23 questions and 10 methods to help you pick the best user research strategy for your users and budget
What do you think of when you hear the term “user research”? Many will immediately think only of user interviews. They’ll picture a one-and-done activity collecting input before moving on to the next step in the process. Some may dismiss the ideas as cumbersome: a nice-to-have if budget and time allows.
In reality, user research is both essential and attainable. It’s a key element to delivering the right thing to users, and it can take many more forms than user interviews. Rather than a one-time check-in, user research can be an important element in each stage of the design process, including discovery, validation/testing, and post-launch. User research helps companies understand what users think and how they behave. There are different types of user research methods that we use to inform our clients on how to improve website usability, minimize user frustration, drive quality leads, improve conversion rates, and more.
Finding the Right User Research Method is Key
User research is not conducted with a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s essential to select the right method based on your company’s needs, goals, timeline, and budget. This will ensure you’re collecting effective and useful data and insights that are worth your time and money. User research methods can make a significant impact in the following ways:
It influences your project cost and duration.
It can determine how you pick your partner or lead.
It defines the specificity of answers to your most important questions.
It can be a factor in how seriously the findings considered.
We partner with our clients to conduct both qualitative (in-depth insights) and quantitative (numerical data) user research. These different types of research methods reveal valuable information about the target audience. Here are several examples of the research methods that we execute at various stages of the design process:
Personas
Usability Testing and Interviews
Stakeholder Interviews
Focus Groups
Contextual Inquiries/Shadowing
Diary Study
A/B Testing
Multivariate Testing
Accessibility Testing
Card Sorting
Navigation Testing
Tree Testing
5-Second Test
Journey Mapping
Eye Tracking
Heat Mapping
Competitive Comparison
User Feedback Survey
User Analytics
Goals will Help Inform Your User Research Method
How do you find the right research method? You need to first pinpoint your company’s user research goal(s) to inform a particular method. What is the goal of your user research? What questions do you want answered? Do you need some some new product ideas?
Here are examples of goal-oriented questions aligned by research method. The answers to these questions teach our clients more about their users, including what they think, what they value, their pain points, how they take action, etc.
Stakeholder Interviews:
What matters to the client?
What does the client think about the product?
Competitive Comparison:
Is this feature going to be a key differentiator for the client?
How do users evaluate the product against the competition?
Usability Testing and Interviews:
How do users complete tasks?
What is the user’s feedback on a tangible prototype or product?
What’s working or not working on the site or app?
How do lots of users conduct specific tasks?
What do users think about the experience?
Journey Mapping:
What are users' experiences from awareness to consideration to a decision?
Tree Testing
Where do users click to accomplish their goal?
Where do users' journeys begin?
A/B Testing:
Which version best achieves the goal of the test?
Multivariate Testing:
How do various UI elements interact with each other and support incremental improvements to a design?
Card Sorting:
How can we categorize and label content?
How do users define the groups?
Where do users place topics into our groups?
Navigation Testing:
How successfully can users move through a series of steps?
Where are users clicking to reach their goals?
How can we optimize the users’ navigation?
Accessibility Testing:
Does the product work for users with special needs?
Is the product inclusive across gender, racial, geographic, socio-economic lines?
Eye Tracking:
Which elements are distracting, findable, or discoverable?
We partner with our clients to identify important questions and how best to find the answers to them. With user research, we listen and learn from users so we can better inform and strengthen the design process. As a result, companies cultivate more satisfying user experiences, while expanding growth opportunities for their brands.
Do you have additional questions about user research? We are here to help, contact us! Also, check out our related post on “Do-it-Yourself-Recruiting for User Research.”