User Research Fundamentals: Tips to get them Right - Review

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash depicting User Research Fundamentals

It is highly important to get the user research fundamentals right.

In this article, I share a few tips to get them right.

The tips are inspired from the learnings from Conversion Optimization Minidegree at CXL Institute.

What is User Research

In user research, our focus is in understanding the goals, needs, and beliefs of the people.

When we have these detailed insights, we can create better experiences for the users.

Better the experience of the user, higher the business value.

It is important in user research, to get things right in the start or the requirements stage.

In the requirements stage, we can have many design alternatives at a relatively lower cost.

As the product moves to development phase, the cost of change increases rapidly.

So with User research, you can reduce the risks and save a lot of money to the company.

On a positive note, it helps in identifying opportunities to delight customers.

A proper user research helps in conversions and sales.

Good sales help in more and better results.

If the experience of the user is good, we get increased retention.

The reason being, the user is satisfied because the productivity has increased.

This is the reason for getting the user research fundamentals right.

When done right, user research helps in decreasing development costs through fewer cycles or iterations.

Users face fewer errors.

The features and how to becomes obvious.

This reduces the training and support costs for the company.

Different Research Technique to Answer different research questions

The research questions are usually divided in two broad terms:

• Qualitative
• Quantitative

They can further be categorized into Attitudinal and Behavioral.

For Qualitative, we have questions like "Why" and "How to Fix".

In Quantitative, we ask questions for "how many" and "how much".

For Attitudinal, the questions are more about "What people say".

In Behavioral, it is more about "What people do".

Accordingly, we can have research tools like

• Interviews and focus groups for Attitudinal Qualitative.

• Intercept and Email surveys for Attitudinal Quantitative.
• Usability Lab Testing for Behavioral Qualitative.
• A/B Testing for Behavioral Quantitative.

How to Lead a User Research

User Research takes deep insights.

Sometimes, so deep that they are not apparent in a brain storming sessions.

The best way to lead a user research is by describing the problem entirely.

Without mentioning which method or type of research we are going to use in the statement.

If one start the user research with a question like - "I want to do an interview", it is a bad approach.

Nothing is known. Why do you want to do an interview and nothing else?

What data can you gather?

There is a lot of difference in what people say they do and what they actually do.

This is the reason, in user research, focus is given more to the observation of user actually doing something.

User Research Stages and Tools

The User Research stages are broadly classified into four:

• Discover Stage - The question asked here is What are the user needs or problems.
• Explore Stage - We are more interested to ask about the way we might address the needs. The "How".
• Test Stage - We have a solution now. How well does it address the needs of the user?
• Listen Stage - The solution we made. Did it help us achieve our goals?

Some common tools used for each stage are following:

Discover - we can use ethnographic field study, diary study, user interviews, stakeholders interviews, requirements gathering.

Explore - Tools like competitive analysis, design review, persona building, task analysis, journey mapping, prototype feedback and testing, card sorting can be used.

Test - we can use usability testing either in-person or remote, benchmark testing, eye tracking or heat mapping.

Listen - Common tools are Surveys and Analysis of the analytics collected.

Zooming in on Interviews

The role of interviews is very significant in User Research.

We can generally design an interview for user research with simple steps.

First, we define the goals of an interview.

We then make a data collection template based on the goals we identify.

Third is the Interview.

It should be like a conversation with the user.

The more "why" we ask, the more insights we can get.

With few pro-tips, we can avoid the traps in interviews.

These traps can be lead to insufficient, irrelevant or incorrect data to be collected.

Users are not necessarily marketing term savvy people.

So it is always better to avoid the jargon terms.

Do not assume that the user can predict their future behavior.

The behavior can definitely be covered in usability testing.

We should avoid restrictive questioning.

So ask such questions that lets the user explain more about their experience.

We can gain much more insights than asking subjective questions.

Surveys are equally important

For good analysis, we need data from a larger population.

We cannot interview them all.

But, we can use a survey to reach out to them.

Surveys are done on a sample from a given population.

The sample should be representative of the population.

Surveys need to have clear and specific goals.

I have covered Surveys in much depth in my another blog post:

How to make Best Surveys using Survey Tools

There are a few common errors that occur in Surveys that we can try to avoid:

• Coverage Error - This error occurs when you are not able to cover the complete sample. Although they are part of the representative group from the population.
• Sampling Error - This error occurs when the sampling is not done right. The sample generated is not representative of the population.
• Measurement Error - Your method of measuring something is incorrect. This can be poorly designed questions or the options given for the questions.
• Non-response Error - You assumed that all groups will respond in equal amounts or percentage. But, one group turns out to be more responsive than another.

Conclusion - User Research Fundamentals

The better we understand our users, the better products we can design.

It started with getting the user research fundamentals right.

Good user research helps in designing products that boost the productivity of the users.

This element eventually helps in increasing conversions and sales for the company.

User Research is a very interesting and booming field now.

Though, many companies still do not call it with that name.

The field is between product development and design.

In this article, I covered a few recommended tips form the expert practitioner of user research.

There is much more to learn and get skilled at CXL Institute.

Additional Readings:

How to Build a User Research Culture

How to Use Qualitative Research to Drive Conversions

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Home page of the blog: Insights by Faheem