user research leader

What is a UX Researcher? Responsibilities, Salaries, and More

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the field, understanding the nuances of UX researchers is essential for success.

In this guide, we’ll delve into the core responsibilities, salary insights, essential skills, and more, providing you with the knowledge and tools you need to excel as a UX researcher.

A UX researcher in SaaS specializes in understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through various research methods to inform product design and development.

• Entry-Level (0-2 years) : Approximately $60,000 per year, with a range from $43,000 to $87,000.
• Mid-Career (2-5 years) : Around $90,000 per year, ranging from $57,000 to $108,000.
• Experienced (5-10 years) : About $96,000 per year, with a range from $70,000 to $132,000.
• Late Career (10+ years) : Average salary is approximately $106,000 per year.

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What is a UX researcher?

They conduct user interviews, surveys, usability tests, and analyze data to provide actionable insights . These insights help improve user experience and ensure the product meets user expectations and business goals.

In the SaaS industry, UX researchers play a critical role in optimizing software interfaces and features to enhance user satisfaction and engagement.

What does a UX researcher do?

A UX researcher is responsible for understanding users’ needs and behaviors to guide product design decisions. They use various research methods like user interviews, surveys, and usability tests to collect data on how users interact with products.

In the SaaS industry, UX researchers analyze this data to improve software usability and functionality, ensuring the product is intuitive and meets user expectations. Their insights help create user-friendly products that enhance user satisfaction and drive business success.

UX researcher’s main responsibilities

A UX researcher plays a crucial role in understanding user behaviors and needs to inform the design and development of SaaS products .

Here are the main responsibilities and duties of a UX Researcher:

• Conduct User Research : Plan and execute qualitative and quantitative research studies, such as user interviews, surveys, and usability testing.
• Analyze Data : Interpret and synthesize research findings to generate actionable insights and recommendations for product improvements .
• Collaborate with Teams : Work closely with product managers, designers, and developers to integrate research findings into the product development process.
• Create Research Reports : Prepare detailed reports, personas, journey maps, and presentations to effectively communicate insights to stakeholders.
• Advocate for Users : Promote a user-centered design approach within the organization, ensuring user needs and feedback are prioritized.
• Stay Updated : Keep abreast of the latest UX research methods, tools, and industry trends to continuously improve research practices.
• Conduct Competitive Analysis : Analyze competitors’ products to understand market trends and identify opportunities for innovation.
• Facilitate Workshops : Lead workshops and brainstorming sessions to gather input from stakeholders and users.
• Develop Research Plans : Create and manage research plans, timelines, and budgets to ensure projects are completed on schedule.

These responsibilities ensure that UX researchers effectively contribute to the creation of user-centric SaaS products that meet both user and business needs.

UX researcher salary

A career as a UX researcher can be financially rewarding, with salaries varying based on experience, location, industry, and the company. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

Salary by experience

Salary by location

• San Francisco, CA : $149,315 per year.
• New York, NY : $127,877 per year.
• Austin, TX : $128,333 per year.
• Chicago, IL : $115,598 per year.

Salary by industry

• Technology : Generally, UX researchers in the tech industry can expect salaries ranging from $92,000 to $146,000 per year.
• Finance : Salaries in the financial sector can range from $86,000 to $134,000 annually.
• Healthcare : UX researchers in healthcare might earn between $75,000 and $120,000 per year.
• Retail : The retail sector offers salaries ranging from $70,000 to $110,000 annually.

Highest paying companies

• Google : $120,000 to $230,000 per year.
• LinkedIn : $115,000 to $220,000 per year.
• Meta (Facebook) : $110,000 to $210,000 per year.
• Apple : $105,000 to $200,000 per year.

These figures highlight the lucrative nature of a career in UX research , especially within top tech companies and in major metropolitan areas.

UX researcher career path

A career in UX research involves progressing through various roles, each with increasing responsibility and expertise.

