero is a designer, illustrator, and author based in New York.
In UX research the main focus is to design products that speak to your users. You’re solving a problem for them or rather bringing a solution to their already existing problem, but how can you bring a solution to your users when you don’t have the right information about them. User research is the process of discovering exactly what your users need, but more importantly how to solve that need.
It’s the process of discovering their behaviors, motivations, and pain points, and this can be done through observation, feedback methodology, interviews, and a few other mediums. Qualitative user research is more cost-effective and also very easy to understand.
We might be the one designing the whole experience but our users are the ones who’ll be stuck with our product so we need to provide the best user experience to them by thinking in ways they would think while using our product, and what they’ll do while using our product.
Now that we have an understanding of what user research is, let’s dive deep into the steps of creating a user research plan. Here are the seven steps when it comes to creating a user research plan.
- Define a clear problem statement.
- Your research objective.
- Determine the research method.
- Recruit participants.
- Conduct Research.
- Timeline.
- How to present your findings.
Define a clear problem statement:
Always clearly identify and state the problems you’re trying to solve, or a condition you’re trying to improve upon, this will show you the gap between your user’s problem and the end result of solving such problems, by so doing it will make other processes easier and lead you to the next line of action, your problem statement should have the needed and right information in it. Your problem statement can be gotten from feedback from your support team, stakeholders’ interviews, already existing data, etc.
Your problem statement should describe the existing problem, when, where this problem is met and the effect it has on your users as well as the business.
An abstract example of a problem statement will be this:
“Jane, a working mom of two needs someone who will pick up her kids from school every day while she’s at work, she wants to be able to track the person as well as her kids until they arrive safely at her place of work where she takes them home after working hours.”
Research Objective: The objective of your research should give you the why and what you want from your research, it should fall in line with your problem statement, your end goal should be your takeout for your research, this way the questions you ask your participants will be inline with the information you need, as this will help you easily erase data that are not useful for you and your team.
And you should keep in mind the five why techniques when carrying out your research, this will help you get to the root of your research, you can use the five why techniques by asking your participants why they do what they do, why they acted in certain ways, and other why instances, be sure to pay close attention to the logic of cause and effect relationship, and asking why until you get to the root of the problem you’re trying to solve.
It should follow a pattern, first comes to the problem statement, then the objective, and followed by what action should be taken to carry out such an objective.
Determine the research method: There are various techniques you could use when carrying out your research, you need to decide what method is suitable for you which could be based on the project type, the project goals, the resources as well as the research team.
Whatever research method you choose should be in line with your objective above and help you and your team make knowledgeable decisions.
(Here is a more detailed article on when and which user experience research method to use by the Nielsen Norman Group.
Recruit participants: Now it’s time to choose the right participants for your research, you need to be sure they’re tailored to your project’s desired goals and the questions you’re trying to answer, it’s also important you pick the right number of people when conducting your research.
You can do this by analyzing the different types of people who will be making use of your product, you can list them out and make a persona for each. When also picking out the number of participants for your research you should also keep in mind the resources at hand, in such cases, you might be required to focus on average or typical use and not edge cases. If you already have a user base you can as well get some or most of the data you might need.
Conduct Research: So you’ve gotten your participants, your objective, and your questions ready, it’s time for you to start conducting the research.
“To find ideas, find problems. To find problems, talk to people.”-Julie Zhou, designer and author of “The making of a manager.”
You should follow the same processes for all your participants, whatever plan you have chosen, their main focus should be on the goals, all background distractions should be taken care of in order to avoid any distractions that will pull them away from your objective, try as much you can to present an open-ended question to avoid one-sided answers, one key takeout is to pay close attention to your participants and guide them subtly when they’re drifting away from the course of research.
Timeline: Based on the method you use, project release date, number of participants, and what your intended findings are, you should determine your timeline for your research. It could be days or even weeks, or maybe months.
Also, keep in mind what your stakeholder expectations are for the research and their expected result from your findings. There are cases where a fixed timeline can be met based on a few factors.
How to present your findings: Research presentations are as important as the research itself, you need to choose a suitable medium to present your findings to your stakeholders in an easy and understandable way.
Your presentation needs to describe the goal of the research, findings as well as the next line of action to take, it needs to show how the research process went, though your presentation shouldn’t be too long that it bores others listening to you, its data should be simplified with clear visuals. Remember the five “why” we talked about? Well, that shouldn’t be left. One of the ways to show your presentation is through slides, you could use other mediums as you see fit.
You’ve come to the end of this phase, remember user research is an endless process that gives you opportunities to always improve and make better-informed decisions, so good luck with that.
