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User experience (ux) research: definition and methodology.

17 min read To build outstanding products and services for your customers, you need a thorough understanding of who they are, what they need and where their pain points and priorities lie. UX research helps you fully step into your customers’ shoes.

What do we mean by user experience?

User experience (UX) is a customer’s-eye view of your business as it relates to completing tasks and using interactive platforms and services.

It’s closely tied to the idea of customer experience (CX) , but rather than being a holistic view of your brand, it’s more focused on utility and usability testing – the hands-on side of things. You can think of UX as a sub-discipline of CX .

For example, CX research might consider how customers perceive a company’s customer service levels and how confident they feel in having their issues resolved. Meanwhile, UX research would focus on how successfully those customers navigate a self-service website, whether the language on that site is clear and how easy it is to use.

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What is user experience (UX) research?

User experience (UX) research is about diving deep into how customers interact with your brand on a practical, functional level, and observing how easily they can complete their tasks and meet their goals.

User research is the process of discovering the behaviors , motivations, and needs of your customers through observation, task analysis, and other types of user feedback . It can involve working directly with members of your target audience through UX testing sessions, remote session observation using digital tools, surveys to collect user feedback, and many more UX research methods and techniques.

Why is UX research important?

So what exactly is the value of user experience research? After all, you understand your business and its workings better than anyone. How can uninformed external users help you learn more?

The fresh perspective of your end-users is exactly why UX research is so valuable. Because they’re not already immersed in your language, processes, and systems, user testing participants are in the best position to help you see where things might be confusing to a newcomer who isn’t involved with your business.

Better yet, they can show you where confusion or frustration might lead a new or potential customer to miss out on product benefits, fail to convert, or even give up and look toward your competitors instead.

In areas like new product design and development , user research allows you to head off potential issues with products and services before they even hit the shelves. You can design the product correctly the first time, instead of having to fix it later when customers are unhappy.

Simply put, UX research is critical because it keeps you from wasting time, money, and effort designing the wrong product or solution. It’s valuable for all areas of your business and yields clear benefits for your product, your users, and your bottom line.

• Product benefits By asking your customers for direct feedback about a potential product, you can discover how and when customers prefer to use a product, what pain points your product will solve, and how to improve your product design .
• User benefits UX research is unbiased feedback, straight from the most valuable source: your customers. Because this type of research is not biased by investors, company leaders, or outside influences, it is the best resource for getting actionable product feedback.
• Business benefits Knowing what your users value helps you spend less time and money fixing flawed designs, speeds up the product development process , and increases customer satisfaction.

UX research helps brands and organizations to:

• Understand how users experience products, websites, mobile apps, and prototypes
• Evaluate and optimize prototypes and ideas based on UX research discoveries – and nail the design and experience early in a product’s life cycle
• Unearth new customer needs and business opportunities
• Find and fix hidden problems with products and services that arise in real-world use cases
• Make informed decisions through the product development process by testing various aspects of product designs
• Provide user experiences that outperform other businesses in your sector ( UX competitor research )
• Understand each user interaction across complete customer journeys
• Build a richer, more useful picture of your target audiences for better marketing and advertising

What’s the ROI of performing UX research?

The ROI of UX research is tricky to pin down because there often isn’t a direct, easy-to-spot correlation between time spent on it and resulting revenue. UX research can and does drive revenue, but it more directly influences metrics that show customer satisfaction, customer retention, and behavioral goals like user signups.

A simple way to draw a straight (if basic) line between UX research and its associated ROI is to calculate your conversion rate, where ‘conversion’ simply means completing the action you had in mind:

Number of people who took your desired action

—————————————————————       x 100

Total visitors/users

That percentage can be calculated and revisited over time to see how UX changes resulting from your research are having an effect.

Generally, when we talk about ROI, we’re talking about the highest possible rates of return you can attribute to an investment. But – while PWC research suggests that ROI on UX research can rise to as high as 301% – it’s better not to get caught up in absolutes with operational data like revenue.

Instead, it’s worth thinking more about the benefits that come out of tracking human behavior associated with improving your UX in general.

For example, IBM research states that 3 out of 5 users think that a positive user experience is more influential than strong advertising, while Forrester Research estimates that as many as 50% of potential sales fall through because users can’t find the information they need.

Thorough UX research can also cut a project’s development time by up to 50% .

Ultimately, when trying to track the ROI of your time spent doing quantitative and qualitative research on UX, you want to look at behavior and sentiment. If your main goal is website use, you should notice a decline in bounce rate as a sign of positive ROI. If you sell services, run regular CSAT surveys to determine how satisfied customers are with everything.

You might also find that data in unusual places. For example, if you spot a decline in chatbot requests around how to do or perform certain actions, or for information, then you know your new UX implementations are working as desired.

Those kinds of behavioral data points will shine a light on how worthwhile your UX research has been more readily than changes in revenue.

User experience research methods

The type of UX research techniques you choose will depend on the type of research question you’re tackling, your deadline, the size of your UX research team, and your environment.

There are three research dimensions to consider as you decide which methods are best for your project:

Attitudinal and behavioral

“Attitudinal” refers to what people say, while “ behavioral ” refers to what people actually do – and these are often very different. Attitudinal research is often used in marketing because it measures people’s stated beliefs and needs. However, in product design and user experience research, what people do tends to be more relevant.

For example, A/B testing shows visitors different versions of a site at random to track the effect of site design on conversion and behavior.

Another behavioral method is eye tracking, which helps researchers understand how users interact and visually engage with the design of an interface by following their gaze.

Qualitative and quantitative methods

Quantitative UX research studies collect and analyze results, then generalize findings from a sample to a population. They typically require large numbers of representative cases to work with and are structured in their approach.

Quantitative research uses measurement tools like surveys or analytics to gather data about how subjects use a product and are generally more mathematical in nature. This type of inquiry aims to answer questions like ‘what,’ ‘where’ and ‘when’.

Qualitative research methods, on the other hand, gather information about users by observing them directly, as in focus groups or field studies.

Qualitative research aims to understand the human side of data by gaining a sense of the underlying reasons and motivations surrounding consumer behavior. It tends to use small numbers of diverse (rather than representative) cases, and the data collection approach is less structured. Qualitative methods are best suited to address the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of consumer behavior.

Qualitative UX research methods

Several UX research methodologies can help UX researchers answer those big ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions, and influence the design process of any product or service you’ve got cooking. Here are just a few …

1. Participatory design

In participatory design, people are asked to draw or design their own best-case version of the tool, product, or service in question. This gives UX researchers the ability to ask qualitative questions about why specific choices have been made. If multiple participants make similar choices, it’s easy to spot patterns that should be adopted.

You might ask participants how they would redesign your website. While their responses will naturally vary, you might spot that several of them have moved your site’s navigation to a more prominent spot, or have moved the checkout from the left of the screen to the right.

2. Card sorting

Card sorting involves giving participants a range of cards that represent business-specific topics and asking them how they would sort them into groups. UX researchers are then able to probe into why their audience might group certain things, and make changes to existing offerings as a result.

If you have a wide range of products and solutions, card sorting would be a useful way to gauge how your target audience would naturally bucket them on your website. A furniture seller, for example, might use this technique to find that people are naturally inclined to group items by room, rather than by furniture type.

3. Diary studies

If you’d like to know how the UX of your product or service varies over time or throughout the length of its use, a diary study can help. Here, participants are given a way to record their thoughts as they set about using the product or service in question, noting things that occur to them as they go. This is useful as it provides real-world insight over a longer period than a one-off focus group.

Giving people access to an early build of an app and asking them to keep usability testing notes can highlight pain points in the user interface. In a one-off focus group, having to tap three times to get to an oft-used screen might seem fine – whereas participants are more likely to find it annoying in the day-to-day. This kind of longer-term usability test can provide really valuable insights.

Both quantitative and qualitative UX research methodologies can be useful when planning the design and development of your brand presence, as well as for usability testing when it comes to product and service design.

Context-of-use

By collecting and analyzing information about users, the intended use of the application, the tasks they perform with the application, and the technical constraints presented by the application, context-of-use analysis allow UX researchers to better understand the overall experience.

Typically, context-of-use analysis data is collected through research surveys, focus groups, interviews, site visits, and observational studies.

Context-of use-analysis is one method for identifying the most important elements of an application or product in the context of using that application or product. This type of UX research is typically done early in the product lifecycle and continued as data identifies which components of the product and UX are most critical.

Types of user research tools

There are many types of user research methods for discovering data useful for product design and development. Below are some common examples of tools user experience researchers may use to gather information and draw insights into mental models, or users’ thought processes.

UX research surveys or questionnaires can discover data at scale through in-person or remote polling, with specific questions designed to collate useful information about user experience.

User groups or focus groups are a form of a structured interview that consults members of a target audience on their experience, views, and attitudes towards the product or solution. They usually involve neutral parties, such as a moderator and note-taker, and are led by a researcher who asks open-ended questions focused on specific aspects of an investigation.

User interviews are one-on-one structured interviews with a target audience member, led by a UX researcher to understand more about personal experiences with the product. These user interviews can be directed to compare and contrast answers between users, or non-directed, where users lead the conversation.

Ethnographic interviews take place within the target users’ typical environment to get a better context-of-use view. Field studies and site visits are similarly observational in nature, and take place in situ where the product or service is used, but may involve larger groups.

This is not a comprehensive list of research techniques but represents some of the main ways UX researchers might perform usability testing or trial UX design.

When to conduct user experience research

Before launching a new product or service, understanding user preferences that could impact your design or development is key to success. The earlier user experience research is performed, the more effective the end product or service will be, as it should encompass the insights learned about your target audience.

As a product and service’s use and value evolve over its lifecycle, the user experience will change over time. User research should be undertaken on an ongoing basis to determine how to adapt to users’ new needs and preferences.

Five basic steps to conducting UX research

If you’re new to UX research, here’s a step-by-step list of what to consider before you begin your UX testing program:

• Objectives What do you need to find out about your users and their needs?
• Hypothesis What do you think you already know about your users?
• Methods Based on your deadline, project type, and the size of your research team, what UX research methods should you use?
• Process Using your selected UX research method(s), begin collecting data about your users, their preferences, and their needs.
• Synthesis Analyze the data you collected to fill in your knowledge gaps, address your hypothesis and create a plan to improve your product based on user feedback.

Qualtrics makes UX research simple and easy

User experience research and user testing are multifaceted and can involve a lot of both quantitative and qualitative data. To ease the process and make sure it is efficient and scalable, it’s best conducted using a highly responsive platform that allows you to collect data, analyze trends and draw conclusions all in one place.

Whether you need attitudinal or behavioral insights, Qualtrics is your go-to solution for collecting all kinds of UX data and making use of it in the context of your wider CX program .

Conduct in-person studies or send beautifully designed surveys easily and quickly, and view your results via custom dashboards and reports using the most sophisticated research platform on the planet.

Related resources

User experience 20 min read, user experience surveys 9 min read, ux research tools 8 min read, user analytics 11 min read, rage clicks 11 min read, user experience analytics 10 min read, website user experience 14 min read, request demo.

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The Complete Guide to UX Research Methods

UX research provides invaluable insight into product users and what they need and value. Not only will research reduce the risk of a miscalculated guess, it will uncover new opportunities for innovation.

By Miklos Philips

Miklos is a UX designer, product design strategist, author, and speaker with more than 18 years of experience in the design field.

PREVIOUSLY AT

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.” —Tim Brown, CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO

User experience (UX) design is the process of designing products that are useful, easy to use, and a pleasure to engage. It’s about enhancing the entire experience people have while interacting with a product and making sure they find value, satisfaction, and delight. If a mountain peak represents that goal, employing various types of UX research is the path UX designers use to get to the top of the mountain.

User experience research is one of the most misunderstood yet critical steps in UX design. Sometimes treated as an afterthought or an unaffordable luxury, UX research, and user testing should inform every design decision.

Every product, service, or user interface designers create in the safety and comfort of their workplaces has to survive and prosper in the real world. Countless people will engage our creations in an unpredictable environment over which designers have no control. UX research is the key to grounding ideas in reality and improving the odds of success, but research can be a scary word. It may sound like money we don’t have, time we can’t spare, and expertise we have to seek.

In order to do UX research effectively—to get a clear picture of what users think and why they do what they do—e.g., to “walk a mile in the user’s shoes” as a favorite UX maxim goes, it is essential that user experience designers and product teams conduct user research often and regularly. Contingent upon time, resources, and budget, the deeper they can dive the better.

What Is UX Research?

There is a long, comprehensive list of UX design research methods employed by user researchers , but at its center is the user and how they think and behave —their needs and motivations. Typically, UX research does this through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.

There are two main types of user research: quantitative (statistics: can be calculated and computed; focuses on numbers and mathematical calculations) and qualitative (insights: concerned with descriptions, which can be observed but cannot be computed).

Quantitative research is primarily exploratory research and is used to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into usable statistics. Some common data collection methods include various forms of surveys – online surveys , paper surveys , mobile surveys and kiosk surveys , longitudinal studies, website interceptors, online polls, and systematic observations.

This user research method may also include analytics, such as Google Analytics .

Google Analytics is part of a suite of interconnected tools that help interpret data on your site’s visitors including Data Studio , a powerful data-visualization tool, and Google Optimize, for running and analyzing dynamic A/B testing.

Quantitative data from analytics platforms should ideally be balanced with qualitative insights gathered from other UX testing methods , such as focus groups or usability testing. The analytical data will show patterns that may be useful for deciding what assumptions to test further.

Qualitative user research is a direct assessment of behavior based on observation. It’s about understanding people’s beliefs and practices on their terms. It can involve several different methods including contextual observation, ethnographic studies, interviews, field studies, and moderated usability tests.

Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group feels that in the case of UX research, it is better to emphasize insights (qualitative research) and that although quant has some advantages, qualitative research breaks down complicated information so it’s easy to understand, and overall delivers better results more cost effectively—in other words, it is much cheaper to find and fix problems during the design phase before you start to build. Often the most important information is not quantifiable, and he goes on to suggest that “quantitative studies are often too narrow to be useful and are sometimes directly misleading.”

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. William Bruce Cameron

Design research is not typical of traditional science with ethnography being its closest equivalent—effective usability is contextual and depends on a broad understanding of human behavior if it is going to work.

Nevertheless, the types of user research you can or should perform will depend on the type of site, system or app you are developing, your timeline, and your environment.

Top UX Research Methods and When to Use Them

Here are some examples of the types of user research performed at each phase of a project.

Card Sorting : Allows users to group and sort a site’s information into a logical structure that will typically drive navigation and the site’s information architecture. This helps ensure that the site structure matches the way users think.

Contextual Interviews : Enables the observation of users in their natural environment, giving you a better understanding of the way users work.

First Click Testing : A testing method focused on navigation, which can be performed on a functioning website, a prototype, or a wireframe.

Focus Groups : Moderated discussion with a group of users, allowing insight into user attitudes, ideas, and desires.

Heuristic Evaluation/Expert Review : A group of usability experts evaluating a website against a list of established guidelines .

Interviews : One-on-one discussions with users show how a particular user works. They enable you to get detailed information about a user’s attitudes, desires, and experiences.

Parallel Design : A design methodology that involves several designers pursuing the same effort simultaneously but independently, with the intention to combine the best aspects of each for the ultimate solution.

Personas : The creation of a representative user based on available data and user interviews. Though the personal details of the persona may be fictional, the information used to create the user type is not.

Prototyping : Allows the design team to explore ideas before implementing them by creating a mock-up of the site. A prototype can range from a paper mock-up to interactive HTML pages.

Surveys : A series of questions asked to multiple users of your website that help you learn about the people who visit your site.

System Usability Scale (SUS) : SUS is a technology-independent ten-item scale for subjective evaluation of the usability.

Task Analysis : Involves learning about user goals, including what users want to do on your website, and helps you understand the tasks that users will perform on your site.

Usability Testing : Identifies user frustrations and problems with a site through one-on-one sessions where a “real-life” user performs tasks on the site being studied.

Use Cases : Provide a description of how users use a particular feature of your website. They provide a detailed look at how users interact with the site, including the steps users take to accomplish each task.

You can do user research at all stages or whatever stage you are in currently. However, the Nielsen Norman Group advises that most of it be done during the earlier phases when it will have the biggest impact. They also suggest it’s a good idea to save some of your budget for additional research that may become necessary (or helpful) later in the project.

Here is a diagram listing recommended options that can be done as a project moves through the design stages. The process will vary, and may only include a few things on the list during each phase. The most frequently used methods are shown in bold.

Reasons for Doing UX Research

Here are three great reasons for doing user research :

To create a product that is truly relevant to users

• If you don’t have a clear understanding of your users and their mental models, you have no way of knowing whether your design will be relevant. A design that is not relevant to its target audience will never be a success.

To create a product that is easy and pleasurable to use

• A favorite quote from Steve Jobs: “ If the user is having a problem, it’s our problem .” If your user experience is not optimal, chances are that people will move on to another product.

To have the return on investment (ROI) of user experience design validated and be able to show:

• An improvement in performance and credibility
• Increased exposure and sales—growth in customer base
• A reduced burden on resources—more efficient work processes

Aside from the reasons mentioned above, doing user research gives insight into which features to prioritize, and in general, helps develop clarity around a project.

What Results Can I Expect from UX Research?

In the words of Mike Kuniaysky, user research is “ the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience. ”

User research has been essential to the success of behemoths like USAA and Amazon ; Joe Gebbia, CEO of Airbnb is an enthusiastic proponent, testifying that its implementation helped turn things around for the company when it was floundering as an early startup.

Some of the results generated through UX research confirm that improving the usability of a site or app will:

• Increase conversion rates
• Increase sign-ups
• Increase NPS (net promoter score)
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Increase purchase rates
• Boost loyalty to the brand
• Reduce customer service calls

Additionally, and aside from benefiting the overall user experience, the integration of UX research into the development process can:

• Minimize development time
• Reduce production costs
• Uncover valuable insights about your audience
• Give an in-depth view into users’ mental models, pain points, and goals

User research is at the core of every exceptional user experience. As the name suggests, UX is subjective—the experience that a person goes through while using a product. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the needs and goals of potential users, the context, and their tasks which are unique for each product. By selecting appropriate UX research methods and applying them rigorously, designers can shape a product’s design and can come up with products that serve both customers and businesses more effectively.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• How to Conduct Effective UX Research: A Guide
• The Value of User Research
• UX Research Methods and the Path to User Empathy
• Design Talks: Research in Action with UX Researcher Caitria O'Neill
• Swipe Right: 3 Ways to Boost Safety in Dating App Design
• How to Avoid 5 Types of Cognitive Bias in User Research

Understanding the basics

How do you do user research in ux.

