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Introduction To UX Research

User experience research fits into the product development life cycle before, during, and after design. There are three main types of UX research: foundational research which answers "What should we build?" and helps define problems; design research which answers "How should we build it?" and informs the design; and post-launch research which answers "Did we succeed?" and evaluates how well features meet user needs. UX research requires qualities like empathy, pragmatism, and collaboration and different research methods are used depending on the questions being asked.

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Yadhushua Cimeni
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134 views2 pages

Introduction To UX Research

User experience research fits into the product development life cycle before, during, and after design. There are three main types of UX research: foundational research which answers "What should we build?" and helps define problems; design research which answers "How should we build it?" and informs the design; and post-launch research which answers "Did we succeed?" and evaluates how well features meet user needs. UX research requires qualities like empathy, pragmatism, and collaboration and different research methods are used depending on the questions being asked.

Uploaded by

Yadhushua Cimeni
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Let's shift gears and talk about user experience research.

Because I'm a UX researcher, I'm particularly


looking forward to this section. Coming up, we're going to talk about how user
experience research fits into the development
of a product, common types of UX
research methods and their benefits and drawbacks,
and biases in UX research. As we get started, it's important to keep
in mind that the role of a UX designer can look very different at
different companies. At a larger company like Google, with thousands
of employees, UX designers often have a dedicated user experience
research partner so designers don't have to
do much research themselves. But at a smaller company, one UX designer
might be responsible for both the UX research
and the UX design. That's why it's so
critical for you to learn how to do
both parts of the job. Plus having some research
skills can be really enticing to companies that are eager to hire new UX designers.
Let's start with the basics. UX research focuses on
understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through
observation and feedback. The goal of user
experience research is to prioritize the user. We also want to make sure
business needs are met. UX research can
help bridge the gap between what a business
thinks the user needs and what the user
actually needs, before an expensive and time-consuming
product is made. How does UX research fit into the development
of a product? To answer this question, we need to zoom out and revisit the product
development life cycle. You may remember that the product development life cycle is
the process used to take a product from an
idea to reality. User research is a
continuous part of the product development life cycle
and takes place before, during, and after phase 3: Design. Research that takes
place before anything is designed is usually called
foundational research. Some UX teams might also call it strategic or
generative research. All three terms mean
the same thing, but in this course, we'll stick with
foundational research. Foundational research answers the question, "What
should we build?" Additional questions
you might ask during this research phase are, "What are the user problems?" "How
can we solve them?" The goal of foundational
research is to help define the problem you would like to design
a solution for. This research includes
talking with users and identifying their
pain points when using a product. And guess what? Sometimes foundational research
reveals opportunities no one on the design team
would have come up with. Research that takes place
during the design phase, phase 3, of the product
development life cycle, is called design research. Some teams call it
tactical research, but both terms refer
to the same thing. Design research
answers the question, "How should we build it?" Here's a list of things
you might want to ask users about during this
phase of research. How was your experience
using the prototype today? How easy or difficult
was it to use? Why? Did you encounter
any challenges? The goal of design research is to inform how the product
should be built. Design research gives
designers a chance to reduce the problems that occur as users interact with
your prototype. You can conduct design
research very early in the design process when
you have paper sketches, or you can wait until you have a prototype to test with
users. It just depends on what your
key research goals are. The third type of user research is called post-launch
research. You might guess that
post-launch research only happens at the end of the
product development life cycle. Post-launch research can
be used to evaluate how well a launch feature is
meeting the needs of users. Post-launch research answers the question, "Did we
succeed?" The goal of post-launch research is to understand how users experienced
the product
and whether it was a good or poor user experience. You might also want to check
your product's performance
against the competition. Next, let's discuss some of the key qualities that UX
researchers usually possess. Qualities of a good
UX researcher include empathy, pragmatism,
and collaboration. Empathy is the
ability to understand someone else's feelings or
thoughts in a situation. Pragmatism is a practical
approach to problem-solving. Pragmatic people are
focused on reaching goals. Collaboration is the ability to work with a range of
people, personalities, and work styles. You already have all
of these qualities. All you need to do is learn how to apply them in your work. The
more you develop
these qualities, the more capable a
researcher you can become over time, so keep at it. If you want to specialize
as a UX researcher, you'll need some
additional training. While our program
focuses on UX design, keep in mind that research is always a part of
the design process. Next, we'll discuss the types of research methods used for
different research questions.

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