Here’s a typical career progression for a UX Researcher:

• Junior UX Researcher : Assists in conducting user research, supports senior researchers, and helps with data collection and analysis. To progress , focus on learning various research methods, gaining practical experience, and building a strong portfolio. Seek feedback from mentors and participate in internships to develop skills.
• UX Researcher : Conducts user research studies, analyzes data, and provides insights to inform product design decisions. Collaborates with designers, developers, and product managers. To advance, take on more complex projects, deepen your understanding of user research methodologies, and develop strong communication skills to present findings effectively.
• Senior UX Researcher : Leads major research projects, mentors junior researchers, and plays a key role in strategic planning and decision-making. Provides detailed insights that significantly impact product development. Enhance leadership skills, contribute to creating research frameworks and methodologies, and build strong relationships with cross-functional teams.
• Lead UX Researcher : Oversees the research team, ensures the quality and consistency of research activities, and aligns research goals with business objectives. Manages multiple projects and collaborates with senior stakeholders. Develop project management skills, drive innovation within the team, and engage in high-level strategic planning. Focus on fostering a user-centered culture within the organization.
• UX Research Manager : Manages the UX research team, coordinates research efforts across projects, and ensures alignment with overall business strategy . Provides leadership and mentorship to the research team. Enhance managerial skills, stay updated with industry trends, and focus on optimizing team performance and research processes. Advocate for the importance of UX research in strategic decisions.
• Director of UX Research : Sets the overall research strategy for the organization, collaborates with top executives, and ensures the integration of research insights into the company’s vision and goals. Oversees all research activities and initiatives . Focus on strategic leadership, expand influence across departments, and drive innovation in research practices. Develop a vision for the future of UX research within the organization.
• Vice President (VP) of UX Research : Responsible for the entire research function within the organization, driving research excellence and contributing to the overall business strategy . Manages a large team of researchers and oversees all research-related activities. Strengthen executive leadership skills, maintain a forward-thinking research vision, and foster a culture of innovation and creativity within the research team.

Each step in this career path builds on the previous one, emphasizing continuous learning, leadership, and strategic thinking to progress to higher levels of responsibility and influence in the field of UX research.

Best practices for being a great UX researcher

To excel as a UX researcher, it’s essential to adopt practices that enhance your ability to gather meaningful insights and communicate them effectively.

Here are some best practices:

• Empathize with Users : Always strive to understand and share the feelings of users. This helps in designing experiences that truly meet their needs and solve their problems. Conduct thorough user interviews and immerse yourself in the user’s environment whenever possible.
• Communicate Clearly : Present your findings in a way that is easily understandable to stakeholders from different backgrounds. Use visual aids like charts, graphs, and personas to make your data more accessible and engaging.
• Collaborate with Cross-Functional Teams : Work closely with designers, developers, product managers, and other stakeholders. Effective collaboration ensures that research insights are integrated into the product development process and that everyone is aligned with user needs.
• Stay Updated with Industry Trends : UX research is a rapidly evolving field. Stay current with the latest research methods, tools, and industry trends by attending conferences, participating in webinars, and reading relevant literature.
• Iterate Based on Feedback : UX research is an iterative process. Use feedback from users and stakeholders to continuously refine your research methods and insights. This helps you make informed design decisions and improve the user experience.
• Maintain Objectivity : Ensure that your research is unbiased and objective. Avoid leading questions and let the data speak for itself. This helps in building trust with stakeholders and ensuring that design decisions are based on solid evidence.
• Document Your Findings : Keep detailed records of your research processes, findings, and insights. This documentation can be invaluable for future projects and for providing context to new team members.

By following these best practices, you can enhance your effectiveness as a UX researcher and contribute to creating user-centric products that meet both user and business needs.

UX researcher FAQs

• Who can become a UX researcher? Anyone with a background in psychology, human-computer interaction, design, or related fields and a strong interest in understanding user behaviors and improving user experiences can become a UX researcher.
• Do UX researchers get paid well? Yes, UX researchers generally receive competitive salaries, with compensation varying based on experience, location, and industry, often ranging from $60,000 to over $120,000 per year.
• Is it hard to be a UX researcher? Being a UX researcher can be challenging due to the need for strong analytical skills, the ability to conduct and interpret various research methods, and effective communication of findings to stakeholders.
• Do UX researchers need to code? No, UX researchers do not typically need to code, but having a basic understanding of coding can be beneficial for communicating with development teams and understanding technical constraints.
• Do you need a PhD to be a UX researcher? No, a PhD is not required to be a UX researcher. Most positions require a bachelor’s or master’s degree in a relevant field, though higher education can enhance career prospects and earning potential.