UX research includes two main types: quantitative (statistical data) and qualitative (insights that can be observed but not computed), done through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. The UX research methods used depend on the type of site, system, or app being developed.

What are UX methods?

There is a long list of methods employed by user research, but at its center is the user and how they think, behave—their needs and motivations. Typically, UX research does this through observation techniques, task analysis, and other UX methodologies.

What is the best research methodology for user experience design?

The type of UX methodology depends on the type of site, system or app being developed, its timeline, and environment. There are 2 main types: quantitative (statistics) and qualitative (insights).

What does a UX researcher do?

A user researcher removes the need for false assumptions and guesswork by using observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies to understand a user’s motivation, behavior, and needs.

Why is UX research important?

UX research will help create a product that is relevant to users and is easy and pleasurable to use while boosting a product’s ROI. Aside from these reasons, user research gives insight into which features to prioritize, and in general, helps develop clarity around a project.

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Miklos Philips

London, United Kingdom

Member since May 20, 2016

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User Research

What is user research.

User research is the methodic study of target users—including their needs and pain points—so designers have the sharpest possible insights to make the best designs. User researchers use various methods to expose problems and design opportunities and find crucial information to use in their design process.

Discover why user research is a crucial part of the design process.

• Transcript loading…

User Research – Get to know your Users, and What They want

To call user research a crucial part of an interaction design process might seem overly obvious. Indeed, it’s the only way to discover exactly what these users need, having first found out precisely who they are. To set out to generate these facts, you must gather data from your users through a structured approach . First, you must choose methods that 1) suit your research’s purpose and 2) will yield the clearest information. Afterwards—to get the insights you want—you’ll need to interpret your findings from all that data, which can be tricky . You can apply user research anytime during the design process. Typically, researchers begin with qualitative measures, to discover users’ needs and motivations . They might later test their results by using quantitative measures .

“Research is creating new knowledge.” – Neil Armstrong, the First person to walk on the Moon

User research essentially splits into two subsets:

Qualitative research – Ethnographic field studies and interviews are examples of methods that can help you build a deep understanding of why users behave the way they do (e.g., why they leave a website so quickly). For instance, you can interview a small number of users and get sharp insights into their shopping habits by asking them open-ended questions. Usability testing is another dimension of this type of research (e.g., examining users’ stress levels when they use a certain design). Qualitative research requires great care. As it involves collecting non-numerical data (e.g., opinions), your own opinions might influence findings.

Quantitative research – With more-structured methods such as surveys, you gather measurable data about what users do and test assumptions you developed from qualitative research. An example is to use an online survey to ask users questions about their shopping habits (e.g., “Approximately how many items of clothing do you buy online per year?”). You can use this data to find patterns within a large user group. In fact, the larger the sample of representative test users is, the more likely you’ll have a statistically reliable way of assessing the target user population. Regardless of the method, with careful research you can gather objective and unbiased data. Nevertheless, quantitative data alone cannot expose deeper human insights.

We can also split user research into two approaches:

Attitudinal – you listen to users’ words (e.g., in interviews).

Behavioral – you watch their actions through observational studies.

Usually, you can get the sharpest view of a design problem when you apply a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative research as well as a mixture of attitudinal and behavioral approaches.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Leverage User Research Methods throughout Development

Industry-leading user experience consulting organization the Nielsen Norman Group names appropriate user research methods for you to use during your project’s four stages . Here are key methods:

Discover – Determine what’s relevant for users.

Diary studies – Have users log their performance of activities or record their daily interactions with a design.

Contextual inquiries – Interview suitable users in their own environment to find out how they perform the task/s in question.

Explore – See how to address all users’ needs.

Card sorting – On cards, write words and phrases and then let participants organize these in the most meaningful way and label categories to ensure your design is logically structured.

Customer journey maps – Create user journeys to reveal potential pitfalls and crucial moments.

Test – Evaluate your designs.

Usability testing – Make sure your design is easy to use.

Accessibility evaluations – Test your design to ensure everyone can use it.

Listen – Put issues in perspective, uncover any new problems and spot trends.

Analytics – Gather analytics/metrics to chart (e.g.) website traffic and generate reports.

Surveys/Questionnaires – Track how users’ feel about your product/design via these.

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However you approach user research, always consider the pros and cons of each technique . Card sorting is cheap and easy, for example, but may prove time-consuming when you proceed to analysis. Moreover, it might not provide in-depth contextual meaning. The resources available to you are another constraint. These will decide when, how much and which type of user research you can actually do. Therefore, carefully choose only the most relevant method/s for your research . Also, get stakeholders from your organization involved early on . They can reveal precious insights and help keep your research on track regarding business goals. Overall, user research is a valuable way to validate the assumptions the design team makes concerning users in the field , cut the expense of the best deliverables and keep your product’s demand high and ahead of competitors’ in the marketplace.

User research methods have various pros and cons and involve activities ranging from observations of users in context to controlled experiments in lab settings.

Learn More about User Research

For a fuller grasp of user research, take our course here .

See the Nielsen Norman Group’s list of user research tips .

Find an extensive range of user research considerations , discussed in Smashing Magazine.

Here’s a convenient and example-rich catalogue of user research tools.

Questions related to User Research

User Research is a fulfilling career for individuals driven to comprehend user behaviors and work collaboratively with teams. As a User Researcher, you're instrumental in steering teams towards crafting user-centric solutions. If you're intrigued by a career that combines both analytical and creative insights, consider delving into this field. For a comprehensive understanding, explore the User Researcher Learning Path on our platform.

User Researchers are seeing competitive pay in the industry. On average, they can earn from $92,000 to $146,000 annually. In some smaller firms, user research duties might be combined with a broader UX role. To understand how salaries can differ by region or delve into a broader perspective on UX-related pay, check out this detailed guide on UI UX Designer Salaries for 2023 or Glassdoor's breakdown of User Experience Researcher salaries .

While both are integral to the user experience, User Research and UX Design serve different purposes. User Research delves deep into understanding user preferences and needs, paving the way for informed design strategies. In contrast, UX Design is about sculpting a product based on that insight, ensuring it's both user-centric and aesthetically pleasing. 

Sometimes, especially in compact teams, the roles might blur with a designer handling research. Want a comprehensive insight? Dive into User Experience: The Beginner's Guide to explore their interconnected dynamics.

Yes, there is! Think of UX research as a subset of user research. While both focus on understanding users, user research casts a broader net, examining topics like pricing or delivery preferences. UX research, meanwhile, zeroes in on how users interact with a product and their experience doing so. In short, user research looks at broader interactions, while UX research specifically studies product use. To dive deeper, check out our course on User Research Methods and Best Practices .

User research utilizes varied techniques such as usability testing, A/B tests, surveys, card sorting, interviews, analytics analysis, and ethnographic studies. Every approach brings unique insights and is ideal for specific situations. It's essential to choose the proper technique based on your research goals and your audience. Discover these techniques further in 7 Great, Tried and Tested UX Research Techniques . 

For a comprehensive understanding of usability testing, a popular user research method, check out our course on User Research Methods and Best Practices .

While a related degree can be beneficial, it's not strictly required to become a user researcher. Many successful user researchers have degrees in diverse fields like psychology, design, anthropology, statistics, or human-computer interaction. What's crucial is a mix of relevant education, hands-on experience, and continuous learning. Even if some employers might favor candidates with a bachelor's degree, it can be in something other than a UX-focused area. Only some degrees specifically target user research. To strengthen your knowledge, consider courses like Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX or User Research Methods and Best Practices .

While each user research project is unique, some standard steps guide most endeavors:

Determine the research question.

Choose the proper research technique.

Find participants.

Execute the research.

Evaluate the gathered data.

Share the results.

For a thorough understanding of these steps and more, check out User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

There's a wide array of user research tools to pick from, tailored to your research goals, organizational size, and project specifics. Some popular choices include:

For surveys: Typeform or Google Forms.

Card sorting: Tools like Optimal Workshop, Maze or Trello.

Analyzing user activity: HotJar or CrazyEgg for heatmaps.

Usability evaluations: Platforms like Userlytics or Lookback.

Analyzing qualitative data: Miro or Lucidchart for affinity diagramming.

Crunching numbers: Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel for quantitative insights.

Usability testing on prototypes: Tools like Adobe XD or Figma.

Presenting findings: Use Google Slides, PowerPoint, or Prezi.

These tools often boast extra features to amplify your research.

Dive deeper into their applications with User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

User research is paramount in creating products that align with users' genuine needs and preferences. Instead of basing designs on assumptions, it provides factual insights into how users feel and interact with products. By engaging in user research, designers can spot usability challenges, collect feedback on design ideas, and validate their design decisions. For businesses, this not only refines product offerings but also strengthens brand loyalty and reputation. A standout user experience gives a company a competitive edge and lowers the chances of product setbacks. Dive deeper into the significance of user research in design with Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX and User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide .

Literature on User Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on User Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about User Research

Take a deep dive into User Research with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love , if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design .

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’ .

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world . You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

All open-source articles on User Research

A simple introduction to lean ux.

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• 3 years ago

How to Do a Thematic Analysis of User Interviews

• 4 years ago

How to Conduct User Interviews

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7 Great, Tried and Tested UX Research Techniques

User Research: What It Is and Why You Should Do It

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• 2 years ago

How to Conduct User Observations

How to Visualize Your Qualitative User Research Results for Maximum Impact

Shadowing in User Research - Do You See What They See?

Creating Personas from User Research Results

The Basics of Recruiting Participants for User Research

Co-Cultures and Value Framing: Know your users

How to Conduct Focus Groups

Understand the User’s Perspective through Research for Mobile UX

Learning Experience Design - The Most Valuable Lessons

Ethnography

Chapter 11: Curated List of Research techniques

Personas for Mobile UX Design

Mobile Usability Research – The Important Differences from the Desktop

How to Prepare for a User Interview and Ask the Right Questions

5 Ways to Improve the UX of Your Applications

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Download our free ebook The Basics of User Experience Design to learn about core concepts of UX design.

In 9 chapters, we’ll cover: conducting user interviews, design thinking, interaction design, mobile UX design, usability, UX research, and many more!

The Essential Guide to User Research

User research — an essential part of the design process that shouldn’t be overlooked by UX designers. Here’s a guide for UX designers or those who simply want to understand user research better.

To understand how user research is done in a real context, check out the conversation I had with Mo on how he does research as a Product Designer .

What’s covered:

1. introduction.

• What is user research

2. The importance of research

Including the user in the process.

• Empathy in user research

What happens if you don’t do user research?

• Stakeholder and team buy-in

What user research doesn’t do

• No ‘one size fits all’ approach

3. How to approach user research

• Defining your research goal
• Types of research methods
• Organisational research

What is user research?

User research is used to understand the user’s needs, behaviors, experience and motivations through various qualitative and quantitative methods to inform the process of solving for user’s problems.

As Mike Kuniaysky puts it, user research is:

“The process of understanding the impact of design on an audience.”

Why is user research so important?

Great UX Design is grounded in great user research - driven by user insights while balancing priorities and technical feasibility.

User research helps uncover important and useful insights about the user and their needs. Until you know your user and their needs, emotions, feelings, struggles etc, you won’t be able to deliver a great user experience.

‘ It all starts with the user.’

User research is a great opportunity to include the user in the design process. By collaborating with users, you are practicing user-centered design , which is crucial to creating a successful product for your users.

Researching with empathy in mind

It’s no surprise that empathy is the key to user-centered design. Empathy means putting aside your own assumptions to see things from someone else’s perspective.

In other words, empathy is the ability to understand another person’s experiences and feelings from their point of view.

Why is this important to user research? By putting the user first, you can approach it from the angle of what the user needs to make their life much easier or simpler.

‘You are not the user.’

The benefit of this is that it builds an emotional connection between the user and the product. Users feel their needs are being met and are more likely to continue using the product.

To ensure that you doing research with a user-centered approach, you can apply the Golden Circle model, as discussed by Thomas and McDonough in the Australasian Medical Journal by asking three important questions:

• Why are we achieving a certain goal?
• How are we going to achieve this goal?
• What’s the outcome of achieving this goal?

User research helps to remove bias by learning about the user from their perspective, experiences, knowledge and mental models. It examines and proves or disproves assumptions. If done right, user research is evidence that helps to ground design decisions based on an understanding of user needs.

A lot of the times, teams or organisations may bypass or rush the process of user research with reasons like, “We don’t have the time or budget for user research” or, “We know enough about our users already to build the product”.

While user research does require upfront time to plan and execute, and conducting it may mean the design process takes longer, neglecting user research may put the organisation at a disadvantage in the long run.

‘Neglecting user research may put the organisation at a disadvantage in the long run.’

So what might be the price of not doing proper user research?

• The product has great features that don’t solve the user’s problem
• The product isn’t user-friendly as false assumptions are baked into the form and function of the product
• The product causes confusion for the user

Making your team and organization aware of the implications of not doing proper user research means that you will be saving time, money and effort in the long run and building a product that actually serves the needs of users.

Getting stakeholder and team buy-in

Great, you’re doing user research for a project or product. While this step is paramount to great UX, unless the research insights and knowledge is shared with your team and stakeholders, no amount of research will be sufficient.

‘Unless the research is shared with your team, no amount of research will be sufficient.’

It’s important to include or engage your team in the research or it may be difficult to get stakeholder buy-in. You may be working with Product Managers, Data Scientists, Engineers, and other stakeholders. Within your team, there are different viewpoints and priorities.

Design is a team sport, so it’s crucial to have your team understand why they are building a product and what problem they are solving before they jump into development.

Get your team and stakeholders involved in the research. Get your team members to take notes as you are conducting user interviews. Hold a workshop session with your team to analyse and sort through raw data from research. If that’s not possible, engage your team by sharing your research findings with them.

By inviting your team and stakeholders to participate and play a part in the user research, you create a shared understanding of the user’s needs, making it much easier to work towards the same goal, which is to create a solution that addresses the user’s needs.

‘By inviting your team to participate in the user research, you create a shared understanding of the user’s needs’

When you get your team on your side, it makes the process of building a product together with a smoother one where there is less room for conflicts and misunderstandings further down the line. Chances are your team may start to advocate for the user as much as you do!

The goal of user research is to take the knowledge and insights gained from users to create user-centered solutions.

While user research informs design, it doesn’t immediately provide solutions to problems. There needs to be an exploration of ideas and design iterations before those solutions are reached.

There’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach

When it comes to doing user research, there’s ‘no ‘one size fits all’ approach. It all depends on the specific user group and context you are solving for.

These are different for every project and it is your job as the designer to define and understand these for every project.

How to approach user research

The first thing to do before doing any research is to ask the right research questions. What is your research goal? What are you trying to understand?

Here’s a set of criteria to help you hone in on your research questions:

• Be specific
• Be focused and relevant to what you’re trying to understand
• Make them practical with the resources you have
• Make them actionable
• Be flexible and don’t worry about which method to use (yet)

The types of research methods and when to use them

Research is multi-dimensional. There are so many different types of methods and approaches that it can be overwhelming if you don’t focus your research. Here, I’ll cover some important research methods and when you might use them:

Stages of the product life cycle

• Quantitative vs. qualitative
• Attitudinal vs. behavioral

During the early stages of the design process, the key goal is to do exploratory research. Each project has its own context and specific user group that research should explore. Questions to ask:

• What do users need?
• What is already working and what isn’t?

Appropriate methods to be used at this stage include 1:1 user interviews, focus groups, competitive analysis, benchmark studies, ethnographic research.

Development

Now that you have developed your ideas and built wireframes and prototypes, you need to evaluate and validate whether your designs actually help users solve their problems.

• Do users understand how it works?
• How do users interact with your prototype?
• Can users find what they are looking for?
• Do the features look and feel right?

Methods to use include: moderated and unmoderated usability testing, prototype testing, card sorting, preference testing, A/B testing.

As the design goes live, the goal is to measure how well the product meets user’s needs. The goal here is to measure the performance and aim to optimise the experience.

At this stage, feedback from users is really useful. Things may have changed and the product you created to solve user’s problems in the first place may no longer be the best solution anymore. The key is to proactively adapt and iterate if needed.

Methods include surveys, data analytics, bug reports.

In a nutshell, user research can be done at any stage of the product life cycle.

Quantitative

Quantitative research is used to understand the ‘what’. This type of research can be measured numerically. For example, “How many people visited a store over a week” or “What percentage of users clicked this button”. This type of research explores large sample sizes of data to identify trends and patterns.

Examples include surveys, analytics, and A/B testing.

What quantitative research doesn’t tell you is why particular trends or patterns occur.

Qualitative

Qualitative research uncovers the ‘why’. “ Why do users have a particular attitude towards a product?” and “What else do people see on the page?”

Qualitative research explores user’s attitudes, behaviors, and opinions. It provides key insights into understanding the context behind why trends and patterns arise.

Examples include user interviews, field studies, usability testing, and customer calls.

It’s important to use a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative methods to come to a holistic understanding of the user and problems to be solved. Both methods are useful for answering different research questions and cannot substitute one for the other.

Attitudinal

Attitudinal research seeks to assess why users have particular attitudes and feelings towards an experience. For instance, whether users enjoy using your product or not.

Examples include: focus groups, card sorting, surveys, questionnaires and participatory design.

Behavioral research focuses on what users do with the product in question. This could be to find out how users navigate through a site.

Examples include A/B testing, eye-tracking, click-stream analysis and usability studies.

It’s important to know that what users say and do are often different, which is why you should aim to do a mixture of attitudinal and behavioral research.

A note on organizational research

There’s value in understanding the organization, stakeholders in the organization and the business context the product exists within before conducting user research.

Learn about the product and users through existing research your team has conducted. That way, you’ll get a better idea of how to focus your research.

There’s a huge overlap in the different types of research that can be done. Selecting which method(s) to use depends on the research questions you want to answer and the research goals you have.

User research is an integral part of UX design. When it’s done right, user research contributes to great UX.

Remember, it’s all about meeting the user’s needs. As Hoa Loranger, Vice President of the Nielsen Norman Group says:

“UX without users isn’t UX.”

Empathic design: The most difficult simple approach to successful design

Empathic design: Research strategies

When to use which user-experience research methods

The biggest mistakes in user research and how to avoid them

10 User research myths and misconceptions

Skip user research unless you’re doing it right seriously

Further Resources

The Nielsen Norman Group has some fantastic articles on user research and UX Design more generally

UK Government’s Service Manual on User research

Thank you for reading! Hope this article has been insightful to you.

