Most UX teams live every day with the anxiety that they don’t truly know what their users want and need. Over two blog posts, we’re answering two fundamental questions about UX research - why to do it and how to do it.

Most UX teams live every day with the anxiety that they don’t truly know what their users want and need. They think they know. They build features and experiences that they hope will satisfy user needs. They may even do some usability or user acceptance testing to work out the bugs and make sure what they built works as intended.

In our experience, though, most organizations don’t have the time and resources to do the type of in-depth research that ensures you’re solving the core problems of your users.

After all, what’s a product worth if it doesn’t help a real person solve a real need in the real world?

Over two blog posts, we’re answering two fundamental questions about UX research - why to do it and how to do it.

## Part 2: How to do UX research the right way.

The only thing worse than not doing any UX research is doing the wrong UX research. 

It’s hard enough to build a successful product for users when you don’t understand the problems you’re trying to solve for people. It’s a whole other challenge when you find you’ve been solving the wrong problems because your research led you down the wrong path.

Here are five steps you can take to make sure you create and execute a research plan that will deliver real results for your users, your customers, and your business.

### Step 1: Clearly Define Your Objectives 

The first step in putting together a research plan is to answer the most important question: Why are you doing this research?   

When not thought out or planned well, user research can be expensive, frustrating, and time-consuming and it won’t end up delivering much for the effort.

You need to be able to clearly articulate what you’re going to gain by doing this research and what success looks like for you and your team.

Here are two ways to clearly define your goals and criteria for success:

1. __Talk to the people who have a stake in the success of the product.__ 
We throw the term “stakeholders” around a little too loosely sometimes. Think of it literally and put sincere effort into clearly understanding the stakes. How can research help those stakeholders answer their most important questions?  What would success look like for them and for their business?

2. __Review before you start.__ 
Too many research projects rush past this initial research step in anticipation of generating new insights. Previous research studies, existing analytics data, customer support tickets, and competitors’ products are all great sources of information that can help you more clearly see what you already know and what you need research to help you uncover. 

### Step 2: Choose your Methods

Based on the information you gathered when defining your objectives, your next step is to determine the best research methods to uncover the answers you need.  

There is one key question to ask when choosing your research methods.  

__Do you want to hear what people say about something or do you want to see what they actually do?__

If you’re interested in what people say or think about a problem or potential solution then you may want to start with a quantitative survey followed by user interviews. A quantitative survey will measure and categorize a user’s stated opinions toward your product or service and identify areas where you can dive deeper in interviews. But they’re only as reliable as what people tell you they might do in a hypothetical future situation or what they remember doing in the past.

If your research questions are more focused on actual user behavior then you have a few options. You could choose to run a usability study that’s moderated by a researcher and recorded to track how users complete specific tasks. You can also try an ethnographic (or field) study that watches people “in the wild” as they go through the steps to accomplish a task or solve a problem your product is designed to fix.

Either way, it’s a good idea to mix quantitative and qualitative methods so you get a good picture of what people are saying side-by-side with what they actually do. Turns out, we’re all human and we often say one thing while doing the exact opposite.

__Pro Tip:__ Video clips are often the best way to get stakeholders to see the issues and feel the users struggle in specific contexts.  

### Step 3: Recruit the Right Users

No matter what research method you choose, you’ll need people to participate in the research. But it can’t be just anybody you know who “kind of” fits the profile. You need to source real users who really do (or would) use your product or service. 

This is often the most time-consuming part of any research project because it’s a little like herding cats. People don’t show up for scheduled sessions, change their minds about participating or just don’t feel interested in giving you feedback. 

To make recruitment as effective as possible look at your current user base or analytics data to choose people who fit the right profile or behavior pattern for the questions you want to answer.  If you haven’t launched yet, do some market research and look at who uses similar products in your space. Recruiting the right people means you can talk to less of them because you’ll quickly start to see the biggest trends that are most common to your core user and you can more thoroughly [understand and empathize with their pains](https://drawbackwards.com/blog/understanding-your-audience-through-empathy-and-research-ux-design-competency-3). 