We hope this guide has provided you with valuable insights into the roles, responsibilities, and rewards associated with this role.

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Leading UX Research Teams: 4 Tips for Researchers Who Manage Researchers

Some senior UX researchers are boldly carving out their own progression paths in UX research. Indeed, it might be time for us to carve out our own future. A big part of that means creating clear pathways for growth within our UX research teams. In this article, I’ll discuss four career and management tips for UX research leaders to help them and their teams to blossom, survive, and thrive.

As a leader in the UX research space, I’ve had the privilege of managing large UX research teams. I’ve had opportunities to train and mentor many newbies and junior researchers, and throughout my career, I’ve discovered ways of working that have helped me to manage my teams effectively. More importantly, as the industry grows and more and more researchers look to UX research as a possible career path, I’ve been managing their expectations.

We’re at a pivotal moment in UX research as an industry and within User Experience as a whole. Although UX researchers have successfully carved out a place in the design, product, and service-delivery pipeline, many organizations still struggle to understand exactly who we are and the value we bring. So such organizations might not be focusing on our career paths and growth as a discipline just yet.

In the meantime, UX research leaders must take the reins and carve out our own future. A big part of that means creating clear pathways for growth on our teams. If you’re a current or rising senior UX research leader, consider four strategies that I’ve used throughout my leadership journey to become a better manager and guide newer researchers toward a fulfilling career path in UX research leadership.

1. Invest in a culture of growth, not just a specialty.

As a team leader in UX research, I invest about 50% or more of my time recruiting and building our team and community. UX research is definitely an invaluable specialty. If you have any doubt about that, just take a look at the number of open UX research roles right now. Ask any UX research manager., and they’ll tell you a good user researcher is hard to find and hard to keep.

A great user researcher also has a broad skillset. When you are hiring members of your team, you are not just building an army of research-bot specialists for your company. The team itself must have a dynamic, diverse research culture in which people can try new things, grow, and learn.

So why might being in a specialty be a bad thing? It isn’t when you love what you do—and many user researchers love doing what they do. But what happens if being a UX research specialist means you can’t grow beyond UX research roles? What if you really want to progress in your organization or company, but more senior roles simply don’t exist? Or worse, your once-coveted specialist background means some dismiss your skills as not-a-fit when you’re seeking broader roles?

Because many companies don’t really have an answer to the UX research–career path question, and they just need us as specialists right now, this could mean that there is no career path in your company. Consequently, a many great researchers are leaving the field once they get to the more senior ranks.

If there is an exodus of our best, most ambitious senior researchers because our company hasn’t sorted out a career progression, we have done something truly damning to the future of UX research as a profession. We risk our longevity as a field. This type of role stagnation is a grave error whenever it happens. Every role needs progression.

So, if your organization is still focusing mainly on investing in UX research as a specialty, the power to make change lies with you. You need to be creative as a leader and create opportunities for growth for promising UX researchers who are under your care.

New methods? New projects? New skills? Are you giving your team members plenty of opportunities to grow? Correction: Are you creating opportunities for your team to grow?

2. Practice self-management as well as self-care.

In my own quest to understand leadership, I found a diagram of a model called the Drotter’s leadership pipeline, in which leadership begins with mastering the management of yourself and your own time, skills, and outputs. The next tier is leading yourself toward either excelling as a senior expert in your field or moving into managing others in your field.

Eventually, you’ll move on to higher tiers, or levels, at which leaders manage other managers in the same field, and so on and so forth, up the ladder. Drotter’s leadership diagram enables professionals to create their own progression—one that offers intrinsic motivations outside a corporate structure.