Check out the latest article I’ve written:

• Builders and Creators, Effective Entrepreneurship, Small Bets and the Resonance Test

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Written by Mona Yang

Product, tech, startups. Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/monajyang

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table of contents

What is UX research?

Introduction to ux research.

Designing user experiences is kind of like feng shui for your app or website: it’s all about creating an optimal experience that’s delightful, logical, and tailored to a user’s goals and needs. UX research is one of the most crucial ingredients to doing this well. More and more companies are realizing that research can’t be skipped, because answering critical questions about your users – and adopting a user-first approach to design – leads to more satisfied customers and fewer inefficiencies.

That’s why, after my years of experience at Turtle , I've created this guide as a foundation for understanding the impact UX research can have, and the steps you should take to start to incorporate UX research into your research and design process.

User experience research is a systematic approach to helping companies understand a user’s perspective. It’s about diving deep into how people interact with a product and observing how easily they can complete their tasks and meet their goals. Through UX research, you can discover behaviors, needs, and motivations via observation, task analysis, and other types of user feedback.

There are a number of different methods that fall under the umbrella of UX research, from usability studies to interviews and focus groups. The main element that ties everything together is a focus on understanding the user.

UX researchers act as a bridge between customers or users and the product, engineering, and company leadership teams. They distill learnings from their research into easily digestible stories and visual artifacts to inform how product development teams solve user problems and design the best user experience, validate assumptions, evaluate solutions, assess the impact of a product. UX research insights can even help guide a company’s strategic direction. Take it from Summer Kim, Head of User Research at WhatsApp:

“As a user researcher, my mission is to humanize data and spread impactful and memorable user stories, so we make products and services that matter to people, companies, and their missions.”

Qualitative vs. quantitative data.

At the beginning of your research process, you’ll be thinking about your goals and what you’re trying to discover. Are you trying to measure something? Or gain more high-level insights? That’s when you’ll be deciding on your qualitative and quantitative research methods. What’s the difference? As UX researcher Laura Klein puts it:

“Quantitative research tells you what your problem is. Qualitative research tells you why you have that problem.”

As an example, imagine you run a test that determines that over 99% of users who sign up for your service do not complete the purchase process. When you analyze the data, you find that the majority of users drop off at the Payment & Billing page. You’ve just done quantitative research to pinpoint a problem.

Now you need to understand why it is happening. You can use more quantitative data, like an A/B test to try changing up the experience of the page until you get more conversions. You can also dig deeper into understanding why users are not converting by leveraging qualitative data.

You might consider conducting user interviews, focus groups, or usability studies to find out what people are feeling or thinking when they arrive at that page. It is this analysis that, combined with the quantitative data you’ve gathered, can help you address the user’s problem.

Why UX research is important

User-centered design – in which you include users in every stage of the design process – is becoming widely adopted across companies of all sizes and industries. With user-centered design, empathy is the key to understanding someone else’s point of view and avoid the common trap of assuming that you are your user. What are the people who use your product actually thinking, feeling, and observing? UX research is the process to discover the answers to these questions and beyond.

UX research gives you:

Insight into what users want and need and why, an understanding of how users use your product, a foundation for how to design your product to fulfill those needs, data to inform your design decisions, insight into your return on investment for designs.

From a business standpoint, the benefits of UX research are clear: it positively affects user satisfaction, retention, and growth through informing product and design decisions. This ends up cutting down support costs, stirring product innovation, and influencing business strategy.

What UX research accomplishes

The Nielsen Norman Group describes four main product design stages in which UX research can be effective. If you incorporate research at each of these stages, you stand a far greater chance of success. However, keep in mind that research can be incorporated at any point – it doesn’t need to be a linear process to be effective.

1. Discover

Doing UX research during the Discovery phase of your project is critical for understanding the user problems, the current alternatives, and the opportunities for your company to create a winning solution This is when uncovering new insights that may surprise you. Some of the questions you may ask when conducting UX research during this stage include:

Who are we designing for?

What problem are we solving, what pain points do users have with their current solutions, what is preventing customers from using our product why are customers churning, how do we differentiate from other solutions on the market.

During the Discovery phase, you may conduct user interviews and send out surveys, run diary studies with users, gather feedback from Sales and Customer Support teams, interview stakeholders across the company, and do competitive research.

In the Explore phase of the design process, you’re diving a bit deeper into understanding the problem, and scoping out the solution. UX research tasks conducted during this phase may include:

Creating personas

Customer journey mapping, user story mapping, co-creation research.

All of these activities may involve sitting down with stakeholders, either in person or using an online whiteboard, and talking through the ideas and solutions together. During this phase, ideas become a bit more tangible, prototypes and designs are created, and getting a variety of feedback becomes really important.

The Test phase often happens while a product is being developed, and is important for validating designs with users, and for making sure products and features are accessible for all. Some of the UX research activities you could do during this phase are:

In-person usability testing

Remote usability testing, card sorting, a/b testing experiments, accessibility evaluation.

Listening is all about opening your ears to what users are actually saying about your product. You can engage in listening activities at any point, even if a product isn’t actively being developed. Some of the common UX research activities that involve listening are:

Social media monitoring

Help desk query analysis, third-party review analysis, search log analysis, contextual enquiry, q&as at events and demos, the role of a ux researcher.

You don’t need to have a dedicated UX research team to conduct UX research. Despite the fact that many larger tech companies and financial firms are foregoing agencies to bring UX in-house, many smaller companies leverage designers, product managers, or marketers to take on UX researching roles. Eduardo Gomez, UX Research Lead at Miro says:

“Can anyone become a decent UX researcher? The short answer is ‘yes’ – although it took me more than a year of failing to feel confident about the positive answer.”

Regardless of where UX research sits within an organization, there are some key responsibilities that the function has:

1. Inspiring empathy for the user

Taking a step back from the specific tasks that they carry out, UX researchers often serve as the “voice of the user” and aim to inspire empathy among those who are others who are developing the products or experiences.

Not only do UX researchers need to understand the context, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and motivations of users, they also must align them with the motivations and expectations of internal stakeholders.

2. Collecting and analyzing data

Of course, research is about gathering and making sense of data. One of the key deliverables at the end of a UX research project is a list of recommendations for the product development and design teams. But before you make those suggestions, you need to understand and synthesize the findings.

One common mistake with research is not considering how you will analyze it until after all of the research is done. Savvy UX researchers start thinking about data analysis from the start, so they can design the project to deliver the most useful results, and also revisit their plan periodically as the project progresses.

Many UX researchers employ thematic analysis to start grouping data into meaningful categories. Affinity diagramming is a great way to make sense of qualitative data in a visual way, and identify meaningful patterns.

3. Collaborating with key stakeholders

Since UX research is still a fairly new field for some people, there are bound to be people in a company who don’t understand the purpose or benefits, or who aren’t sure where UX research should sit in the organizational structure to be most effective.

Often you can engage stakeholders across the company in UX research by carrying out educational sessions. This can also show you who will be great supporters, influencers, and advocates for UX research in the future.

What do remote UX Teams love doing in Miro?

Creating affinity maps, personas, and customer journey maps

Brainstorming and collaborating on projects

Running remote design sprints

Sketching out or iterating prototypes

Documenting everything together

Presenting their work

Author Josh Zak, Ux-pert from Turtle Design

Discover more, service design vs. ux design, customer experience vs. service design, get on board in seconds, plans and pricing.

The Complete Guide To UX Research (User Research)

UX Research is a term that has been trending in the past few years. There's no surprise why it's so popular - User Experience Research is all about understanding your customer and their needs, which can help you greatly improve your conversion rate and user experience on your website. In this article, we're going to provide a complete guide to UX research as well as how to start implementing it in your organisation.Throughout this article we will give you a complete high-level overview of the entire UX Research meaning, supported by more in-depth articles for each topic.

Introduction to UX Research

Wether you're a grizzled UX Researcher who's been in the field for decades or a UX Novice who's just getting started, UX Research is an integral aspect of the UX Design process. Before diving into this article on UX research methods and tools, let's first take some time to break down what UX research actually entails.

Each of these UX Research Methods has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to understand your goals for the UX Research activities you want to complete.

What is UX Research?

UX research begins with UX designers and UX researchers studying the real world needs of users. User Experience Research is a process --it's not just one thing-- that involves collecting data, conducting interviews, usability testing prototypes or website designs with human participants in order to deeply understand what people are looking for when they interact with a product or service.

By using different sorts of user-research techniques you can better understand not only people desires from their product of service, but a deeper human need which can serve as an incredibly powerful opportunity.

There's an incredible amount of different sorts of research methods. Most of them can be divided in two camps: Qualitative and Quantitative Research.

Qualitative research - Understanding needs can be accomplished through observation, in depth interviews and ethnographic studies. Quantitative Research focusses more on the numbers, analysing data and collecting measurable statistics.

Within these two groups there's an incredible amount of research activities such as Card Sorting, Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Usability Tests, Personas & Customer Journeys and many more. We've created our The Curated List of Research Techniques to always give you an up-to-date overview.

Why is UX Research so important?

When I started my career as a digital designer over 15 years ago, I felt like I was always hired to design the client's idea. Simply translate what they had in their head into a UI without even thinking about changing the user experience. Needless to say: This is a recipe for disaster. An no, this isn't a "Client's don't know anything" story. Nobody knows! At least in the beginning. The client had "the perfect idea" for a new digital feature. The launch date was already set and the development process had to start as soon as possible.

When the feature launched, we expected support might get a few questions or even receive a few thank-you emails. We surely must've affected the user experience somehow!

But that didn't happen. Nothing happened. The feature wasn't used.

Because nobody needed it.

This is exactly what happens when you skip user experience research because you think you're solving a problem that "everybody" has, but nobody really does.

Conducting User Experience research can help you to have a better understanding of your stakeholders and what they need. This is incredibly valuable information from which you can create personas and customer journeys. It doesn't matter if you're creating a new product or service or are improving an existing once.

Five Steps for conducting User Research

Created by Eric Sanders , the Research Learning Spiral provides five main steps for your user research.

• Objectives: What are the knowledge gaps we need to fill?
• Hypotheses: What do we think we understand about our users?
• Methods: Based on time and manpower, what methods should we select?
• Conduct: Gather data through the selected methods.
• Synthesize: Fill in the knowledge gaps, prove or disprove our hypotheses, and discover opportunities for our design efforts.

1: Objectives: Define the Problem Statement

A problem statement is a concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon. It identifies the gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal) state of a process or product.

Problem statements are the first steps in your research because they help you to understand what's wrong or needs improving. For example, if your product is a mobile app and the problem statement says that customers are having difficulty paying for items within the application, then UX research will lead you (hopefully) down that path. Most likely it will involve some form of usability testing.

Check out this article if you'd like to learn more about Problem Statements.

2: Hypotheses: What we think we know about our user groups

After getting your Problem Statement right, there's one more thing to do before doing any research. Make sure you have created a clear research goal for yourself. How do you identify Research Objectives? By asking questions:

• Who are we doing this for? The starting point for your personas!
• What are we doing? What's happening right now? What do our user want? What does the company need?
• Think about When. If you're creating a project plan, you'll need a timeline. It also helps to keep in mind when people are using your products or service.
• Where is the logical next step. Where do people use your product? Why there? What limitations are there to that location? Where can you perform research? Where do your users live?
• Why are we doing this? Why should or shouldn't we be doing this? Why teaches you all about motivations from people and for the project.
• Last but not least: How? Besides thinking about the research activities itself, think about how people will test a product or feature. How will the user insights (outcome of the research) work be used in the  User Centered Design - and development process?

3: Methods: Choose the right research method

UX research is about exploration, and you want to make sure that your method fits the needs of what you're trying to explore. There are many different methods. In a later chapter we'll go over the most common UX research methods .

For now, all you need to keep in mind that that there are a lot of different ways of doing research.

You definitely don't need to do every type of activity but it would be useful to have a decent understanding of the options you have available, so you pick the right tools for the job.

4. Conduct: Putting in the work

Apply your chosen user research methods to your Hypotheses and Objectives! The various techniques used by the senior product designer in the BTNG Design Process can definitely be overwhelming. The product development process is not a straight line from A to B. UX Researchers often discover new qualitative insights in the user experience due to uncovering new (or incorrect) user needs. So please do understand that UX Design is a lot more than simply creating a design.

5. Synthesise: Evaluating Research Outcome

So you started with your Problem Statement (Objectives), you drafted your hypotheses, chose the top research methods, conducted your research as stated in the research process and now "YOU ARE HERE".

The last step is to Synthesise what you've learned. Start by filling in the knowledge gaps. What unknowns are you now able to answer?

Which of your hypotheses are proven (or disproven)?

And lastly, which new exciting new opportunities did you discover!

Evaluating the outcome of the User Experience Research is an essential part of the work.

Make sure to keep them brief and to-the-point. A good rule of thumb is to include the top three positive comments and the top three problems.

UX Research Methods

Choosing the right ux research method.

Making sure you use the right types of user experience research in any project is essential. Since time and money is always limited, we need to make sure we always get the most bang-for-our-buck. This means we need to pick the UX research method that will give us the most insights as possible for a project.

Three things to keep in mind when making a choice among research methodologies:

• Stages of the product life cycle - Is it a new or existing product?
• Quantitative vs. Qualitative - In depth talk directly with people or data?
• Attitudinal vs. Behavioural - What people say vs what people do

Image from Nielsen Norman Group

Most frequently used methods of UX Research

• Card Sorting: Way before UX Research even was a "thing", psychological research originally used Card Sorting.  With Card Sorting, you try to find out how people group things and what sort of hierarchies they use. The BTNG Research Team is specialised in remote research. So our modern Card Sorting user experience research have a few modern surprises.
• Usability Testing: Before launching a new feature or product it is important to do user testing. Give them tasks to complete and see how well the prototype works and learn more about user behaviours.
• Remote Usability Testing: During the COVID-19 lockdown, finding the appropriate ux research methods haven't always been that easy. Luckily, we've adopted plenty of modern solutions that help us with collecting customer feedback even with a remote usability test.
• Research-Based User Personas: A profile of a fictional character representing a specific stakeholder relevant to your product or service. Combine goals and objections with attitude and personality. The BTNG Research Team creates these personas for the target users after conducing both quantitative and qualitative user research.
• Field Studies: Yes, we actually like to go outside. What if your product isn't a B2B desktop application which is being used behind a computer during office hours? At BTNG we have different types of Field Studies which all help you gain valuable insights into human behaviour and the user experience.
• The Expert Interview: Combine your talent with that of one of BTNG's senior researcher. Conducting ux research without talking to the experts on your team would be a waste of time. In every organisation there are people who know a lot about their product or service and have unique insights. We always like to include them in the UX Research!
• Eye Movement Tracking: If you have an existing digital experience up and running - Eye Movement Tracking can help you to identify user experience challenges in your funnel. The outcome shows a heatmap of where the user looks (and doesn't).

Check out this article for a in-depth guide on UX Research Methods.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative UX research methods

Since this is a topic that we can on about for hours, we decided to split this section up in a few parts. First let's start with the difference.

Qualitative UX Research is based on an in-depth understanding of the human behaviour and needs. Qualitative user research includes interviews, observations (in natural settings), usability tests or contextual inquiry. More than often you'll obtain unexpected, valuable insights through this from of user experience research methods.

Quantitative UX Research relies on statistical analysis to make sense out of data (quantitative data) gathered from UX measurements: A/B Tests - Surveys etc. Quantitative UX Research is as you might have guessed, a lot more data-orientated.

If you'd like to learn more about these two types of research, check out these articles:

Get the most out of your User Research with Qualitative Research

Quantitative Research: The Science of Mining Data for Insights

Balancing qualitative and quantitative UX research

Both types of research have amazing benefits but also challenges. Depending on the research goal, it would be wise to have a good understanding which types of research you would like to be part of the ux design and would make the most impact.

The BTNG Research Team loves to start with Qualitative Research to first get a better understanding of the WHY and gain new insights. To validate these new learning they use Quantitative Research in your user experience research.

A handful of helpful UX Research Tools

The landscape of UX research tools has been growing rapidly. The BTNG Research team use a variety of UX research tools to help with well, almost everything. From running usability tests, creating prototypes and even for recruiting participants.

In the not-too-distant future, we'll create a Curated UX Research Tool article. For now, a handful of helpful UX Research Tools should do the trick.

• For surveys : Typeform
• For UX Research Recruitment: Dscout
• For analytics and heatmaps: VWO
• For documenting research: Notion & Airtable
• For Customer Journey Management : TheyDo
• For transcriptions: Descript
• For remote user testing: Maze
• For Calls : Zoom

Surveys: Typeform

What does it do? Survey Forms can be boring. Typeform is one of those ux research tools that helps you to create beautiful surveys with customisable templates and an online editor. For example, you can add videos to your survey or even let people draw their answers instead of typing them in a text box. Who is this for? Startup teams that want to quickly create engaging and modern looking surveys but don't know how to code it themselves.

Highlights: Amazing UX, looks and feel very modern, create forms with ease that match your branding, great reports and automation.

Why is it our top pick? Stop wasting time on ux research tools with too many buttons. Always keep the goal of your ux research methods in mind. Keep things lean, fast and simple with a product with amazing UX.

https://www.typeform.com/

UX Research Recruitment: Dscout

What does it do? Dscout is a remote research platform that helps you recruit participants for your ux research (the right ones). With a pool of +100.000 real users, our user researchers can hop on video calls and collect data for your qualitative user research. So test out those mobile apps user experience and collect all the data! Isn't remote research amazing?

Highlights: User Research Participant Recruitment, Live Sessions,Prototype feedback, competitive analysis, in-the-wild product discovery, field work supplementations, shopalongs.

Why is it our top pick? Finding the right people is more important than finding people fast. BTNG helps corporate clients in all types of industries which require a unique set of users, each time. Dscout helps us to quickly find the right people and make sure our user research is delivered on time and our research process stays in tact.

https://dscout.com/

Analytics and heatmaps: VWO

What does it do? When we were helping the Financial Times, our BTNG Research Team collaborated with FT Marketing Team who were already running experiments with VWO. 50% of the traffic would see one version of a certain page while 50% saw a different version. Which performed best? Perhaps you'd take a look at time-on-page. But more importantly: Which converts better!

Hotjar provides Product Experience Insights that show how users behave and what they feel strongly about, so product teams can deliver real value to them.

Highlights: VWO is an amazing suite that does it all:Automated Feedback, Heatmaps, EyeTracking, User Session Recordings (Participant Tracking) and one thing that Hotjar doesn't do: A/B Testing.