Recruitment agencies or online tools like UserZoom, User Interviews, or Respondent.io are good sources for recruiting users quickly. However, they can get expensive, don’t always have the user you need, and can deliver folks who are a bit more experienced at testing products than an average person (the dreaded professional testers). You may need to do some guerilla-style recruitment through Facebook groups or personal and professional networks.

One of the best options if you have a large existing user base and are testing things like usability of new features is to cultivate a user feedback program or panel. Your existing user base can sign up to be on-call research testers that you can tap into from time to time for feedback on new features or ideas. 

However you source your participants, you’ll need to think about compensation. It’s extremely rare to find a lot of people who will give you their time and feedback for free. Compensation needs to be based on the type of participant and their role. Professional users responding to a research request for a tool or process related to their work will expect something close to what they make in their salary or hourly wage. Users opening their personal lives to research may respond to slightly lower compensation but it still must match their general expectations for what they would want to receive in exchange for the amount of time and effort you’re requesting.

### Step 4: Create a Research Plan and Scripts

This is another step that’s often overlooked in the rush to get in front of users and gather quick feedback and insights. But a good research plan will tie together your research questions, the methods you’ve chosen to answer those questions and your recruitment plan into a cohesive outline that you can follow as you conduct the research and gather the data.

Scripts help researchers stay focused and on track and remember to cover all the research questions and topics. They also allow multiple researchers to moderate different sessions with consistency. Qualitative, open-ended questions help get the user talking about how they currently accomplish a task or solve certain problems related to the product in their day-to-day lives. 

The key to conducting great research is having a great plan, putting the plan into action, and then shutting up and listening. It’s easy to overreach and ask too many questions or direct the user toward your own assumptions. The most powerful tool in user research is silence. Users will often fill the silence with an insight or observation you never would have thought to ask about.

### Step 5: Launch Your Research

With a plan in place, it’s time to schedule your research sessions and execute the research plan. The key to this step is not being afraid to make mistakes and adjust on the fly. No two user interviews, usability sessions, or ethnographic studies are the same. Just like your product, your research plan needs the flexibility to adapt to real users. You’ll learn a lot from your first few sessions about what works and what doesn’t. Adjust your plan as needed but keep your focus on the main questions you’re trying to answer.

A few additional tips:
- Try to remain as neutral as possible to prevent influencing users during your research.
- Don’t ask leading questions (this can lead to confirmation bias of your own assumptions).
- Do ask open-ended questions (this can lead to new and unexpected insights).
- Try to stick to the script and avoid answering any questions from users that may prevent you from witnessing a valid and helpful pain point in the process.
- Try to gain as much context into a user’s actual behaviors as opposed to their intended behaviors or what they say they would do in an ideal situation.
- Invite other team members and stakeholders to observe research sessions for themselves. Nothing brings the point home better than seeing a problem in real life.

### Looking for a Research Partner?

We’re experienced in research methods of all shapes and sizes, from ethnographic studies to quick and agile usability testing. We pride ourselves on choosing methods and building research plans that drive real results.

[Start a conversation](https://drawbackwards.com/contact) and see how we can help take your user research to the next level.

Why and How to Do UX Research

How to Do UX Research

Most UX teams live every day with the anxiety that they don’t truly know what their users want and need. They think they know. They build features and experiences that they hope will satisfy user needs. They may even do some usability or user acceptance testing to work out the bugs and make sure what they built works as intended.

In our experience, though, most organizations don’t have the time and resources to do the type of in-depth research that ensures you’re solving the core problems of your users.

After all, what’s a product worth if it doesn’t help a real person solve a real need in the real world?

Over two blog posts, we’re answering two fundamental questions about UX research - why to do it and how to do it.

# Part 1: Why do UX Research

The most important question in any research project is to ask yourself why you’re doing research in the first place.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Who is the research going to help?

Where, when, and how do you anticipate using the insights from your research to improve the product?