Self-management is discovering your intrinsic motivations and using them to carve out your own career goals and plans. Have you explored what you want? Have you made a plan or set goals? Tried different types of projects? Engaged in cross-functional collaboration and skill-building?

You should do these things on your own, before anyone asks you to do them. Then, when you meet with your manager, you’ll be in a position to say what you want to achieve. Your manager’s role is to support your journey and help you get where you want to go.

Self-care is about taking care of yourself along this journey. You must take care of yourself just as you care for others and do all your management work. You won’t be of much help or comfort to anyone on your team if you’re not in a good place yourself. So carve out some time to keep yourself well at work. A few of my personal-favorite wellness activities: lunchtime walks, no-go calendar breaks, head-down Fridays. Don’t skip these. Just make them part of your routine and recharge.

3. Have regular one-on-one discussions about career paths.

I get so many questions from people I manage and mentor about research leadership and where and how far they might go. The topic of career progression is at the top of my mind and something I discuss often.

There are a few themes that tend to arise whenever I have these discussions about UX career progression: role clarity, career maturity, ambitions versus aspirations, blockers to leadership, and inspirations to keep going in the field of UX research. Let’s consider how these themes could serve as good prompts during a career-growth conversation:

• role clarity —How much user research does someone who reports to you want to do? There are many people who do some type of research. Is a team member more interested in UX design or service design or perhaps deep immersion in mixed methods? Clarifying how much research someone wants to do and what role he or she desires in the world of user experience often helps in determining how far or where they want to go in UX research—if that’s what they want.
• career maturity —At what stage are your team members now in their career? This is an important question because some of the people who pivot into UX research have already had long professional careers, but their UX research skills are new. Or are they mature UX researchers? One’s career maturity and UX research maturity might be very different. Figuring out where people are now is the first step to thinking about where they want to go and the pace at which they want to get there.
• ambitions versus aspirations— How carved in stone is this career plan or desire? Ambition is a strong, internally driven desire. How calculated does this person want to be? Aspiration is hopeful and allows a more fluid journey. Someone might have a hazy sense of the future, but be open to other paths. Why is this important? Decide how calculated you want to be. Look at this as serendipity versus positioning and planning: some won’t mind so much where they end up; others would be crushed if they weren’t meeting milestones.
• blockers to leadership —Most of the researchers I’ve managed have wanted to advance and grow. What prevents your team members from achieving their next steps? This question is really for someone who is keen to advance or has tried to advance—perhaps by applying for senior roles—but didn’t make it. Have you taken the time to make a plan? Have you identified and addressed the skills they lack or need to improve? You can address the need for practical skills through training and classes, but the softer skills require deeper work. If you identify a skill that needs improvement, be ready with a plan to improve it.
• inspirations to keep going —Also known as “I’m about to leave UX research, are you going to stop me?” This conversation is perhaps the most difficult one I’ve had. When a UX researcher you manage becomes bored or feels her UX research role involves doing the same usability testing, day after day, it’s time to shake things up. This type of thinking can reflect a career danger zone and be a motivation killer. Because we are specialists, our role can become routine. If we find ourselves in a rut, this is where a pep-talk is necessary, but it should also include a plan of action. Get creative: What can you do within your remit to spark a new way of thinking or offer a new project for this person? We know UX research can be dynamic, so there is always room to move horizontally, if not vertically.

One-on-ones on the topic of a UX researcher’s career path can be tricky. Not everyone is seeking career-path grooming, so offering career advice can easily come across as being pushy. So, along with the themes I’ve described, I also suggest a couple of approaches, as follows:

• Hands-on— Some people who you manage are more eager to have these types of conversations. They might crave a lot of structure and milestones, or tiers. They want to know when they have accomplished something or when they should have done so. Human Resources usually has tools to support such conversations, but you can also find many free, career-planning templates online. This is where your planning skills matter.
• Hands-off —Remember, not everyone loves one-on-ones with their manager; in fact, some people dread them. Others may have a more relaxed approach to their career, or might not have a clear idea of where they want to go. Some people on your team simply might not be bothered about progression or climbing a ladder. That doesn’t mean they don’t crave growth. You should still ask questions about where they want to go and their priorities, then seize the opportunity to inspire them to get there. This is where your listening skills matter.