Why is it our top pick? Even tho it's an expensive product, it does give you value for money. Especially the reports with very black and white outcomes are great for presenting the results you've made.

https://vwo.com/

Documenting research: Notion

What does it do? Notion is our command center, where we store and constantly update our studio's aggregate wisdom. It is a super-flexible tool that helps to organise project documentation, prepare for interviews with either clients or their product users, accumulate feedback, or simply take notes.

Highlights: A very clean, structured way to write and share information with your team in a beautiful designed app with an amazing user experience.

Why is it our top pick? There's no better, more structured way to share information.

https://www.notion.so/

Customer Journey Management: TheyDo

What does it do? TheyDo is a modern Journey Management Platform. It centralises your journeys in an easy to manage system, where everyone has access to a single source of truth of the customer experience. It’s like a CMS for journeys.

Highlights: Customer Journey Map designer, Personas and 2x2 Persona Matrix, Opportunity & Solution Management & Prioritisation.

Why is it our top pick? TheyDo fits perfectly with BTNG's way of helping companies become more customer-centric. It helps to visualise the current experience of stakeholders. With those insight which we capture from interviews or usability testing, we discover new opportunities. A perfect starting point for creating solutions!

https://www.theydo.io/

Transcriptions: Descript

What does it do? Descript is an all-in-one solution for audio & video recording, editing and transcription. The editing is as easy as a doc. Imagine you’ve interviewed 20 different people about a new flavor of soda or a feature for your app. You just drop all those files into a Descript Project, and they show up in different “Compositions” (documents) in the sidebar. In a couple of minutes they’ll be transcribed, with speaker labels added automatically.

Highlights: Overdub, Filler Word Removal, Collaboration, Subtitles, Remote Recording and Studio Sound.

Why is it our top pick? Descript is an absolute monster when it comes to recording, editing and transcribing videos. It truly makes digesting the work after recording fast and even fun!

https://www.descript.com/

Remote user testing: Maze

What does it do? Maze is a-mazing remote user testing platform for unmoderated usability tests. With Maze, you can create and run in-depth usability tests and share them with your testers via a link to get actionable insights. Maze also generates a usability study report instantly so that you can share it with anyone.

It’s handy that the tool integrates directly with Figma, InVision, Marvel, and Sketch, thus, you can import a working prototype directly from the design tool you use. The BTNG Design Team with their Figma skills has an amazing chemistry with the Research Team due to that Figma/Maze integration.

Highlights: Besides unmoderated usability testing, Maze can help with different UX Research Methods, like card sorting, tree testing, 5-second testing, A/B testing, and more.

Why is it our top pick? Usability testing has been a time consuming way of qualitative research. Trying to find out how users interact (Task analysis) during an Interviews combined with keeping an eye on the prototype can be... a challenge. The way that Maze allows us to run (besides our hands on usability test) now also run unmoderated usability testing is a powerful weapon in our arsenal.

https://maze.co/

Calls: Zoom

What does it do? As the other video conferencing tools you can run video calls. But what makes Zoom a great tool? We feel that the integration with conferencing equipment is huge for our bigger clients. Now that there's also a Miro integration we can make our user interviews even more fun and interactive!

Highlights: Call Recording, Collaboration tools, Screen Sharing, Free trial, connects to conferencing equipment, host up to 500 people!

Why is it our top pick? Giving the research participants of your user interviews a pleasant experience is so important. Especially when you're looking for qualitative feedback on your ux design, you want to make sure they feel comfortable. And yes, you'll have to start using a paid version - but the user interface of Zoom alone is worth it. Even the Mobile App is really solid.

https://zoom.us/

In Conclusion

No matter what research methodology you rely on if it is qualitative research methods or perhaps quantitative data - keep in mind that user research is an essential part of the Design Process. Not only your UX designer will thank you, but also your users.

In every UX project we've spoken to multiple users - no matter if it was a task analysis, attitudinal research or focus groups... They all had one thing in common:

People thanked us for taking the time to listen to them.

So please, stop thinking about the potential UX research methods you might use in your design process and consider what it REALLY is about:

Solving the right problems for the right people.

And there's only one way to get there: Trying things out, listening, learning and improving.

Looking for help? Reach out!

See the Nielsen Norman Group’s list of user research tips: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-research-cheat-sheet/

Find an extensive range of user research considerations, discussed in Smashing Magazine: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/comprehensive-guide-ux-research/

Here’s a convenient and example-rich catalogue of user research tools: https://blog.airtable.com/43-ux-research-tools-for-optimizing-your-product/

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What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

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The UX researcher’s toolkit: 11 UX research methods and when to use them

After defining your objectives and planning your research framework, it’s time to choose the research technique that will best serve your project's goals and yield the right insights. While user research is often treated as an afterthought, it should inform every design decision. In this chapter, we walk you through the most common research methods and help you choose the right one for you.

What are UX research methods?

A UX research method is a way of generating insights about your users, their behavior, motivations, and needs.

These methods help:

• Learn about user behavior and attitudes
• Identify key pain points and challenges in the user interface
• Develop user personas to identify user needs and drive solutions
• Test user interface designs to see what works and what doesn’t

You can use research methodologies like user interviews, surveys, focus groups, card sorting, usability testing to identify user challenges and turn them into opportunities to improve the user experience.

More of a visual learner? Check out this video for a speedy rundown. If you’re ready to get stuck in, jump straight to our full breakdown .

The most common types of user research

First, let’s talk about the types of UX research. Every individual research method falls under these types, which reflect different goals and objectives for conducting research.

Here’s a quick overview:

Qualitative vs. quantitative

All research methods are either quantitative or qualitative . Qualitative research focuses on capturing subjective insights into users' experiences. It aims to understand the underlying reasons, motivations, and behaviors of individuals.

Quantitative research, on the other hand, involves collecting and analyzing numerical data to identify patterns, trends, and significance. It aims to quantify user behaviors, preferences, and attitudes, allowing for generalizations and statistical insights.

Qualitative research also typically involves a smaller sample size than quantitative research. Nielsen Norman Group recommends 40 participants—see our full rundown of how many user testers you need for different research methods .

Attitudinal vs. behavioral

Attitudinal research is about understanding users' attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs. It delves into the 'why' behind user decisions and actions. It often involves surveys or interviews where users are asked about their feelings, preferences, or perceptions towards a product or service. It's subjective in nature, aiming to capture people's emotions and opinions.

Behavioral research is about what users do rather than what they say they do or would do. This kind of research is often based on observation methods like usability testing, eye-tracking, or heat maps to understand user behavior.

Generative vs. evaluative

Generative research is all about generating new ideas, concepts, and insights to fuel the design process. You might run brainstorming sessions with groups of users, card sorting, and co-design sessions to inspire creativity and guide the development of user-centered solutions.

On the other hand, evaluative research focuses on assessing the usability, effectiveness, and overall quality of existing designs or prototypes. Once you’ve developed a prototype of your product, it's time to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. You can compare different versions of a product design or feature through A/B testing—ensuring your UX design meets user needs and expectations.

Remove the guesswork from product decisions

Collect both quantitative and qualitative insights from your customers and build truly user-centric products with Maze.

11 Best UX research methods and when to use them

There are various UX research techniques—each method serves a specific purpose and can provide unique insights into user behaviors and preferences. In this section, we’ll highlight the most common research techniques you need to know.

Read on for an at-a-glance table, and full breakdown of each method.

1. User interviews

Tl;dr: user interviews.

Directly ask users about their experiences with a product to understand their thoughts, feelings, and problems

✅ Provides detailed insights that survey may miss ❌ May not represent the wider user base; depends on user’s memory and honesty

User interviews are a qualitative research method that involves having open-ended and guided discussions with users to gather in-depth insights about their experiences, needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Typically, you would ask a few questions on a specific topic during a user interview and analyze participants' answers. The results you get will depend on how well you form and ask questions, as well as follow up on participants’ answers.

“As a researcher, it's our responsibility to drive the user to their actual problems,” says Yuliya Martinavichene , User Experience Researcher at Zinio. She adds, “The narration of incidents can help you analyze a lot of hidden details with regard to user behavior.”

That’s why you should:

• Start with a wide context : Make sure that your questions don’t start with your product
• Ask questions: Always ask questions that focus on the tasks that users are trying to complete
• Invest in analysis : Get transcripts done and share the findings with your team

Tanya Nativ , Design Researcher at Sketch recommends defining the goals and assumptions internally. “Our beliefs about our users’ behavior really help to structure good questions and get to the root of the problem and its solution,” she explains.

It's easy to be misunderstood if you don't have experience writing interview questions. You can get someone to review them for you or use our Question Bank of 350+ research questions .

When to conduct user interviews

This method is typically used at the start and end of your project. At the start of a project, you can establish a strong understanding of your target users, their perspectives, and the context in which they’ll interact with your product. By the end of your project, new user interviews—often with a different set of individuals—offer a litmus test for your product's usability and appeal, providing firsthand accounts of experiences, perceived strengths, and potential areas for refinement.

2. Field studies

Tl;dr: field studies.

Observe users in their natural environment to inform design decisions with real-world context

✅ Provides contextual insights into user behavior in real-world situations ✅ Helps identify external factors and conditions that influence user experience ❌ Can be time-consuming and resource-intensive to conduct ❌ Participants may behave differently when they know they are being observed (Hawthorne effect)

Field studies—also known as ethnographic research—are research activities that take place in the user’s environment rather than in your lab or office. They’re a great method for uncovering context, unknown motivations, or constraints that affect the user experience.

An advantage of field studies is observing people in their natural environment, giving you a glimpse at the context in which your product is used. It’s useful to understand the context in which users complete tasks, learn about their needs, and collect in-depth user stories.

When to conduct field studies

This method can be used at all stages of your project—two key times you may want to conduct field studies are:

• As part of the discovery and exploration stage to define direction and understand the context around when and how users interact with the product
• During usability testing, once you have a prototype, to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution or validate design assumptions in real-world contexts

3. Focus groups

Tl;dr: focus groups.

Gather qualitative data from a group of users discussing their experiences and opinions about a product

✅ Allows for diverse perspectives to be shared and discussed ❌ Group dynamics may influence individual opinions

A focus group is a qualitative research method that includes the study of a group of people, their beliefs, and opinions. It’s typically used for market research or gathering feedback on products and messaging.

Focus groups can help you better grasp:

• How users perceive your product
• What users believe are a product’s most important features
• What problems do users experience with the product

As with any qualitative research method, the quality of the data collected through focus groups is only as robust as the preparation. So, it’s important to prepare a UX research plan you can refer to during the discussion.

Here’s some things to consider:

• Write a script to guide the conversation
• Ask clear, open-ended questions focused on the topics you’re trying to learn about
• Include around five to ten participants to keep the sessions focused and organized

When to conduct focus groups

It’s easier to use this research technique when you're still formulating your concept, product, or service—to explore user preferences, gather initial reactions, and generate ideas. This is because, in the early stages, you have flexibility and can make significant changes without incurring high costs.

Another way some researchers employ focus groups is post-launch to gather feedback and identify potential improvements. However, you can also use other methods here which may be more effective for identifying usability issues. For example, a platform like Maze can provide detailed, actionable data about how users interact with your product. These quantitative results are a great accompaniment to the qualitative data gathered from your focus group.

4. Diary studies

Tl;dr: diary studies.

Get deep insights into user thoughts and feelings by having them keep a product-related diary over a set period of time, typically a couple of weeks

✅ Gives you a peak into how users interact with your product in their day-to-day ❌ Depends on how motivated and dedicated the users are

Diary studies involve asking users to track their usage and thoughts on your product by keeping logs or diaries, taking photos, explaining their activities, and highlighting things that stood out to them.

“Diary studies are one of the few ways you can get a peek into how users interact with our product in a real-world scenario,” says Tanya.

A diary study helps you tell the story of how products and services fit into people’s daily lives, and the touch-points and channels they choose to complete their tasks.

There’s several key questions to consider before conducting diary research, from what kind of diary you want—freeform or structured, and digital or paper—to how often you want participants to log their thoughts.

• Open, ‘freeform’ diary: Users have more freedom to record what and when they like, but can also lead to missed opportunities to capture data users might overlook
• Closed, ‘structured; diary: Users follow a stricter entry-logging process and answer pre-set questions

Remember to determine the trigger: a signal that lets the participants know when they should log their feedback. Tanya breaks these triggers down into the following:

• Interval-contingent trigger : Participants fill out the diary at specific intervals such as one entry per day, or one entry per week
• Signal-contingent trigger : You tell the participant when to make an entry and how you would prefer them to communicate it to you as well as your preferred type of communication
• Event-contingent trigger : The participant makes an entry whenever a defined event occurs

When to conduct diary studies

Diary studies are often valuable when you need to deeply understand users' behaviors, routines, and pain points in real-life contexts. This could be when you're:

• Conceptualizing a new product or feature: Gain insights into user habits, needs, and frustrations to inspire your design
• Trying to enhance an existing product: Identify areas where users are having difficulties or where there are opportunities for better user engagement

TL;DR: Surveys

Collect quantitative data from a large sample of users about their experiences, preferences, and satisfaction with a product

✅ Provides a broad overview of user opinions and trends ❌ May lack in-depth insights and context behind user responses

Although surveys are primarily used for quantitative research, they can also provided qualitative data, depending on whether you use closed or open-ended questions:

• Closed-ended questions come with a predefined set of answers to choose from using formats like rating scales, rankings, or multiple choice. This results in quantitative data.
• Open-ended question s are typically open-text questions where test participants give their responses in a free-form style. This results in qualitative data.

Matthieu Dixte , Product Researcher at Maze, explains the benefit of surveys: “With open-ended questions, researchers get insight into respondents' opinions, experiences, and explanations in their own words. This helps explore nuances that quantitative data alone may not capture.”

So, how do you make sure you’re asking the right survey questions? Gregg Bernstein , UX Researcher at Signal, says that when planning online surveys, it’s best to avoid questions that begin with “How likely are you to…?” Instead, Gregg says asking questions that start with “Have you ever… ?” will prompt users to give more specific and measurable answers.

Make sure your questions:

• Are easy to understand
• Don't guide participants towards a particular answer
• Include both closed-ended and open-ended questions
• Respect users and their privacy
• Are consistent in terms of format

To learn more about survey design, check out this guide .

When to conduct surveys

While surveys can be used at all stages of project development, and are ideal for continuous product discovery , the specific timing and purpose may vary depending on the research goals. For example, you can run surveys at:

• Conceptualization phase to gather preliminary data, and identify patterns, trends, or potential user segments
• Post-launch or during iterative design cycles to gather feedback on user satisfaction, feature usage, or suggestions for improvements

6. Card sorting

Tl;dr: card sorting.

Understand how users categorize and prioritize information within a product or service to structure your information in line with user expectations

✅ Helps create intuitive information architecture and navigation ❌ May not accurately reflect real-world user behavior and decision-making

Card sorting is an important step in creating an intuitive information architecture (IA) and user experience. It’s also a great technique to generate ideas, naming conventions, or simply see how users understand topics.

In this UX research method, participants are presented with cards featuring different topics or information, and tasked with grouping the cards into categories that make sense to them.

There are three types of card sorting:

• Open card sorting: Participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and name those categories, thus generating new ideas and names
• Hybrid card sorting: Participants can sort cards into predefined categories, but also have the option to create their own categories
• Closed card sorting: Participants are given predefined categories and asked to sort the items into the available groups

Card sorting type comparison table

You can run a card sorting session using physical index cards or digitally with a UX research tool like Maze to simulate the drag-and-drop activity of dividing cards into groups. Running digital card sorting is ideal for any type of card sort, and moderated or unmoderated sessions .

Read more about card sorting and learn how to run a card sorting session here .

When to conduct card sorting

Card sorting isn’t limited to a single stage of design or development—it can be employed anytime you need to explore how users categorize or perceive information. For example, you may want to use card sorting if you need to:

• Understand how users perceive ideas
• Evaluate and prioritize potential solutions
• Generate name ideas and understand naming conventions
• Learn how users expect navigation to work
• Decide how to group content on a new or existing site
• Restructure information architecture

7. Tree testing

Tl;dr: tree testing.

Evaluate the findability of existing information within a product's hierarchical structure or navigation

✅ Identifies potential issues in the information architecture ❌ Focuses on navigation structure, not visual design or content

During tree testing a text-only version of the site is given to your participants, who are asked to complete a series of tasks requiring them to locate items on the app or website.

The data collected from a tree test helps you understand where users intuitively navigate first, and is an effective way to assess the findability, labeling, and information architecture of a product.

We recommend keeping these sessions short, ranging from 15 to 20 minutes, and asking participants to complete no more than ten tasks. This helps ensure participants remain focused and engaged, leading to more reliable and accurate data, and avoiding fatigue.

If you’re using a platform like Maze to run remote testing, you can easily recruit participants based on various demographic filters, including industry and country. This way, you can uncover a broader range of user preferences, ensuring a more comprehensive understanding of your target audience.

To learn more about tree testing, check out this chapter .

When to conduct tree testing

Tree testing is often done at an early stage in the design or redesign process. That’s because it’s more cost-effective to address errors at the start of a project—rather than making changes later in the development process or after launch.

However, it can be helpful to employ tree testing as a method when adding new features, particularly alongside card sorting.

While tree testing and card sorting can both help you with categorizing the content on a website, it’s important to note that they each approach this from a different angle and are used at different stages during the research process. Ideally, you should use the two in tandem: card sorting is recommended when defining and testing a new website architecture, while tree testing is meant to help you test how the navigation performs with users.

8. Usability testing

Tl;dr: usability testing.

Observe users completing specific tasks with a product to identify usability issues and potential improvements

✅ Provides direct insights into user behavior and reveals pain points ❌ Conducted in a controlled environment, may not fully represent real-world usage

Usability testing evaluates your product with people by getting them to complete tasks while you observe and note their interactions (either during or after the test). The goal of conducting usability testing is to understand if your design is intuitive and easy to use. A sign of success is if users can easily accomplish their goals and complete tasks with your product.

There are various usability testing methods that you can use, such as moderated vs. unmoderated or qualitative vs. quantitative —and selecting the right one depends on your research goals, resources, and timeline.

Usability testing is usually performed with functional mid or hi-fi prototypes . If you have a Figma, InVision, Sketch, or prototype ready, you can import it into a platform like Maze and start testing your design with users immediately.