You may not have answers to all these questions right away, but simply by asking them you’ll uncover a lot about whether or not research is the right investment to make right now.

We’re in a unique position at Drawbackwards of advising clients at every stage of the product development process. Some are just getting started and trying to better define the problem they’re looking to solve for people. Others are mature products that are looking to refresh and redefine what they offer. 

Regardless of where they are in the process, there are three common reasons that clients typically ask us to help them with UX research.

## Reason #1

## We have to justify investments that we believe will improve the product.

Of all the reasons to do UX research, this might be the weakest but most common. Many product teams struggle to get a consistent budget for anything much more than keeping the lights on. Yet most product teams know the key areas where their product needs the most help.

That’s why research is often used to justify what the product team thinks it already knows. It’s seen as a tool to “sell” the need for improvements to management and those holding the purse strings.

There are two problems with this approach: 

1. __It’s never a good idea to go into research loaded with assumptions.__
You’re much more likely to only pay attention to what you’re looking for and miss valuable insights in what you didn’t expect (and haven’t thought to budget for).
2. __You’ll likely uncover more than you bargained for.__
On the other end of the spectrum, you may open a Pandora’s box of problems you didn’t know you had, which can draw the wrong kind of attention from the C-suite and distract everybody from the core problems you set out to solve.

That said, there are times when it makes sense to do research to help justify additional investments. Just be sure that you’ve narrowly defined the problem you’re trying to solve and you go into the research with an open mind to what you may uncover that you didn’t anticipate. 

## Reason #2

## We need to understand the reasons behind a problem at a deeper level.

We’re all swimming in a lot of data. Most products and services have analytics that can track every step of the user or customer journey. 

What those passive analytics don’t usually capture is the “why” behind the behavior. That’s where thoughtful and thorough user research can play a valuable role.

It usually takes just a couple of times around the block of creating solutions that don’t eventually work before a UX or product team learns the value of doing research before building solutions.

Exploratory research helps you uncover the deeper motivations of your users and customers, understand their environment, empathize with their core real-world problems, and ideate real solutions that have a better chance of success.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many teams kick the research can down the road and assume they can keep taking stabs at solutions before they put it in front of actual users.

Problems don’t always just jump off the page to designers and developers. They need to see the user in action to understand the context in which the solution will exist. Then, they’ll have what they need to make the tweaks that will take a product from good and functional to great and delightful.

Don’t underestimate the power of sitting down with a user to chat about the problem you’re trying to solve even before you have a solution to offer.

## Reason #3

## We want to identify surface-level UI problems so we can iterate quickly.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with quick usability testing as a pulse check while you’re iterating. In fact, we often build light and simple UX research into two-week design sprints for clients. It’s a great way to make sure what you’re building works as intended and helps you adjust quickly if it doesn’t.

But don’t let that lull you into feeling like you’ve got everything covered. You’ll still want to make sure you have your bases covered with in-depth research that has identified the core problems and characteristics of your users, and you’ll want to make sure the quick tests you did stand up over time.

Keep your finger on the pulse with quick checks but also remember that nothing beats real-world experience and seeing your product or service in the wild.

## For best results, take a blended approach.

We’ve worked with clients on a wide range of problems through the years and we’ve seen a lot of motivations for doing research. Some clients are just starting to understand the problems their users face. Others are digging for new understandings.

In each scenario, we look at the underlying problems and make sure that we’re designing research that uncovers the needs of the users, not just scratches an itch for the product or business team to feel better about decisions they already made.

That’s why we’re big proponents of a mixed approach. Mixing your research methods helps you gain a more holistic view of your product or service and the people who rely on it. Sticking to just one approach will leave you with the impression that the trunk is the only part of the elephant that matters.

For more on how we make sure we use a mixed method approach, check out our next post on how to do UX research.

If you’re interested in having an experienced and trustworthy guide to help you on your research journey, [start a conversation](https://drawbackwards.com/contact) and let’s talk about how we can work together.

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Why and How to Do UX Research

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Why do UX Research

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