Have career-path chats with the people you manage. If they don't start this conversation themselves, you can begin with that role-clarity probe. Most importantly, you should also be having such conversations with the people who manage you. Always keep the topic of UX research career growth active within your organization.

4. Support the future of UX research, be bold, influence, and speak up.

Although many in UX research want and crave leadership, many of us are not sure what true leadership means. What is this golden stuff of UX research leadership that might take us beyond leading a pure UX research team? What are those elusive skills that garner an invitation to sit at the senior management-strategy table? What are the signs of a good leader in your business?

When we think longer term in UX research, that means playing the long game. I am not entirely convinced that UX researchers have figured out the value we bring to the executive table. While it is clear that we bring data and insights to the table, we must start thinking about how we can use such insights to influence the organization.

Long-term thinking means enhancing a broader set of leadership skills that can help us to be better strategy influencers rather than just insight providers for the organization. How are your finance skills? Can you write a business case or strategy plan? It might be time to look at how our UX research skills map alongside the broader set of strategic and communication skills that people at the leadership table actually value.

Indeed, what are UX research leadership skills anyway? Establishing a clear, shared view would ultimately help us to set up UX research as a profession, with clear, progressive career steps. I look forward to a time when we might unite as a UX research community and start to establish some of these steps for career progression. Only those of us within the discipline truly understand how we can make progress. We also have a unique view of those skills that are necessary to influence others. If we have a sense of UX research-career maturity, we should really start articulating that to the teams under our care. Those coming up need to see a future for themselves in this profession, and that future guarantees the longevity of our discipline.

No matter the company, successful UX research leadership is a combination of thinking for the long term, having a clear point of view, and speaking up. UX research is so new to many organizations. Have you taken a point of view on what it should mean for your organization? Regardless of what your organization’s UX research maturity might currently be, have you set a course ahead?

If you want to start a journey, you must first choose your destination. So decide where you want to go. Having a point of view is not the same as following the strategy that senior management has outlined. While achieving those strategic goals is part of your work, your course for how to get there is entirely your own to define. Be bold. Have you been thinking in this way? Why not? If this type of thinking is new to you, put on Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and take some time to think about how you would do things your way—and more importantly, what that would mean for your organization.

For more of my perspectives on managing UX research teams, I invite you to watch my talk , “Research Can Lead,” from the UX Live 2020 conference.

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Join the discussion, andrea lewis.

Head of UX and Managing Director at Ad Hoc Global

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UX Researcher

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What Is a UX Researcher? How to Become One, Salary, Skills.

UX researchers are responsible for studying and understanding what users of a system or product need and want. UX researchers use their findings to improve the design of goods, software and services. Here’s what to know about a UX researcher’s salary, needed skills and how to become one.

What Is a UX Researcher?

UX researchers study user behavior to answer important questions about how digital products and services are designed and how customers interact with them. The goal of a UX researcher is to improve a product or service through their findings. Some of the key insights UX researchers must uncover about users include their demographic information, how they use a product, what they get from a product and what issues they may have with the product. 

What Do UX Researchers Do?

UX researchers are tasked with learning what motivations, needs and behaviors users have when interacting with a product or service. The two main types of UX research are quantitative and qualitative. The goal of quantitative research is to identify the experience of a user by looking at data, such as click-through rates on landing pages, for example. The goal of qualitative research is to understand why users behave the way they do, and for this, UX researchers rely on field studies, moderated usability tests and user interviews.

UX Researcher Responsibilities

• Design, organize and implement user research projects, including A/B tests, field studies, user surveys, user interviews and usability tests.
• Analyze and synthesize qualitative and quantitative research to create and report findings.
• Present findings to designers, developers, leadership and stakeholders. 
• Collaborate with product and design teams and provide actionable feedback. 