The tasks you create for usability tests should be:

• Realistic, and describe a scenario
• Actionable, and use action verbs (create, sign up, buy, etc)

Be mindful of using leading words such as ‘click here’ or ‘go to that page’ in your tasks. These instructions bias the results by helping users complete their tasks—something that doesn’t happen in real life.

✨ Product tip

With Maze, you can test your prototype and live website with real users to filter out cognitive biases, and gather actionable insights that fuel product decisions.

When to conduct usability testing

To inform your design decisions, you should do usability testing early and often in the process . Here are some guidelines to help you decide when to do usability testing:

• Before you start designing
• Once you have a wireframe or prototype
• Prior to the launch of the product
• At regular intervals after launch

To learn more about usability testing, check out our complete guide to usability testing .

9. Five-second testing

Tl;dr: five-second testing.

Gauge users' first impressions and understanding of a design or layout

✅ Provides insights into the instant clarity and effectiveness of visual communication ❌ Limited to first impressions, does not assess full user experience or interaction

In five-second testing , participants are (unsurprisingly) given five seconds to view an image like a design or web page, and then they’re asked questions about the design to gauge their first impressions.

Why five seconds? According to data , 55% of visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a website, so it;s essential to grab someone’s attention in the first few seconds of their visit. With a five-second test, you can quickly determine what information users perceive and their impressions during the first five seconds of viewing a design.

Product tip 💡

And if you’re using Maze, you can simply upload an image of the screen you want to test, or browse your prototype and select a screen. Plus, you can star individual comments and automatically add them to your report to share with stakeholders.

When to conduct five-second testing

Five-second testing is typically conducted in the early stages of the design process, specifically during initial concept testing or prototype development. This way, you can evaluate your design's initial impact and make early refinements or adjustments to ensure its effectiveness, before putting design to development.

To learn more, check out our chapter on five-second testing .

10. A/B testing

Tl;dr: a/b testing.

Compare two versions of a design or feature to determine which performs better based on user engagement

✅ Provides data-driven insights to guide design decisions and optimize user experience ❌ Requires a large sample size and may not account for long-term effects or complex interactions

A/B testing , also known as split testing, compares two or more versions of a webpage, interface, or feature to determine which performs better regarding engagement, conversions, or other predefined metrics.

It involves randomly dividing users into different groups and giving each group a different version of the design element being tested. For example, let's say the primary call-to-action on the page is a button that says ‘buy now’.

You're considering making changes to its design to see if it can lead to higher conversions, so you create two versions:

• Version A : The original design with the ‘buy now’ button positioned below the product description—shown to group A
• Version B : A variation with the ‘buy now’ button now prominently displayed above the product description—shown to group B

Over a planned period, you measure metrics like click-through rates, add-to-cart rates, and actual purchases to assess the performance of each variation. You find that Group B had significantly higher click-through and conversion rates than Group A. This indicates that showing the button above the product description drove higher user engagement and conversions.

Check out our A/B testing guide for more in-depth examples and guidance on how to run these tests.

When to conduct A/B testing

A/B testing can be used at all stages of the design and development process—whenever you want to collect direct, quantitative data and confirm a suspicion, or settle a design debate. This iterative testing approach allows you to continually improve your website's performance and user experience based on data-driven insights.

11. Concept testing

Tl;dr: concept testing.

Evaluate users' reception and understanding of a new product, feature, or design idea before moving on to development

✅ Helps validate and refine concepts based on user feedback ❌ Relies on users' perception and imagination, may not reflect actual use

Concept testing is a type of research that evaluates the feasibility, appeal, and potential success of a new product before you build it. It centers the user in the ideation process, using UX research methods like A/B testing, surveys, and customer interviews.

There’s no one way to run a concept test—you can opt for concept testing surveys, interviews, focus groups, or any other method that gets qualitative data on your concept.

*Dive into our complete guide to concept testing for more tips and tricks on getting started. *

When to conduct concept testing

Concept testing helps gauge your audience’s interest, understanding, and likelihood-to-purchase, before committing time and resources to a concept. However, it can also be useful further down the product development line—such as when defining marketing messaging or just before launching.

Which is the best UX research type?

The best research type varies depending on your project; what your objectives are, and what stage you’re in. Ultimately, the ideal type of research is one which provides the insights required, using the available resources.

For example, if you're at the early ideation or product discovery stage, generative research methods can help you generate new ideas, understand user needs, and explore possibilities. As you move to the design and development phase, evaluative research methods and quantitative data become crucial.

Discover the UX research trends shaping the future of the industry and why the best results come from a combination of different research methods.

How to choose the right user experience research method

In an ideal world, a combination of all the insights you gain from multiple types of user research methods would guide every design decision. In practice, this can be hard to execute due to resources.

Sometimes the right methodology is the one you can get buy-in, budget, and time for.

Gregg Bernstein , UX Researcher at Signal

UX research tools can help streamline the research process, making regular testing and application of diverse methods more accessible—so you always keep the user at the center of your design process. Some other key tips to remember when choosing your method are:

Define the goals and problems

A good way to inform your choice of user experience research method is to start by considering your goals. You might want to browse UX research templates or read about examples of research.

Michael Margolis , UX Research Partner at Google Ventures, recommends answering questions like:

• “What do your users need?”
• “What are your users struggling with?”
• “How can you help your users?”

Understand the design process stage

If your team is very early in product development, generative research —like field studies—make sense. If you need to test design mockups or a prototype, evaluative research methods—such as usability testing—will work best.

This is something they’re big on at Sketch, as we heard from Design Researcher, Tanya Nativ. She says, “In the discovery phase, we focus on user interviews and contextual inquiries. The testing phase is more about dogfooding, concept testing, and usability testing. Once a feature has been launched, it’s about ongoing listening.”

Consider the type of insights required

If you're looking for rich, qualitative data that delves into user behaviors, motivations, and emotions, then methods like user interviews or field studies are ideal. They’ll help you uncover the ‘why’ behind user actions.

On the other hand, if you need to gather quantitative data to measure user satisfaction or compare different design variations, methods like surveys or A/B testing are more suitable. These methods will help you get hard numbers and concrete data on preferences and behavior.

*Discover the UX research trends shaping the future of the industry and why the best results come from a combination of different research methods. *

Build a deeper understanding of your users with UX research

Think of UX research methods as building blocks that work together to create a well-rounded understanding of your users. Each method brings its own unique strengths, whether it's human empathy from user interviews or the vast data from surveys.

But it's not just about choosing the right UX research methods; the research platform you use is equally important. You need a platform that empowers your team to collect data, analyze, and collaborate seamlessly.

Simplifying product research is simple with Maze. From tree testing to card sorting, prototype testing to user interview analysis—Maze makes getting actionable insights easy, whatever method you opt for.

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about testing methods, head on to the next chapter all about tree testing .

Get valuable insights from real users

Conduct impactful UX research with Maze and improve your product experience and customer satisfaction.

Frequently asked questions

How do you choose the right UX research method?

Choosing the right research method depends on your goals. Some key things to consider are:

• The feature/product you’re testing
• The type of data you’re looking for
• The design stage
• The time and resources you have available

What is the best UX research method?

The best research method is the one you have the time, resources, and budget for that meets your specific needs and goals. Most research tools, like Maze, will accommodate a variety of UX research and testing techniques.

When to use which user experience research method?

Selecting which user research method to use—if budget and resources aren’t a factor—depends on your goals. UX research methods provide different types of data:

• Qualitative vs quantitative
• Attitudinal vs behavioral
• Generative vs evaluative

Identify your goals, then choose a research method that gathers the user data you need.

What results can I expect from UX research?

Here are some of the key results you can expect from actioning the insights uncovered during UX research:

• Improved user satisfaction
• Increased usability
• Better product fit
• Informed design decisions
• Reduced development costs
• Higher conversion rates
• Increased customer loyalty and retention

Tree Testing: Your Guide to Improve Navigation and UX

UX Research Cheat Sheet

February 12, 2017 2017-02-12

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User-experience research methods are great at producing data and insights, while ongoing activities help get the right things done. Alongside R&D, ongoing UX activities can make everyone’s efforts more effective and valuable. At every stage in the design process, different UX methods can keep product-development efforts on the right track, in agreement with true user needs and not imaginary ones.

In This Article:

When to conduct user research.

One of the questions we get the most is, “When should I do user research on my project?” There are three different answers:

• Do user research at whatever stage you’re in right now . The earlier the research, the more impact the findings will have on your product, and by definition, the earliest you can do something on your current project (absent a time machine) is today.
• Do user research at all the stages . As we show below, there’s something useful to learn in every single stage of any reasonable project plan, and each research step will increase the value of your product by more than the cost of the research.
• Do most user research early in the project (when it’ll have the most impact), but conserve some budget for a smaller amount of supplementary research later in the project. This advice applies in the common case that you can’t get budget for all the research steps that would be useful.

The chart below describes UX methods and activities available in various project stages.

Each project is different, so the stages are not always neatly compartmentalized. The end of one cycle is the beginning of the next.

The important thing is not to execute a giant list of activities in rigid order, but to start somewhere and learn more and more as you go along.

When deciding where to start or what to focus on first, use some of these top UX methods. Some methods may be more appropriate than others, depending on time constraints, system maturity, type of product or service, and the current top concerns. It’s a good idea to use different or alternating methods each product cycle because they are aimed at different goals and types of insight. The chart below shows how often UX practitioners reported engaging in these methods in our survey on UX careers.

If you can do only one activity and aim to improve an existing system, do qualitative (think-aloud) usability testing , which is the most effective method to improve usability . If you are unable to test with users, analyze as much user data as you can. Data (obtained, for instance, from call logs, searches, or analytics) is not a great substitute for people, however, because data usually tells you what , but you often need to know why . So use the questions your data brings up to continue to push for usability testing.

The discovery stage is when you try to illuminate what you don’t know and better understand what people need. It’s especially important to do discovery activities before making a new product or feature, so you can find out whether it makes sense to do the project at all .

An important goal at this stage is to validate and discard assumptions, and then bring the data and insights to the team. Ideally this research should be done before effort is wasted on building the wrong things or on building things for the wrong people, but it can also be used to get back on track when you’re working with an existing product or service.

Good things to do during discovery:

• Conduct field studies and interview users : Go where the users are, watch, ask, and listen. Observe people in context interacting with the system or solving the problems you’re trying to provide solutions for.
• Run diary studies to understand your users’ information needs and behaviors.
• Interview stakeholders to gather and understand business requirements and constraints.
• Interview sales, support, and training staff. What are the most frequent problems and questions they hear from users? What are the worst problems people have? What makes people angry?
• Listen to sales and support calls. What do people ask about? What do they have problems understanding? How do the sales and support staff explain and help? What is the vocabulary mismatch between users and staff?
• Do competitive testing . Find the strengths and weaknesses in your competitors’ products. Discover what users like best.

Exploration methods are for understanding the problem space and design scope and addressing user needs appropriately.

• Compare features against competitors.
• Do design reviews.
• Use research to build user personas and write user stories.
• Analyze user tasks to find ways to save people time and effort.
• Show stakeholders the user journey and where the risky areas are for losing customers along the way. Decide together what an ideal user journey would look like.
• Explore design possibilities by imagining many different approaches, brainstorming, and testing the best ideas in order to identify best-of-breed design components to retain.
• Obtain feedback on early-stage task flows by walking through designs with stakeholders and subject-matter experts. Ask for written reactions and questions (silent brainstorming), to avoid groupthink and to enable people who might not speak up in a group to tell you what concerns them.
• Iterate designs by testing paper prototypes with target users, and then test interactive prototypes by watching people use them. Don’t gather opinions. Instead, note how well designs work to help people complete tasks and avoid errors. Let people show you where the problem areas are, then redesign and test again.
• Use card sorting to find out how people group your information, to help inform your navigation and information organization scheme.

Testing and validation methods are for checking designs during development and beyond, to make sure systems work well for the people who use them.

• Do qualitative usability testing . Test early and often with a diverse range of people, alone and in groups. Conduct an accessibility evaluation to ensure universal access.
• Ask people to self-report their interactions and any interesting incidents while using the system over time, for example with diary studies .
• Audit training classes and note the topics, questions people ask, and answers given. Test instructions and help systems.
• Talk with user groups.
• Staff social-media accounts and talk with users online. Monitor social media for kudos and complaints.
• Analyze user-forum posts. User forums are sources for important questions to address and answers that solve problems. Bring that learning back to the design and development team.
• Do benchmark testing: If you’re planning a major redesign or measuring improvement, test to determine time on task, task completion, and error rates of your current system, so you can gauge progress over time.

Listen throughout the research and design cycle to help understand existing problems and to look for new issues. Analyze gathered data and monitor incoming information for patterns and trends.

• Survey customers and prospective users.
• Monitor analytics and metrics to discover trends and anomalies and to gauge your progress.
• Analyze search queries: What do people look for and what do they call it? Search logs are often overlooked, but they contain important information.
• Make it easy to send in comments, bug reports, and questions. Analyze incoming feedback channels periodically for top usability issues and trouble areas. Look for clues about what people can’t find, their misunderstandings, and any unintended effects.
• Collect frequently asked questions and try to solve the problems they represent.
• Run booths at conferences that your customers and users attend so that they can volunteer information and talk with you directly.
• Give talks and demos: capture questions and concerns.

Ongoing and strategic activities can help you get ahead of problems and make systemic improvements.

• Find allies . It takes a coordinated effort to achieve design improvement. You’ll need collaborators and champions.
• Talk with experts . Learn from others’ successes and mistakes. Get advice from people with more experience.
• Follow ethical guidelines . The UXPA Code of Professional Conduct is a good starting point.
• Involve stakeholders . Don’t just ask for opinions; get people onboard and contributing, even in small ways. Share your findings, invite them to observe and take notes during research sessions.
• Hunt for data sources . Be a UX detective. Who has the information you need, and how can you gather it?
• Determine UX metrics. Find ways to measure how well the system is working for its users.
• Follow Tog's principles of interaction design .
• Use evidence-based design guidelines , especially when you can’t conduct your own research. Usability heuristics are high-level principles to follow.
• Design for universal access . Accessibility can’t be tacked onto the end or tested in during QA. Access is becoming a legal imperative, and expert help is available. Accessibility improvements make systems easier for everyone.
• Give users control . Provide the controls people need. Choice but not infinite choice.
• Prevent errors . Whenever an error occurs, consider how it might be eliminated through design change. What may appear to be user errors are often system-design faults. Prevent errors by understanding how they occur and design to lessen their impact.
• Improve error messages . For remaining errors, don’t just report system state. Say what happened from a user standpoint and explain what to do in terms that are easy for users to understand.
• Provide helpful defaults . Be prescriptive with the default settings, because many people expect you to make the hard choices for them. Allow users to change the ones they might need or want to change.
• Check for inconsistencies . Work-alike is important for learnability. People tend to interpret differences as meaningful, so make use of that in your design intentionally rather than introducing arbitrary differences. Adhere to the principle of least astonishment . Meet expectations instead.
• Map features to needs . User research can be tied to features to show where requirements come from. Such a mapping can help preserve design rationale for the next round or the next team.
• When designing software, ensure that installation and updating is easy . Make installation quick and unobtrusive. Allow people to control updating if they want to.
• When designing devices, plan for repair and recycling . Sustainability and reuse are more important than ever. Design for conservation.
• Avoid waste . Reduce and eliminate nonessential packaging and disposable parts. Avoid wasting people’s time, also. Streamline.
• Consider system usability in different cultural contexts . You are not your user. Plan how to ensure that your systems work for people in other countries . Translation is only part of the challenge.
• Look for perverse incentives . Perverse incentives lead to negative unintended consequences. How can people game the system or exploit it? How might you be able to address that? Consider how a malicious user might use the system in unintended ways or to harm others.
• Consider social implications . How will the system be used in groups of people, by groups of people, or against groups of people? Which problems could emerge from that group activity?
• Protect personal information . Personal information is like money. You can spend it unwisely only once. Many want to rob the bank. Plan how to keep personal information secure over time. Avoid collecting information that isn’t required, and destroy older data routinely.
• Keep data safe . Limit access to both research data and the data entrusted to the company by customers. Advocate for encryption of data at rest and secure transport. A data breach is a terrible user experience.
• Deliver both good and bad news . It’s human nature to be reluctant to tell people what they don’t want to hear, but it’s essential that UX raise the tough issues. The future of the product, or even the company, may depend on decisionmakers knowing what you know or suspect.
• Track usability over time . Use indicators such as number and types of support issues, error rates and task completion in usability testing, and customer satisfaction ratings, to show the effectiveness of design improvements.
• Include diverse users . People can be very different culturally and physically. They also have a range of abilities and language skills. Personas are not enough to prevent serious problems, so be sure your testing includes as wide a variety of people as you can.
• Track usability bugs . If usability bugs don’t have a place in the bug database, start your own database to track important issues.
• Pay attention to user sentiment . Social media is a great place for monitoring user problems, successes, frustrations, and word-of-mouth advertising. When competitors emerge, social media posts may be the first indication.
• Reduce the need for training . Training is often a workaround for difficult user interfaces, and it’s expensive. Use training and help topics to look for areas ripe for design changes.
• Communicate future directions . Customers and users depend on what they are able to do and what they know how to do with the products and services they use. Change can be good, even when disruptive, but surprise changes are often poorly received because they can break things that people are already doing. Whenever possible, ask, tell, test with, and listen to the customers and users you have. Consult with them rather than just announcing changes. Discuss major changes early, so what you hear can help you do a better job, and what they hear can help them prepare for the changes needed.
• Recruit people for future research and testing . Actively encourage people to join your pool of volunteer testers. Offer incentives for participation and make signing up easy to do via your website, your newsletter, and other points of contact.

Use this cheat-sheet to choose appropriate UX methods and activities for your projects and to get the most out of those efforts. It’s not necessary to do everything on every project, but it’s often helpful to use a mix of methods and tend to some ongoing needs during each iteration.

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Related courses, discovery: building the right thing.

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Create, maintain, and utilize personas throughout the UX design process

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User Experience Research: Definition, Types, Steps, + Uses

Have you ever noticed how your favorite applications and websites appear to read your mind? How do they smoothly anticipate your wants and make you feel like a tech-savvy superhero? It isn’t magic; it is the result of User Experience Research!

UX research is a dynamic and ongoing process that is essential in developing effective and user-friendly products or services. It fills the gap between user expectations and design decisions, resulting in higher product satisfaction and better business-related results.

Continue reading to learn more about user experience research, how to do it, and how researchers may use it.

What is User Experience research?

User Experience research or UX research is defined as users’ systematic study to discover behaviors, needs, motivations, and trends through observations, analysis, and other user feedback.

