What's the Best Way to Conduct User Research?

You want to provide the best possible experience for your customers. But in order to do that, you need to know how they think.

This is where user research can help--if you know how to do it.

There is no one way to conduct user research, but you do want to select the right method for your desired results. Here's how to figure out what type of research you need and the best way to conduct it.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative

First, you should decide whether you're doing qualitative or quantitative research.

Qualitative research is a research process seeking an in-depth understanding of social phenomena within its natural setting. In general, it focuses on three areas:

1. Individuals
2. Societies and cultures
3. Language and communication

Basically, it strives to tell you why something occurs on the basis of words and understanding. It helps to put it in context of quantitative research.

If qualitative research tells you why, quantitative research tells you what. Quantitative research uses mathematics and statistical analysis to understand numeric data.

So if quantitative research answers the question, "How many customers aged 20 to 24 engage with our product?" qualitative research answers the question, "Why do customers aged 20 to 24 engage with our product more often than customers aged 35 to 40?"

How do you know which one you're after, or which one you're conducting?

Qualitative research relies on exploratory methods such as interviews, ethnographies, or usability tests to get a sense of individual or group experiences. Quantitative research relies on surveys and formal experiments to quantify user behavior in numeric terms.

Selecting a Suitable Method

Once you split research between quantitative and qualitative, the next question is which method (and techniques within that method) is right for you.

For that, you have to be able to answer a few essential questions, such as:

●       What kind of information are you trying to gather?

●       Why do you want to gather that information?

●       What will that information represent for your company?

●       What gaps will be filled by completing this research?

●       What solutions do you wish to present based on your findings?

Basically, you need to define your goal. This, in turn, will clarify the information you need and how you can acquire it.

The Five Steps of UX Research

You know what information you need and you know what questions to ask.

Now, it's time to collect your data.

User research is split into five steps:

1. Objectives
2. Hypotheses
3. Methods
4. Conduct
5. Synthesize

It's a lot like a science experiment in your high school biology class. You define what you're after, the hypotheses you're trying to prove or disprove, the methods you're using to prove or disprove it, the experiment itself, and the process of turning your results into usable data.

Objectives

First, you need to define your objectives.

Your objectives are the questions you're trying to answer through user research. Since this is user research, the objectives guide what you'll bring to the table at your next product meeting.

Let's say you're working on your proprietary software that provides abbreviated news updates from all the biggest stories across the web. You and your team are debating whether to roll out an update that will allow users to share clips from news stories to their social media feeds.

It sounds pretty cool, but you're not quite sure who would use the feature or why they would use it.

Enter, user research.

Objectives are when you discuss goals and framing: who, what, where, when, why. This allows you to generate questions, like, "Who would share these clips?" These questions translate into your objectives and determine the scope of your research. There are all kinds of research objectives, so the world is your oyster.

Hypotheses

Once you have your objectives, you can start to form hypotheses.

On the face of it, you might think that these are the same thing. Not quite. If an objective is your road map, then your hypothesis is a predicted final location.

A hypothesis is a prediction. Based on the question you've posed, your hypothesis is one potential answer to that question.

Think of it this way.

When you structure user research, your objective is the question you're trying to answer. Your hypothesis is a potential answer to that question, and all of your research and data collection is designed to either prove or disprove that hypothesis.

This is important beyond the predictive element. Stating your hypothesis clearly helps your team clarify your research objective and helps minimize the effect of your own biases on the results.

Methods

You have a question and you have a potential result.

Now, it's time to bridge the gap.

To do this, you'll need to establish research methods. Your methods are the means of collecting and interpreting your data in order to make meaningful conclusions.

You can go for almost any research method under the sun, but you're most often limited by time and manpower.

This is when you would implement things like:

●       Surveys

●       Cognitive walkthroughs

●       Paper prototyping

●       Participatory design activities

●       Observational or contextual interviews

●       Market explorations

●       Trend explorations

Let's say you want to do something simple, like figure out your customer demographic information. One of the simplest methods of doing this is a survey.

Conduct

From there, it's time to put your methods in action and conduct your research.

It's helpful to spell out your methods in advance so that you know how much time and manpower must be dedicated to the project successfully.

Whatever your methods are, it's essential that you conduct your research consistently. If you use a survey, make sure all of your participants get exactly the same survey.

That said, you can shift your methods slightly on the go if you realize that you could get more useful information by changing them. But once you shift them, make sure to be consistent long enough to get significant results.

Synthesize

Finally, it's time to bring it all together and synthesize your results.

Synthesis is when you work to find meaning in your data, rather than cold numbers or individual responses. It's often messy, as you can't necessarily take something at face value, but then again, that's half the fun of it.

At this stage, you may have spent quite a while conducting research. So it's easy to want fast results. But this is precisely when you need to take your time--the longer you spend synthesizing, the more value you can extract from your data.

One of the most basic questions to ask yourself at this stage is whether you proved or disproved your hypothesis. You should also ask whether the results suggest that you need to reframe your original objective and whether the research uncovered additional knowledge gaps.

The end goal of synthesis is to create concise, actionable findings that guide your business forward.

Conducting Successful User Research

User research can be deeply rewarding for you and your customers alike. Once you know where you're headed, you're ready to collect useful data.

The trick to good research is being specific about what you're after. Don't be afraid to really whittle it down--after all, you won't get specific answers if you don't ask specific questions.