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What is User Research?

User Research enables teams to uncover user needs, behaviors, and motivations by gathering data in a structured way, analyzing quantitative and qualitative data to better understand how people work and experience our products.

By better understanding our users, we can improve existing applications, generate new ideas, and spark innovation by:

• Ensuring we’re focusing on solving the right problem(s) and increasing product-market fit
• Assessing and measuring outcomes to ensure products and services meet the needs of our Creators
• Modifying, refining, and continuously improving our offerings

Research is about uncovering users’ needs, not asking users what we should build.

http://lkonopski.blogspot.com/2017/12/always-say-junk-fix-never-quick-fix.html

Human-centered design focuses on deeply understanding your target audience and putting their needs at the center of the design and development process. By understanding their needs, motivations, frustrations, and contexts, we can build more relevant, efficient, and effective products.

What People Think Researchers Do…

What Researchers Actually Do…

Why is Research Valuable?

https://www.jackvinson.com/blog/2016/8/11/no-thanks-too-busy

Focuses resources

User research helps teams prioritize the right work and maximize the value of the product. It helps ensure we’re focusing on solving the right problem(s) and increasing product-market fit.

Avoids redevelopment

A common argument is that research takes too long. But research often actually saves time, because it helps teams build things correctly the first time.

Reduces rollout costs

User research helps de-risk projects and rollouts. Instead of building something in isolation for several months, research throughout the development can ensure the product actually meets users’ needs and is valuable, which will increase the predictability of adoption.

What’s the product development process?

Developed by author

Before diving into User Research, consider

• Are there common sense fixes?
• Can your questions be answered by desk research or subject matter experts?
• Has research already been done on this topic?
• Could a heuristic evaluation suffice? (10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, UX Heuristics, First Principles of Interaction Design)
• Are you simply validating decisions that have already been made? Does your timeline prevent you from dedicating sufficient time and resources to actually make changes based on the research?

If the answer is yes, then user research might not be the best place to start.

Types of Research Methods

Below are two tables that highlight the most common qualitative and quantitative methods you’ll likely use, as well as their pros, cons, and when to use them.

Common Qualitative Methods

Table developed by author

Common Quantitative Methods

Table developed by author

Now that we know the common methods, it’s helpful to consider when they might best fit into each phase of the product development process.

Table developed by author

Setting Up and Conducting User Interviews

Research goals act as your North Star to guide and focus your research. Especially in qualitative interviews, you’ll gather a plethora of rich data, which can sometimes be overwhelming. Writing clear research goals up front and referring back to them during your study will help you stay focused and collate targeted and useful findings.

Writing good research goals

Let’s walk through an example. A Product Manager might define a research goal as “Find out how to get participants to order food online.” But unfortunately this isn’t a good goal. It’s hard to get someone to do something. Instead we need to understand their thought processes and habits to understand their motivations and behavior. A better goal would be to uncover participants’ thought processes and prior experiences behind ordering food online.

When doing exploratory interviews, good research goals might be:

• Understand glows and grows in the current platform onboarding and training process
• Uncover what (if any) resources and supports are missing from our current onboarding experience

For concept testing, you might want to:

• Understand Creators’ needs around finding and inputting formulas while building products
• Understand Creators’ expectations, motivations, and requirements for security and permissions functionality

For usability testing, your focus might be:

• Uncover any pain points or challenges related to transitioning to an app-first mental model
• Identify pain points and areas of confusion within a newly launched feature

And when writing a survey, maybe you’re looking to:

• Track the platform’s holistic engagement and user sentiment
• Understand users’ pain point prioritization

Asking good questions

Asking the right questions is actually one of the hardest parts of user research. It takes time to learn how to resist your impulse to ask biased, leading questions. This article covers great ways to improve your interview questions.

See some of the highlights below:

Table developed by author based on information from this article

Things to keep in mind during interviews

• Be open-minded and listen to understand — not to answer. The interviewee is your teacher, and you are the student.
• Be aware of participant bias, the tendency of participants in an experiment to consciously or subconsciously act in a way that they think the experimenter or researcher wants them to act. Be upfront that you want candid feedback because it’s most beneficial and will help you make the product better for everyone (i.e. “Tell me what you’re thinking — not what you think I want to hear”).
• Be wary of confirmation bias, the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. Review audio recordings if possible — you’ll often notice phrases you didn’t initially, and consider analyzing the data with key stakeholders to make sure you all arrive at similar conclusions.
• Have them explain their thinking (painfully) explicitly. Ask them to share specific examples to get richer, more detailed responses — “Walk me through the last time you downloaded an app” instead of only asking “How do you download apps?”
• Continuously ask “why” in order to uncover the root of the issue, which reduces your need to make assumptions and inferences. You need to uncover their deeper need, and then you can design an appropriate solution from that understanding. Look for patterns across participants.
• Focus on needs and understanding, not simply preference. Users aren’t designers. They can’t accurately predict future behavior, they can (unintentionally) misrepresent their behavior, and they don’t always know what they want.

General Interviewing Tips

• Answer questions with questions to maximize learning. “What would you expect it to do?” or “How would you want it to work?”
• Observe what they do, not just what they say. Take note of their tone and body language as well.
• Ask them to share their screen. Instead of relying on verbal descriptions, invite participants to share their screens and walk you through how they do something in depth.
• Pause between questions to give participants time to think and formulate answers. Pauses encourage them to keep talking and explaining their reasoning.
• Don’t express your own opinion and don’t provide positive or negative feedback to their responses. Keep things as neutral as possible and don’t provide feedback. If you respond positively to some comments and not to others, participants will likely try to moderate their behavior and responses accordingly.