UX researchers use different methods to understand problems and draw opportunities to stand out amongst their competition. Organizations conduct UX research to precisely understand how real customers react to the products or services in the real world.

Types of UX research methods

We can divide UX research into two dimensions depending on the product type, its environment, the research size, and your timelines. Let’s look at both measurements.

Quantitative vs. qualitative research

Quantitative research is the study of a population through the use of surveys and questionnaires. Quantitative research helps to generalize findings and understand what a specific population likes and dislikes. This data collection technique is generally mathematical in nature.

Qualitative research helps researchers gather information by observing users in field studies or focus groups. Qualitative research brings sense to the motivations and reasons for consumer behavior. The users are generally in small numbers belonging to diverse backgrounds and help answer the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about consumer behavior.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Research Questions and Questionnaires

Attitudinal vs. behavioral research

“Attitudinal research” applies to what users say, while “behavioral” applies to what they really do. What users and customers usually say and what they do are sometimes pretty different. Researchers often conduct attitudinal research to measure customers’ needs and beliefs.

However, researchers lean towards behavioral research for insights as data on what users tend to do is more relevant. Website A/B testing is an excellent example of behavioral research because it gives researchers critical insights into how users perceive and act on different versions of the same site.

Steps to conduct user experience research

Conducting user experience research is a structured procedure that helps discover significant insights for improving the user experience. Here are the five steps to conducting user experience research:

Step 1: Define objectives

Always define the goals of your research before you act. Understand what you want to discover about your customers and their requirements.

By defining the objectives of your study, you can set the foundation for targeted and purposeful studies. Your goals should include a thorough understanding of your clients and their individual needs. This first stage acts as a compass to ensure that your research efforts are focused on measurable outcomes.

Step 2: Set a hypothesis

Set a hypothesis on what you feel you know about the users. This hypothesis serves as a preliminary assumption, a starting point that you will test and modify during the study process. A well-crafted hypothesis helps guide your research efforts and serves as the foundation for structured inquiry.

Step 3: Choose a suitable method(s)

Choosing the best research techniques is similar to choosing the right tools for a job. The method you’ll adopt is heavily influenced by factors such as project kind, available resources, research team size, and deadlines.

Whether you use surveys, interviews, usability testing, or a combination of methodologies, the goal is to customize your options to the specific context of your research, assuring effective data collecting and insight development.

Step 4: Apply the research method(s)

Conduct research using the research method(s) you chose and start collecting user data about their preferences, likes, dislikes, and needs. Conducting user experience research involves actively engaging with your target users and collecting valuable data.

This step entails creating surveys, setting up usability testing, conducting user interviews, or deploying any other chosen methodologies. UX researchers use a number of user research methods to conduct UX research. By directly interacting with users, you gain firsthand insights into user behaviors, preferences, and pain points.

Step 5: Synthesize feedback

Compiling and synthesizing the feedback is critical as data from your research activity comes in. This involves thoroughly examining user data and discovering trends, patterns, and variations. Collect and analyze the user-feedback data to fill in your knowledge gaps. Use this knowledge to improve and enhance your offering.

You can develop and improve your offers based on actual consumer demands by using synthesized feedback as a source of insights to direct your decision-making.

Uses of User Experience Research

UX research is a comprehensive toolkit for researchers. It allows them to navigate different stages of design and development while uncovering a variety of user insights. Researchers use UX research for the following:

Discovery means understanding what the users find relevant. Researchers either interview the user in their environment or ask them to maintain a record of their daily interaction with a design. Researchers look for insights into user habits, needs, and preferences during this phase.

UX researchers may conduct interviews with users in their natural surroundings or ask them to keep a record of their everyday experiences with a specific design to do this. Researchers can better empathize with users’ experiences and discover insights that help drive the design process by immersing themselves in their reality.

Exploration involves investigating many options and solutions to meet the different requirements of customers. During this phase, researchers look at possibilities to address the needs of all users. Card sorting is one of the interactive UX research methods to understand precisely what people like and dislike.

This interaction method helps researchers better understand users’ mental models and how they expect information to be organized. By investigating these preferences, UX designers may create interfaces and structures that fit customers’ needs, resulting in more intuitive and user-friendly designs.

Usability Testing

Usability Testing is an important stage in the UX research process because it allows designs and prototypes to be thoroughly tested. Testing helps you evaluate the design process thoroughly. UX researchers evaluate the product’s usability, functionality, and overall experience.

Usability testing involves observing real users interact with a prototype, product, or service. A UX researcher can modify the design and make informed decisions to produce a more seamless user experience by identifying pain points, problems, and places of misunderstanding. Companies test products to ensure they’re easy to use and accessible to everyone.

Listening to user feedback and viewpoints is essential for getting insights and putting design issues into context. Listening assists UX researchers in putting issues in perspective. It helps them find unseen problems to fix quickly.

Surveys and Questionnaires are useful tools that help researchers track user feelings. UX researchers can frequently seek user feedback via surveys, questionnaires, and feedback sessions. This method enables researchers to measure user sentiments, identify potential problems that may not be obvious at first, and fix them as soon as possible.

Benefits of UX research

The benefits of conducting UX research are numerous, contributing to both product quality and business success. Here’s a closer look at the main benefits of incorporating UX research into your design and development processes:

Better products

Involving your potential customers directly helps you gain a lot of knowledge on what the customers prefer, what their pain points are, and what will help the overall improvement of the product.

Happy users

UX research helps you collect unbiased feedback directly from your customers – your most reliable feedback source. It is the best actionable feedback source because it is not influenced by company leaders, investors, or other outsiders.

Business growth

Understanding what your customers seek helps organizations spend less money and time correcting flawed designs. It helps to speed up the product development process and boosts customer satisfaction.

User Experience research is an ongoing process. It connects user expectations and design decisions to create seamless product experiences. It discovers user behaviors and preferences using approaches such as quantitative and qualitative research, as well as attitudinal and behavioral insights.

QuestionPro research enables you to effectively develop, distribute, and analyze surveys, acquire useful insights, and make data-driven decisions across a wide range of research areas. It speeds up the research process, increases user interaction, and ultimately helps you better understand your target audience and improve your products or services.

Looking to deliver an exceptional customer experience? Discover more about how to delight your customer at every touchpoint and turn them into brand advocates.

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What is UX research?

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How we think of and practice UX ( user experience ) research has evolved rapidly in recent years. What was once a specialized discipline is now viewed as something everyone in an organization can (and should) participate in. As a result, the definition of UX research is also changing. Whether you’re a UX veteran or newly introduced to the concept, user experience research is evolving and branching out.

What is UX research and why is it important?

As UX research becomes more commonplace in organizations big and small, its definitions and applications have naturally evolved. Traditionally, user experience research is the practice of studying user interactions to help with the design of people-first products and experiences.

Nonetheless, the meaning of UX can vary depending on who you’re talking to. For product teams, UX research might mean validating prototypes and concepts, and for marketing teams, it may mean testing brand designs and messaging before a launch. Each team's UX research deliverables will vary, too. In other words, UX research is no longer a practice held in one corner of the business. The most successful organizations empower all teams to collect user and  customer insights  in order to make better business decisions.

Types of UX research and when to use them

Before we jump into individual research methods, or the tactics used for conducting UX research, there are big-picture questions that need to be addressed first. And that’s: what types of UX research are there?

Qualitative vs. quantitative research

When it comes to understanding your users, you may find yourself wondering if your UX research approach should be  qualitative or quantitative . And it’s important to figure that out because the two types uncover very different insights.

To get a full picture of your user experience, you need to understand both what’s happening and why. If you only have quantitative data, you may be missing out on key insights that could make a difference in your understanding of the user experience. And if you only do qualitative research, you won’t be able to tell whether your findings are representative of a larger population. 

Quantitative research: What's happening with your users?

Quantitative research provides the hard numbers that can highlight patterns and trends in user behavior. This method relies on statistical data to quantify behaviors, opinions, and attitudes. Tools such as surveys , usage statistics, and A/B testing can offer valuable metrics that show what users are doing, how many are doing it, and under what conditions these actions occur.

For instance, quantitative methods can determine the number of users who abandon a shopping cart before completing a purchase, or they can measure how a new feature affects user engagement. These insights are crucial for making data-driven decisions that enhance user interfaces and streamline user interactions.

Qualitative research: Why are your users behaving this way?

On the flip side, qualitative research dives deeper into the motivations behind user actions, filling in the narrative gaps left by quantitative data. Through techniques such as interviews , focus groups , and ethnographic studies , qualitative research explores the underlying reasons for user behaviors, providing context to the numbers.

This method is especially useful when you need to understand the nuances of user satisfaction, discover pain points, and gather detailed feedback about user experiences. It helps to paint a vivid picture of why certain features are loved or disliked, and it can reveal how users emotionally connect with your product.

Integrating qualitative and quantitative research for a comprehensive understanding

The most effective UX research strategy employs both qualitative and quantitative research to create a comprehensive understanding of user experiences. By integrating these approaches, you can both quantify user behavior and understand the motivations behind it.

Starting with quantitative data to identify areas of interest or concern, you can then apply qualitative research to explore those areas more deeply. This combination allows you to not only validate broad patterns found in the data but also to explore the rich, personal insights that give these patterns meaning.

A balanced approach for deeper insights

By balancing quantitative and qualitative research, you achieve a more complete view of the user experience. Quantitative data gives you the necessary breadth to make generalizable conclusions, while qualitative data brings depth and color to those conclusions, providing a clearer direction for actionable improvements. Together, they enable a holistic approach to UX research that aligns business strategies with genuine user needs.

Attitudinal vs. behavioral research

Though sometimes misconstrued as being the same thing, attitudinal and behavioral research are not synonymous. However, as with quantitative and qualitative research, the two can be useful when assessed concurrently. 

Attitudinal research involves the assessment of users’ preconceived attitudes or feelings toward an experience. For example, this could involve asking a user why they like or dislike a feature on your site prior to using it. In contrast, behavioral research is focused on what the user does. 

Drawing another parallel to the distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods, behavioral research will tell you what’s happening, while attitudinal research helps to provide the reason why it’s happening. Always keep in mind that what users say and what users do are often different

Behavioral research: Observing user actions

Behavioral research is grounded in the observation of user behavior as they interact with a product. This method tracks what users actually do, not just what they say they do. By analyzing actions such as clicks, navigation paths, and interaction patterns, behavioral research uncovers how user behavior aligns—or doesn’t—with expected or intended use cases.

For instance, behavioral analytics can reveal if users find and use a new feature, or if they encounter issues completing tasks, allowing teams to objectively measure user engagement and identify problematic areas of a design.

Attitudinal research: Understanding user sentiments

Conversely, attitudinal research delves into the why behind user actions by exploring their attitudes, preferences, and feelings. This type of research typically involves direct feedback from users through methods like surveys, interviews, or sentiment analysis, providing insights into their satisfaction, preferences, and perceptions.

Attitudinal research can explain why a feature that performs well behaviorally might receive negative feedback, or why users request changes to elements that appear to function perfectly well from a behavioral standpoint.

Combining attitudinal and behavioral research for full spectrum insights

To fully understand user experience, it’s beneficial to combine both attitudinal and behavioral research. While behavioral data shows what users are doing, attitudinal data explains why they are doing it. For example, if behavioral data shows an increase in usage of a particular feature, but attitudinal data reveals that users feel frustrated or confused while using it, there may be deeper issues that need addressing.

By assessing both what users do and how they feel about their interactions, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of user experience, leading to more informed decision-making and better product development.

A holistic approach to user research

While attitudinal research provides context and understanding of user feelings and perceptions, behavioral research offers concrete data on user actions. Together, they provide a holistic view of the user experience, enabling UX researchers and designers to create more user-centric products that are not only functionally effective but also emotionally resonant. 

Generative vs evaluation research

The goals of  generative and evaluation research  (sometimes referred to as evaluative research) are very different. Generative research helps you define the problem you’d like to design a solution for. Evaluation research, on the other hand, helps you evaluate an existing design (in prototype, final, or some other form).

Generative research: Defining the user's world

Generative research, sometimes known as discovery research, is fundamentally about defining the problem space before attempting to design solutions. This type of research is exploratory in nature, aimed at uncovering the deep needs, desires, and behaviors of users that are not yet fully understood. It helps paint a broad picture of the context in which a product will be used and the potential challenges and opportunities that exist within that context.

Methodologies often employed in generative research include:

• User interviews to dive deep into the motivations and needs of individuals.
• Ethnographic studies to observe users in their natural environments, providing a richer, more authentic understanding of user behaviors.
• Field studies which involve direct observation and interaction with the user while they engage in their daily activities, offering insights that are often unattainable through other means.

Generative research is crucial in the early stages of product development when teams are tasked with defining the 'what' and 'why'—what needs to be built and why it is important. This research feeds the creative process with valuable insights that guide the design and innovation of new products.

Evaluative research: Assessing and refining the solution

Once a prototype or product iteration has been developed, evaluative research comes into play. This type of research assesses how well a product or feature performs against the intended user needs and business goals. It is more structured and tends to be quantitative, although qualitative methods can also be used to gain deeper insights.

Common evaluative research techniques include:

• Usability testing to identify how effectively users can use the product and where they encounter issues.
• A/B testing to compare different versions of a product and determine which one performs better in terms of user engagement and satisfaction.
• Surveys with closed-ended questions that provide measurable data about user satisfaction and usability.

Evaluative research is critical for refining and validating the design, ensuring that it not only meets the initial design specifications but also resonates with users and meets their needs effectively. It helps teams iterate on design solutions, making informed adjustments based on user feedback and behavior.

Integrating generative and evaluative research for comprehensive insights

While generative research is ideal for identifying new opportunities and understanding user needs, evaluative research is essential for testing and refining those ideas against real-world applications. The integration of both research types allows teams to create products that are both innovative and effective, ensuring that they not only meet the creative vision but also perform well in practical use.

By understanding the distinct roles of generative and evaluative research, teams can better plan their UX research activities to support all phases of the product development lifecycle—from conception to launch and beyond.

UX research methods

UX needs to be a strategic initiative that drives a culture of user-centric design and thinking—informing everything from the product itself to marketing campaigns and messaging to brand design and social media. There's a variety of UX research tools and user research techniques  that help teams collect the insights needed specific for every role.

Let’s take a look at some of the more common methods now.

Remote usability testing

It might be obvious that  remote usability testing  is a great method for conducting UX research—if only by its name alone. This method of  remote research  uses an  insight platform  to record the screen (and voice, depending on the software you choose) of test participants as they interact with your product or experience in their natural environment—at home, in their office, or a specific location.

Through usability testing , designers, product managers, and researchers alike can uncover and understand how real people respond to products and experiences. From what they like and dislike, to where they get stuck and confused, to areas of improvement, the valuable insights gathered from these tests are eye-opening.

Diary studies

Diary studies  are a form of  longitudinal research  (research that takes place over a long period with the same participants). Typically, users self-report their activities at regular intervals to create a log of their activities, thoughts, and frustrations. It’s a useful approach for capturing organic feedback on activities that are repetitive, long, or unpredictable.

The value of diary studies

Optimal scenarios for diary studies: Diary studies are most beneficial when exploring behaviors or experiences that unfold over longer periods. They are ideal for:

• Extended processes: Observing how users engage with a process that takes time, such as adopting new technology or navigating significant life events like purchasing a home.
• Behavioral triggers: Discovering the catalysts that prompt specific user actions, such as reaching for a health-tracking app or initiating a digital payment.
• Routine integration: Understanding how services or products become part of daily habits, affecting user retention and satisfaction.

These studies provide a depth of insight that snapshots from brief interactions simply cannot match, offering a richer, more contextual understanding of the user journey.

Strengths and challenges of diary studies

• In-depth insights: Over time, diary studies can reveal profound insights into user behavior and psychology that other methods might miss due to their limited observation windows.
• Rich contextual data: By capturing real-time data, diary studies provide a detailed view of how products or services fit into the fabric of everyday life.

Considerations:

• High participant commitment: The intensive nature of diary studies requires a significant time commitment from participants, which could lead to dropout if not properly managed.
• Complex data handling: The qualitative data from diary studies can be voluminous and complex, requiring meticulous analysis to derive meaningful conclusions.

Conducting effective diary studies

Preparation and participant engagement: Successful diary studies begin with thoughtful planning and careful participant selection. Maintaining flexible demographics and providing clear, comprehensive instructions are crucial to participant retention and data quality. Adequately compensating participants for their time is also essential given the extended nature of their involvement.

Instruction clarity: Participants should receive explicit instructions detailing the frequency and type of diary entries required, whether textual, visual, or both, and any specific focus areas or questions to address.

Pilot and iterate: Piloting the study with a few participants can help identify any issues with the study design and instructions, ensuring everything is clear and the study is set up for success.

Enhancing insights with interviews

Initial interviews: Starting with an in-depth interview can help set clear expectations, build rapport, and encourage thorough participation throughout the study period.

Concluding interviews: Post-study interviews allow for deeper exploration of diary entries, helping clarify ambiguities and delve deeper into significant findings.

Integrating with other research methods: While powerful on their own, diary studies can be even more informative when combined with other research methods, such as surveys or usability tests, to build a comprehensive picture of the user experience over time.

In essence, diary studies offer a unique lens through which to view the user experience, capturing the ebb and flow of daily life and its impact on product engagement and satisfaction.

Card sorting

Card sorting  is a qualitative research method used to group, label, and describe information more effectively—based on feedback from customers or users.  Card sorting requires you to create a set of cards—sometimes literally—to represent a concept or item. These cards will then be grouped or categorized by your users in ways that make the most sense to them. Most commonly, it’s used when designing (or redesigning) the navigation of a website or the organization of content within it, because it helps to evaluate information architecture.

It may seem obvious, but through a series of expertly-phrased and positioned questions,  surveys  allow you to empathize with your users in order to gain quantitative insights that aren’t as visible to developers, managers, and marketers. Listening to your customer can help you find new problems to solve or devise new ideas, and collecting customer feedback through surveys is an active, receptive, and honest way to do it.

Designing effective surveys

Key considerations for survey design:

• Ask the right questions: Tailor your questions to elicit the most informative responses. This involves understanding the kind of information you need and framing your questions to minimize bias, ensuring they are clear and direct.
• Incentivize participation: Motivate your respondents by offering rewards or explaining the value their feedback provides. This not only increases the response rate but also encourages thoughtful, honest answers.
• Simplify the process: Ensure your survey is concise and straightforward. Managing expectations upfront about the time commitment and providing a seamless user experience can reduce dropout rates.
• Prioritize accessibility and readability: Good UX design is crucial. Surveys should be easy to read and accessible on all devices, using clear fonts, contrasting colors, and an intuitive layout.

Why customer feedback is crucial

Feedback is essentially a dialogue between you and your customers. It helps you understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. Continuous feedback throughout the product development cycle allows you to make iterative improvements, ensuring that the final product resonates well with your users. Real-time insights from surveys can guide your decision-making process, helping you solve the right problems and innovate effectively.

Leveraging survey feedback

Immediate and long-term benefits:

• Identify new challenges: Surveys can pinpoint areas that need attention, revealing both new opportunities and existing flaws.
• Drive product evolution: Regular customer feedback helps you keep pace with users' evolving expectations, ensuring your product or service remains relevant.
• Enhance customer satisfaction: By acting on survey feedback, you demonstrate that you value customer input, fostering loyalty and enhancing overall user satisfaction.

Building on survey insights

While surveys provide valuable quantitative data, integrating these findings with qualitative research, such as interviews or observational studies, can enrich your understanding. This mixed-method approach allows you to not only quantify trends but also explore the reasons behind them, offering a comprehensive view of your user experience.

Live interviews  are a great way to collect qualitative insights. By having dynamic discussions, interviewees are able to observe verbal as well as non-verbal cues and ask open-ended questions to uncover those details that surveys and usability testing cannot. Interviewing is an especially useful UX research method for understanding complex feelings and experiences because it allows you to ask follow-up questions.

When should UX research be conducted?

Early on, UX research was most commonly used to solve a problem that was already known. For example, if a company noticed that visitors were dropping off their site at an unusually high rate on a particular page, researchers would look into how to solve that specific problem. As a result, research wasn’t necessarily something that was done for discovery or as a regular part of the development process.

But that’s a thing of the past. The value teams are getting from fast human insights is driving  UX research best practices  to become embedded in everyday processes for teams across the business. What was once just a problem-solving mindset has evolved to combine the perspective of finding what problems to solve, as well. 

This is where researchers flex their strategic skills, and  companies are getting creative with user experience research  to provide valuable insights. As any consumer will tell you, there are countless experiences that leave us underwhelmed, if not disappointed, that might not be so obvious to spot.

For example, if you visit an e-commerce site, find a product, and purchase it, there isn’t a lot of information that would trigger anyone to wonder if the purchasing experience needed any attention. After all, a purchase was made, right? Discovering what problems need solving, in addition to solving the ones you know need attention, is a big shift in UX research mentality.

A final word on UX research

UX, CX, usability, user testing. No matter what you call it, putting your customers at the center of your company’s mission and culture has become a  competitive advantage  that not only attracts new customers but keeps them coming back.

This expanded view and access to user experience research mean that not only are companies better equipped than ever to create and improve great experiences for their customers, it also means that customers will be expecting better and better experiences in the future.

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What is a UX Researcher? The Ultimate Guide for 2024

The role of the user experience (UX) researcher is becoming more prominent, more specialized, and more in demand.

Uncovering user behaviors, needs, and motivations in order to design products and services that provide value is the crux of user experience research. When performed correctly, these methods have a huge impact on business.

So what is a UX researcher?

In this guide, we’ll take a look at what a UX researcher does and the UX research career path.

Although there is no singular path, there are four main steps to move a UX researcher forward: expanding knowledge of the user research field ; obtaining foundational skills ; crafting a portfolio; and building a network of industry peers.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is a user experience researcher?
• What does a user experience researcher do?
• What skills are required for a career in UX research?
• How to expand your knowledge of the UX research industry
• How to obtain the necessary foundational skills
• How to craft a convincing portfolio
• How to build a solid network of industry peers
• Final thoughts

1. What is a user experience researcher?

A user experience researcher has their hand on the pulse of user needs and goals. They are the empathetic, organized, critical thinker whose day-to-day is about the first stage of the design thinking process : empathize .

This isn’t to say that UX researchers’ work is totally separate from the rest of the process, but their work has arguably the most humanizing effect on the process. Here’s why— UX researchers know how to:

• Understand the problem or challenge at hand
• Apply a variety of methods and approaches to finding out how their users tick in the context of this problem or challenge
• Listen, observe, and ask the right kinds of questions to gather insights that can be turned into actionable ideas
• Synthesize their findings and communicate them to the rest of the team and to key stakeholders in clear, actionable, and even engaging ways

2. What does a user experience researcher do?

The purpose of the UX researcher (also referred to as “user researcher” or “design researcher”) is to unearth human insights in order to guide the application of design.

According to a recent job posting by IBM, as a design researcher, you will “help provide actionable and meaningful data-driven insights that represent the voice of multiple users. You will collaborate across development, design, and marketing teams to evaluate current and upcoming user research needs that help to improve product definition and drive business goals.”

Some typical tasks and responsibilities of the UX researcher include:

Research Planning and Recruitment

• Develop a well-crafted research plan with clear research objectives.
• Write usability research screeners and discussion guides.
• Recruit targeted end-users for specific research studies.

Data Collection

• Moderate one-on-one basic usability sessions.
• Help develop and implement quantitative surveys.
• Conduct stakeholder and client interviews .

Data Analysis

• Extract insights about user behaviors from web instrumentation tools.
• Translate user insights into actionable recommendations for the product team.

Presentation of Insights

• Craft personas and other “information radiators” (e.g. journey maps) to communicate insights across the design and development teams.
• Present design research findings to the larger team in a clear and organized fashion.
• Work closely with the product team to identify research objectives.
• Establish and implement an overall research strategy.

These are just a handful of tasks that belong to UX research. Ultimately, your job as a UX researcher is to build up a picture of your target users based on their needs, wants, motivations, and pain points. These insights enable the wider design team to create user-friendly products based on real user feedback—not just your assumptions.

As with most UX design roles, the UX researcher means different things to different companies.

To learn more about what might be expected of you as a UX researcher, browse various job sites and see how different companies advertise and describe the role. Here are some useful job portals to help you get started:

• UX Jobs Board
• Just UX Jobs
• User Experience Professionals Association
• AIGA Design Jobs

3. What skills are required for a career in UX research?

Now we’re familiar with some of the key tasks and responsibilities, let’s consider what skills are required for a career in UX research.

As such, being a UX researcher typically requires knowledge or experience in a relevant field that studies human behavior, such as cognitive science, behavioral economics, anthropology, sociology, or psychology. Ultimately, it’s important to be adept at reading people and empathizing with the user, and equally at home handling data and analytics.

Ideal candidates are typically “passionate, curious, and self-driven team players” who have experience working in fast-paced environments while applying both generative and evaluative research methods to build a larger understanding of users.

It’s also important to have a solid understanding of the design thinking process, as well as a passion and know-how for influencing design strategy.

Obtaining these skills can be done through identifying research opportunities with a current employer, volunteering for a design project with an external organization (e.g. VolunteerMatch), or completing research for a personal project of your own.

Overall, practice makes perfect, and refining these skills as often as you can prepare you for your future role. You can even get a design thinking certification by taking a course or program in the discipline, to show potential employers and clients that you truly know your stuff.

4. How to expand your user research knowledge

As already mentioned, there are four key steps to forging a career in UX research:

• Expand your user research knowledge.
• Obtain the foundational skills.
• Craft a portfolio of experience.
• Build a network of peers.

Let’s start with that first step: Expanding your knowledge of the UX research field. In addition to browsing job descriptions, there are plenty of things you can do to learn more about the industry — but where to begin?

Start with the basics and learn all about UX design in this comprehensive guide , and understand the critical role UX research plays in UX design in this article.

From there, learn about the difference between qualitative , quantitative , attitudinal, and behavioral research. Next, you can familiarize yourself with some common UX research methods, such as card sorting, usability testing, and user interviews.

You’ll find an introduction to some of the most important UX research methods on the CareerFoundry YouTube channel (and be sure to take a look at these free UX research tutorials ).

Be sure to watch the video below, in which CareerFoundry graduate and professional UX designer Maureen Herben explains the different techniques and tools used in qualitative user research:

As part of your own research into the UX research field, you’ll also want to consider things such as salary and career options. Sites like Glassdoor and Payscale provide up-to-date salary reports for a range of different locations.

If you can, reach out to people who are already donning the UX researcher job title. Do they tend to work remote or in-house? What kinds of companies employ UX researchers? Again, job sites can help you out here if you don’t have any contacts in the industry (yet!).

Before you commit to the UX researcher route, it’s important to learn as much as you can about the industry and what the role entails.

5. How to obtain the foundational skills necessary for a career as a UX researcher

If you’re keen to forge a career in UX research, you’ll need to start learning some of the key skills. As with any profession, it’s important to build a solid foundation of knowledge before jumping into real-world problem-solving.

Assuming that you already have some knowledge in a related area (cognitive science, sociology, psychology, etc.), there are plenty of ways to learn the fundamentals of user research. Let’s consider those now.

• Human-Computer Interaction: An Empirical Perspective : learn about the foundational topics about one of the precursors to UX design. As well as being a neat introduction to HCI , this book includes historical context, the human factor, interaction elements, and the fundamentals of science and research.
• User Research: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Products and Services : learn about all the key research methods including face-to-face user testing, card sorting, surveys, and A/B testing.

Online resources

Industry blogs are a great way to start learning the ins and outs of the field. Some useful (and trustworthy!) sources include:

• Nielsen Norman Group
• UX Collective
• Inside Design

Conferences and meetups

If possible, consider attending a UX research conference or a local meetup. You’ll find a list of the top UX research conferences to attend in 2019 here , and can search for local UX research groups on meetup.com .

In addition to the examples above, finding an apprenticeship or a more senior researcher who is willing to let you shadow their process is a great way to immerse yourself in the context of a UX researcher while learning “on the job.”

6. How to craft a convincing UX research portfolio

As with any design role, a compelling portfolio is key to proving you’ve got the right skills for the job. So how do you go about creating a convincing UX research portfolio ?

As you practice refining your skills, keep a record of your work to present to future employers. Crafting an online portfolio is a great supplement to a resume or CV when highlighting case studies that show hiring managers what you can do. According to Senior UX Recruiter Tom Cotterill:

“Your portfolio should show cultural suitability for the company where you are applying. Don’t be afraid to add a touch of character or your own style to your portfolio. It’s your chance to wow the hiring manager and demonstrate that you stand out from the crowd. A good portfolio indicates, in short, that this person has taken time to represent themselves in the best possible light, and they’re clued up enough to showcase their most relevant work in an aesthetic and logical way.”

Ultimately, your portfolio should include the following sections:

• The problem or design challenge your research aimed to solve.
• The team you collaborated with.
• The research process (how did you go about solving the problem?).
• The tools you used to recruit, collect and analyze data, and present insights.
• The final outcome and the handoff of the design for development .

For more insight on how to refine a great UX research portfolio, check out How to Wow Me With Your UX Research Portfolio and How to Create a Powerful Case Study for Your UX Portfolio . Another great resource for inspiration is  Bestfolios , the largest curation of best UX research and designer portfolios, resumes, case studies , and design resources.

7. How to build a network within the UX research industry

You’re in the process of mastering the right skills and crafting your portfolio. Now it’s time to network! Networking is one of the best ways to meet people in the UX field and potentially land a new job.

Let’s consider some of the best opportunities for making industry connections.

Current Co-Workers

If you are currently employed, look to see if there are any user experience researchers in your organization, and ask them what it’s like! Also request to shadow them during a research session and take notes.

Future Employers

Informational interviews are also a great way to get candid feedback with people working at great companies, such as IBM, Google, or Amazon. Using LinkedIn or Twitter to find and invite UX researchers for coffee is a solid way to get an idea of what it may be like to work for your company of interest, and also how to get in the door.

Online UX Communities

Actively participate in online UX communities (e.g. Facebook groups) relevant to your professional interests and learning goals. Here are a few to start with:

• Useful Usability
• The UX School

UX Research Organizations

Lastly, join 1-2 user experience research organizations, such as the User Experience Research Professionals Association or the Design Research Society to see if there are any upcoming events you can attend.

8. Final thoughts

UX is a growing field, and the role of the user experience researcher is becoming more and more pivotal. Equipping yourself with the necessary skills and knowledge, and learning to conduct UX research like a professional , while surrounding yourself with peers in the field who you can learn from are essential to becoming a UX researcher yourself.

Overall, the value of understanding the needs of the customer cannot be ignored, and user experience researchers will have an increasingly valuable role to play in the future of design.

If you’d like to learn more about UX research, check out the following guides:

• What is the UX research salary?
• A 5-Point Roadmap For Any UX Research Project
• How to conduct a UX audit
• Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid in Your UX Research Portfolio
• Interview Toolkit: Top 5 UX Research Questions to Prepare For

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User Experience Research and Design Specialization

Begin your journey in UX Research and Design . Gain a solid foundation in UX Research and Design to create great products and advance your career.

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What you'll learn

Understand the basics of UX design and UX research

Use appropriate UX research approaches to inform design decisions

Design a complete product, taking it from an initial concept to an interactive prototype

Skills you'll gain

• Usability Testing
• User Experience (UX)
• Prototyping
• UX Research

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• Learn in-demand skills from university and industry experts
• Master a subject or tool with hands-on projects
• Develop a deep understanding of key concepts
• Earn a career certificate from University of Michigan

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Specialization - 6 course series

Integrate UX Research and UX Design to create great products through understanding user needs, rapidly generating prototypes, and evaluating design concepts. Learners will gain hands-on experience with taking a product from initial concept, through user research, ideation and refinement, formal analysis, prototyping, and user testing, applying perspectives and methods to ensure a great user experience at every step.

Applied Learning Project

This Coursera specialization in UX Research and UX Design concludes with a capstone project, in which learners will incorporate UX Research and Design principles to design a complete product, taking it from an initial concept to an interactive prototype.

Introduction to User Experience Principles and Processes

Understand the fields of UX design and UX research.

Understand design principles and best practices and their basis in human capabilities and behavior

Incorporate a user-centered focus into the design process

Understanding User Needs

Understand user needs assessments and qualitative research

Learn an end-to-end methodology for qualitative research

Explore good practices for conducting semi-structured interviews, in-situ observation, and affinity walls

Evaluating Designs with Users

Identify different approaches to user testing and their appropriate use

Design and run an user test effectively

Analyze and report on user testing

UX Design: From Concept to Prototype

Define and scope the design problem

Create user stories and storyboards to transform information about user needs into design concepts

Develop prototypes from elements of interactions and low-to-high fidelity mockups

UX Research at Scale: Surveys, Analytics, Online Testing

Understand survey methodology from the UX perspective

Learn techniques to gaining UX insights from large numbers of users, including web analytics, A/B testing, and remote unmoderated studies

UX (User Experience) Capstone

Gain experience conducting user experience research in a real-world setting

Design and carry out an integrated multi-phase user experience design project

Communicate design concepts and actionable research findings

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Is this course really 100% online do i need to attend any classes in person.

This course is completely online, so there’s no need to show up to a classroom in person. You can access your lectures, readings and assignments anytime and anywhere via the web or your mobile device.

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Yes! To get started, click the course card that interests you and enroll. You can enroll and complete the course to earn a shareable certificate, or you can audit it to view the course materials for free. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you’re automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. Visit your learner dashboard to track your progress.

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What kind of participants are you looking for.

All kinds. You don’t need to be a Google user, computer expert, or technology enthusiast to sign up. Anyone who is over the age of 18 and has ever used the internet in any way can join the program.

How soon will you contact me?

We want to make sure that the studies you participate in are a good fit for you. That’s why we can’t guarantee that everyone who applies will end up participating. If we do contact you, it may not be right away because we will be waiting for a study that’s a good match. We may contact you at any point as long as you remain registered.

If I sign up, will you send me spam or sell my information to other companies?

No. All the information you provide is kept confidential in accordance with the Google Privacy Policy . We only use it to help us find suitable participants for our research studies. We, or an outside agency working on our behalf, would only contact you if we wanted to invite you to participate in a study or needed to clarify some information you provided.

Why does Google collect my personal information such as ethnicity, gender and disabilities?

Google seeks to design inclusive product experiences for everyone. To do this well, it’s important for us to get feedback from everyone. We collect this information to ensure an inclusive and diverse participant pool that is representative of our society. All of these questions are optional and your information is kept confidential in accordance with the Google Privacy Policy .

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You can opt out at any time by completing the opt-out form .

Participating in a study

What exactly will i be doing in these studies.

Google runs a variety of study types. You may be invited to participate in any of the following studies:

Remote usability study

In these studies, we’ll gather your feedback via a screen-sharing session with a researcher where you may be asked questions or provide feedback about a process or design. You can be almost anywhere in the world, but you’ll need to have a high-speed internet connection.

Giving feedback at a Google office

This works best for people who live close to one of our offices. Typically, you'll meet one-on-one with a Google Researcher who'll ask you some questions about your experiences with our products or technology in general.

To keep everyone safe during COVID-19, please check the invitation from your Google contact for relevant information on entering a Google office.

Long-form study

These studies require a small amount of activity every day for several days or weeks. Google researchers will ask you to respond to questions or take notes based on your experience using a product.

For these studies, we’ll simply send you a survey form to fill out. Please note that we don’t typically offer a gift for participating in a survey.

Thank-you gift

What is a "thank-you gift".

This is Google's way of providing a gift as a way of saying thanks to people who participate in research studies, to help improve our products and experiences.

When will I receive my gift?

If your session is eligible for a thank-you gift, you should receive it three to five business days after completing your session. Please note that not all study participants will receive a thank-you gift.

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Written by Syed Balkhi

3 September, 2024

Do you ever wonder how websites and apps seem to know exactly what you want? The truth is, this is in large part due to AI in UX design.

There’s no question that AI has fundamentally changed how companies across all industries operate. According to Forbes, the AI industry is expected to hit $407 billion by 2027! For more context, research shows that around 73% of online businesses in the U.S. are already using AI in some way. 

And it’s no wonder why. AI saves marketers about 2.5 hours a day – that’s 25 whole days a year!

But if you want to get the most from AI, you need to start thinking about how you can use it in UX research. With the right knowledge and resources, you can continuously streamline your design process, which will ultimately lead to more engagement, clicks, and, most importantly, sales. 

Today, we are going to show you how AI is improving UX research and design and how you can use it to your advantage. 

Let’s get started!

How AI Enhances UX Research and the Design Process

Let’s start by exploring a few key benefits of adding AI to your existing design process. 

• Speed Things Up – AI tools can crunch data faster than any human. With the right tool, you can quickly and accurately gather actionable data about your target audience and campaigns. 
• Make Smarter Choices – Instead of guessing or “going with your gut,” you can use hard data to make decisions that line up with your visitors’ needs, goals, and pain points.
• Get Personal – People love it when things feel made just for them. In fact, 80% of people prefer to engage with brands that personalize content and offers. Since you now know what your visitors like, it’s easy to understand how AI can help you build rapport and get to know your audience.
• Include Everyone – AI can spot accessibility issues that humans might miss. Automated accessibility checks ensure that designs are inclusive, which will broaden your audience and improve user experiences for all.
• Save Money – By reducing the need for extensive manual testing and analysis, AI helps businesses optimize their UX research budget and allocate resources more effectively.

7 Practical AI Applications in User Testing and Research

Now that you know a little more about the benefits, let’s talk about some of the specific, practical applications for AI in both user testing and research. 

1. AI-Driven User Testing and Analytics

Automated user behavior analysis makes it easier to see how your audience interacts with your product. AI can track and analyze every click, scroll, and hover, things that would take humans much longer to uncover. Since all of this information is at your fingertips in minutes, you can quickly identify patterns and take action. 

It can handle a whole lot of data at once, which makes large-scale user testing more manageable than ever before. Traditional user testing often limits the number of participants due to logistical constraints. But with AI, you can test with thousands or even millions of users, which means your data will be statistically significant and reliable.

By finding subtle trends and anomalies in the big picture, AI helps you understand user behavior and needs better, which means you can make data-driven decisions that improve user satisfaction and overall experience.

2. Intelligent A/B Testing

A/B testing is a proven way to see which version of a web page or app performs better based on a number of different metrics. This strategy is also called split-testing, and it’s been around since long before AI. 

But there’s no question that machine learning makes this process even better by optimizing it in new and exciting ways. For example, AI algorithms are very good at analyzing different versions of a landing page or offer, which will help you find the best ways to connect with your audience.

Predictive analytics is another element of A/B testing that you should know about. By using historical data and learned patterns, AI can predict which version will perform better even before the testing is complete. This means faster decision-making and better version implementation, so you waste less time and resources on testing. 

Ultimately, AB testing helps you deliver the best possible experience based on data, not guesswork or intuition. AI can make it even better. 

3. AI-Assisted Prototyping

Brainstorming for new designs is important but time-consuming. Instead of spending hours at meetings, you can use AI to speed up this process.

Basically, you can ‘feed’ your program different designs and campaigns that worked well in the past. The AI-powered software can look through this information and pull out key elements that it can then use to build new campaigns. 

Doing this can help you generate a library of great-looking templates and concepts that you can discuss with your design team. Much like traditional brainstorming, not every idea will be a winner. But there’s no question that you’ll save a significant chunk of time by using AI to come up with a pool of ideas.

Rapid iteration on an existing campaign is also possible with AI-driven prototyping, which actually leads back to A/B testing. Instead of spending weeks or months on one prototype, AI tools can generate multiple versions in minutes that you can experiment with on your site or social media. 

Trying out different concepts is important for creative growth, and AI makes it possible to experiment more. By making it easy to test and discard many ideas, AI creates an environment where prototype testing can flourish. 

4. Automated Accessibility Compliance

Making your product accessible to all users is not only the right thing to do, but it also dramatically expands your audience.

AI-driven accessibility checks can automatically scan your design for issues that will hinder users with disabilities. For example, there are tests to determine if a site is color-blind friendly, with different versions for each type of colorblindness. In my experience, this proactive approach helps you identify and fix problems early in the design process.

There’s no doubt that AI can check for accessibility issues faster and more accurately than manual testing. Since AI is working on this part of your site, the design team can focus on other important parts of the user experience while knowing accessibility is being taken care of.

Using AI for periodic checks makes sure no one is left out. It promotes a welcoming design approach so all users, regardless of ability, can have a good experience with your product. This not only increases user satisfaction but also your brand’s reputation for inclusivity .

5. Personalized User Experiences

Did you know that 74% of shoppers say they’ve felt frustrated by a shopping experience because the content didn’t match their interests? This is exactly why personalization is the key to user engagement. People are more likely to take action on your site if you show them things that are relevant to their interests.

AI can supercharge this concept by automatically adapting content and promotions to each user’s preferences. It can do this by analyzing user behavior, determining what content users will find most interesting based on their actions, and tailoring the experience accordingly. This will create a more engaging experience for every single person who lands on your site.

Cool, right?

AI-driven personalization at scale is especially useful for growing businesses. As your user base grows, it admittedly gets hard to add a personal touch to everything you do. AI is able to process huge amounts of data, which means it can hone in and deliver personalized experiences to millions of users without compromising on quality.

The bottom line is people will engage with content that feels tailored to them, which means a big boost in retention and satisfaction. When you add AI to the mix, it creates a win-win situation for you and your customers. 

6. Predictive UX Modeling

Knowing what users want and need is a powerful way to improve the user experience. With the right data, AI can predict what someone might want or do next by looking at past behavior and trends. This foresight will help you design interfaces and interactions that are more intuitive and meet each customer’s expectations. 

For example, a streaming service like Max will show each person shows and movies they might like based on their watch history. 

In the old days, you’d have to wait weeks, sometimes months, and read through tons of user feedback before you could make actionable changes to your campaigns. With AI, you can make these changes essentially in real time based on how people are engaging with your content or offers. 

By knowing what they need before they even realize they have a problem, you can offer solutions that add value to their lives. This proactive approach builds loyalty as users feel understood and valued by your brand.

7. AI-Enhanced Design Systems

Consistency is a massive part of creating a positive user experience. People want to feel comfortable with a brand, whether they’re browsing their blog or buying their products. 

AI can help with this by generating style guides across your entire brand, including products, landing pages, and social media profiles. As a result, all the different parts of your product will have an original look and feel that your customers will recognize.

In this instance, AI will save you a lot of time. Instead of manually checking each component, like color hex codes, against the style guide, AI can do this for you. This reduces the chances of inconsistencies and makes sure every part of the product aligns with your brand. 

Final Thoughts: The Human Touch in an AI World

It’s more clear than ever before that AI is having a huge impact on UX research and design. It’s making things faster, smarter, and more personal.

One of the misconceptions I see around this topic is that it’s meant to replace humans. The truth is, that tools like this actually give designers and researchers better tools to do their job.

The best UX still comes from a mix of AI smarts and human creativity. AI can crunch the numbers and spot patterns, but it takes human insight to turn those insights into experiences that truly connect with users.If you’re ready to bring AI design and research tools to your business, there’s no time like right now to start. Artificial intelligence is getting more helpful every day, so why not take advantage of this remarkable and effective tool today?

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Melissa Smith, PhD, helps workplaces embrace AI

Vol. 55 No. 6 Print version: page 29

• Applied Psychology
• Managing Human Capital
• User Experience Design
• Artificial Intelligence

As artificial intelligence (AI) and automation revolutionize work, employers worldwide are striving to keep pace with the latest developments, maintain productivity, and reduce employee stress.

Applied cognitive psychologist Melissa Smith, PhD, is studying the best ways to help companies and organizations do that as a senior user experience (UX) researcher at Google Workspace, based in Raleigh, North Carolina. The group designs and integrates Google’s vast suite of productivity tools, including Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Meet, into a cohesive service. Using the latest cognitive science, Smith and her team are building more intuitive, user-friendly programs, such as the mobile versions of popular applications like Google Drive and Calendar. Their goal is to boost both employee performance and well-being.

Smith underscores the need for workplaces to adapt to AI and other emerging technologies. She sees these advances not as threats to replace people but as tools to aid in mundane or risky tasks, enabling people to prioritize what truly defines human work: collaboration and creativity. “The beauty of user experience research is discovering what makes someone care deeply about a product, then developing that technology to support their learning and growth,” said Smith.

The Monitor talked with Smith about how she came to UX research and its implications for the future workforce.

How do your team’s strategies and goals stand out from those of other companies developing tools to improve how people work?

Google Workspace products have always been known for their collaborative nature. When I was in early college and Google first introduced Docs, it was revolutionary to be able to have multiple people working on one document at the same time. Today, those collaborative features are an industry norm, and our team is still pushing the cutting-edge boundaries of collaborative work. We are currently incorporating generative AI features across Gmail and Workspace to simplify organization tasks. Soon, you will be able to use Gmail’s side panel to summarize emails and highlight the most important action items. Also, the “Help me write” feature in Gmail and Docs, which uses AI to draft messages based on your prompts, will support Spanish and Portuguese.

Our team also prioritizes tech accessibility as we build new features, making sure that we don’t inadvertently exclude people who, for instance, rely on screen readers or high-contrast screens to interact with our services. Accessibility considerations can be easily overlooked if you don’t actively engage with the many types of consumers who use your services. There are always opportunities for us to improve in creating technology that caters to people with diverse needs or disabilities.

How is your research at Google enhancing employee well-being and shaping how the next generation will work?

User experience research is vital in product development because we are actively incorporating the voices of customers and users. My work focuses on talking with people who use our products to accomplish the diverse tasks relevant to their roles. For example, the needs of a general consumer using our products to complete schoolwork or organize family events differ from those of a small business owner who uses Google Workspace to manage a team.

By making productivity tools more user-friendly, our services streamline workflows and reduce employee stress. Overly complex software and information overload can cause mental fatigue. If we can simplify these processes and present information more clearly, we can help workers focus on essential tasks. This is especially important as workplaces increasingly adopt hybrid work models and communication among workers is fragmented. Our research helps us develop products that better support remote work, such as improved virtual collaboration and scheduling tools that help employees maintain work-life balance.

For example, my team has gained valuable information from users about the importance of seamless connection across multiple platforms and devices which has inspired us to improve the mobile interface for Google Workspace products. Just 5 years ago, I would have never opened a Google Doc on my phone. Now, mobile Docs is far more accessible and offers expanded features for collaboration among employees working from many different locations and platforms.

What led you to user experience research?

During middle school and high school, I was involved with a nonprofit organization called FIRST, which fosters excitement for science and technology among K–12 students through annual robotics competitions. It’s been more than 20 years since I first participated in the program, but that excitement hasn’t stopped. I serve on the FIRST Robotics board and help connect FIRST students with alumni at Google.

One of my goals is to show students the diverse STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-related careers available to them, beyond the already well-known roles like engineer, lab scientist, or doctor. This is partly influenced by my own experiences. I spent my undergraduate years as a mechanical engineering major because I wanted to work in robotics. But when I discovered human-robot interactions, I found that exploring how people engage with and trust artificial agents, and how robots can improve human lives, interested me far more. So, I changed my major and pursued a PhD in applied cognitive psychology and eventually realized that my research interests aligned with the user experience field.

Your dissertation looked at people’s trust in automation and robotics. How do you bring that knowledge into your current work?

No matter what the technology is—you could insert whichever technology buzzword you want, whether it’s AI, machine learning, or big data—people’s fundamental approaches to adopting new systems follow a similar pattern. There will be the early adopters, who embrace the new technology and trust it even if it’s still being workshopped. Then, there is a larger chunk of intermediary users, who prefer to test the waters and wait for the technology to take off before they immerse themselves in it. Finally, there are the people who resist change altogether—the “if it’s not broken, why fix it?” users, who probably wouldn’t mind using an old-school flip phone.

That research taught me that you need to adapt to each set of users. I emphasize that perspective in every product my team creates because most of us on the development team belong to that first group, who generally trust and understand technology. But we aren’t representative of most consumers, so it’s essential to reach out to our end users, not to convince them to trust our product but to hear their concerns so we can build a product worth trusting.

How will AI continue to influence UX research?

AI is unique in that it doesn’t just offer incremental improvements over existing technologies; it represents a whole new paradigm in how people think about and interact with technology. Consequently, we need to exercise much greater caution when building new products and proactively anticipate how users will interact with these systems. At the same time, AI opens many more opportunities to create magical moments—to push productivity, problem-solving, and collaboration forward. That kind of entirely new technology hasn’t emerged in many years, so it is an incredibly interesting time to be a user experience researcher.

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Call for experts: Technical Advisory Group on the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology

deadline of submission: 18 september 2024.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is seeking experts to serve as members of the Technical Advisory Group on the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology. This “Call for experts” provides information about the advisory group in question, the expert profiles being sought, the process to express interest, and the process of selection.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 2.5 billion people need assistive technology, but access to assistive products is as low as 3% in some settings. Among the users of assistive technology, the majority are older people and those living with disabilities or with chronic health conditions. Access to assistive technology is a fundamental human right to live a productive, dignified, and independent life.

Digital health interventions can be used to address barriers to assistive technology. Digital health is the systematic application of information and communications technologies, computer science, and data to support informed decision-making by individuals, the health workforce, and health systems, to strengthen resilience to disease and improve health and wellness. 

Recognizing the need to enhance access to assistive technology and to harness the potential of digital technologies to support health systems for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals, the World Health Assembly (WHA) has adopted two resolutions: WHA71.8 on improving access to assistive technology and WHA71.7 on digital health .

To improve access to assistive technology, WHA71.8 requests Member States to develop, implement, and strengthen policies and programs to improve access to assistive technology, to ensure that adequate and trained human resources for the provision and maintenance of assistive products are available, to promote or invest in research, development, innovation, and product design to make existing assistive products affordable; and to develop a new generation of products. In its resolution on digital health, WHA urges Member States to develop, implement, and utilize digital technologies as a means of promoting equitable, affordable, and universal access to health for all, and to build capacity for human resources for digital health, especially through digital means. The combination of these two approaches holds transformative potential, impacting health, education, livelihoods, and social participation.

Further, the publication of the first WHO and UNICEF Global report on assistive technology and advances in technology, new knowledge, evidence, and innovative solutions are made available. WHO is now in the process of supporting the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology and maximize benefits for users, their families, service providers, and society, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

The Technical Advisory Group on the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology (“TAG”) will play an important role in providing recommendations to WHO and will act as an advisory body to WHO in this field.

Functions of the TAG on the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology

In its capacity as an advisory body to WHO, the TAG shall have the following functions:

• To provide technical and scientific advice on digital technologies for enhancing access to assistive technology and their use;
• To review and recommend priorities, activities, and strategies for the use of digital technologies for enhancing access to assistive technology, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Operations of the TAG on the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology

Members of the TAG shall be appointed to serve for a period of two years and shall be eligible for reappointment. The TAG is expected to meet at least once a year. However, WHO may convene additional meetings. TAG meetings may be held in person (at WHO headquarters in Geneva or another location, as determined by WHO) or virtually, via video or teleconference. The working language of the TAG will be English. We anticipate the time commitment for TAG members will be about one day per month, including participating in meetings and contributing to draft and reviewing technical documents.

Who can express interest?

The TAG on the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology will be multidisciplinary, with members who have a range of technical knowledge, skills, and experience relevant to assistive technology and digital health. Approximately 12 members may be selected.

WHO welcomes expressions of interest from professionals, managers, policymakers, researchers, regulators, and experienced assistive technology users with expertise in one or more of the following areas:

• Assistive technology expertise including as an experienced assistive technology user, service provider, policy/decision maker, researcher, or supplier/manufacturer;
• Strengthening access to assistive technology, especially in low- or middle-income countries;
• Using digital technology to enhance access to assistive technology;
• Digital health (see definition above);
• Health technology or systems;
• Using digital technology in low- or middle-income countries.

Submitting your expression of interest

To register your interest in being considered for the TAG on the use of digital technologies to enhance access to assistive technology, use this link to fill in the digital expression of interest form and submit the following documents :

• A cover letter, indicating your motivation to apply and how you satisfy the selection criteria. Please note that, if selected, membership will be in a personal capacity. Therefore do not use the letterhead or other identification of your employer;
• Your curriculum vitae; and
• A signed and completed Declaration of Interests (DOI) form for WHO Experts, is available at https://www.who.int/about/ethics/declarations-of-interest .

The deadline for submission is 18 September 2024 at 23:59 Geneva time.

After submission, your expression of interest will be reviewed by WHO. Due to an expected high volume of interest, only selected individuals will be informed.

Members of WHO technical advisory groups (TAGs) must be free of any real, potential, or apparent conflicts of interest. To this end, applicants are required to complete the WHO Declaration of Interests for WHO Experts, and the selection as a member of a TAG is, amongst other things, dependent on WHO determining that there is no conflict of interest or that any identified conflicts could be appropriately managed (in addition to WHO’s evaluation of an applicant’s experience, expertise and motivation and other criteria).

All TAG members will serve in their individual expert capacity and shall not represent any governments, any commercial industries or entities, any research, academic, or civil society organizations, or any other bodies, entities, institutions, or organizations. They are expected to fully comply with the Code of Conduct for WHO Experts (https://www.who.int/about/ethics/declarations-of-interest). TAG members will be expected to sign and return a completed confidentiality undertaking prior to the beginning of the first meeting.

At any point during the selection process, telephone interviews may be scheduled between an applicant and the WHO Secretariat to enable the WHO to ask questions relating to the applicant’s experience and expertise and/or to assess whether the applicant meets the criteria for membership in the relevant TAG.

The selection of members of the TAGs will be made by WHO in its sole discretion, taking into account the following (non-exclusive) criteria: relevant technical expertise; experience in international and country policy work; communication skills; and ability to work constructively with people from different cultural backgrounds and orientations. The selection of TAG members will also take account of the need for diverse perspectives from different regions, especially from low and middle-income countries, and for gender balance.

If selected by WHO, proposed members will be sent an invitation letter and a Memorandum of Agreement. Appointment as a member of a TAG will be subject to the proposed member returning to WHO the countersigned copy of these two documents.

WHO reserves the right to accept or reject any expression of interest, to annul the open call process, and reject all expressions of interest at any time without incurring any liability to the affected applicant or applicants and without any obligation to inform the affected applicant or applicants of the grounds for WHO's action. WHO may also decide, at any time, not to proceed with the establishment of the TAG, disband an existing TAG, or modify the work of the TAG.

WHO shall not in any way be obliged to reveal, or discuss with any applicant, how an expression of interest was assessed, or to provide any other information relating to the evaluation/selection process, or to state the reasons for not choosing a member.

WHO may publish the names and a short biography of the selected individuals on the WHO internet.

TAG members will not be remunerated for their services in relation to the TAG or otherwise. Travel and accommodation expenses of TAG members to participate in TAG meetings will be covered by WHO in accordance with its applicable policies, rules, and procedures.

The appointment will be limited in time as indicated in the letter of appointment.

If you have any questions about this “Call for experts”, please write to [email protected] using the subject line “TAG Expression of interest” well before the 18 September 2024 deadline.

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