Day-to-Day Responsibilities of UX Researchers

• Craft user research plans.
• Develop budgets and timelines for research projects. 
• Recruit targeted users.
• Conduct user interviews. 
• Create user surveys. 
• Organize usability tests.
• Conduct field studies.
• Analyze results from interviews and surveys. 

UX Researchers Within a Company

UX researchers are typically part of the product development team within a company. They often collaborate with leaders on the product team and design to create research plans, analyze results and data from surveys and questionnaires and make product recommendations. 

Importance of UX Researchers

UX researchers help companies understand the needs and wants of their customers as they approach the product or service. Without thoughtful UX researchers, companies will overlook the most important part of the design process: empathy. 

What Skills Are Needed to Be a UX Researcher?

Qualifications to be a ux researcher.

• Experience designing and executing user research.
• Knowledge of UX design principles.
• Strong understanding of statistics and data.
• Experience with user research tools and software.

UX Researcher Prerequisites

• UX researchers usually hold a bachelor’s degree in psychology, statistics, human-computer interaction, information systems or a related field. 
• A portfolio of previous user research projects. 

UX Researcher Hard Skills

• Data analysis.
• Math and statistics.
• UX research methods and software tools. 
• User testing. 
• Basic design skills.

UX Researcher Soft Skills

• Empathy and curiosity.
• Interpersonal communication and writing skills.
• Problem solving and critical thinking skills.
• Collaboration and teamwork skills.

Tools and Programs UX Researcher Use

• Google Forms 
• Google Optimize
• Optimal Workshop

How to Become a UX Researcher

Ux researcher education and experience.

UX researchers can come from a variety of different backgrounds; there isn’t one set degree that is necessarily best for UX research. Studying technology or behavioral and social sciences can all be relevant to UX research, as an understanding of tech and how humans interact with it is central to the role.

Outside of education, volunteering to run UX research projects for local businesses and non-profit organizations, as well as participating in hackathons, may be helpful experience in developing a UX research portfolio.

• UX Researcher Certificates and Courses
• UX Bootcamps to Know
• Google UX Design Professional Certificate
• General Assembly UX Design Immersive
• Northwestern UX/UI Boot Camp

UX Researcher Career Path

Although UX researchers can come from many different educational backgrounds, starting a UX research career with an internship is a great first step in the field. UX researchers may later take on roles such as UX designer or UX engineer.

UX Researcher Salary and Job Outlook

UX research is a growing field, with 41 percent of researchers only having five years of experience in the field. But the size of UX researcher teams is expected to grow too. Of UX researchers surveyed by User Interviews , 71 percent said there are five or more researchers on their team.

The full compensation package for a UX researcher depends on a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s experience and geographic location. See below for detailed information on the average UX researcher salary.

Expand Your UX Researcher Career Opportunities

Build a multi-dimensional skillset by completing online UX and design courses through Udemy.

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UX Researcher Certifications + Programs

Reignite your journey up the career ladder with Udacity’s online UX and design certifications.

General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive is a transformative course designed for you to get the necessary skills for a UX Design role in three months. 

The User Experience Design bootcamp is led by instructors who are expert practitioners in their field, supported by career coaches that work with you since day one and enhanced by a career services team that is constantly in talks with employers about their UX Design hiring needs.

What you'll accomplish

As a graduate, you’ll have a portfolio of projects that show your creative and technical ability to launch the next generation of successful apps, websites and digital experiences. Throughout this program, you will:

Identify and implement the most effective methods of user research to gain a deeper understanding of what users want and need.

Use interaction and visual design techniques to craft a dynamic digital product that brings delight and function to users.

Conduct usability testing to make product experiences more accessible for diverse user populations and environments.

Learn best practices for working within a product team, employing product management techniques and evaluating technical constraints to better collaborate with developers.

Produce polished design documentation, including wireframes and prototypes, to articulate design decisions to clients and stakeholders.

Prepare for the world of work, compiling a professional-grade portfolio of solo, group, and client projects.

Prerequisites

This is a beginner-friendly program with no prerequisites, although many students are familiar with common tools for graphic and web designers and some may have had exposure to UX concepts in the past. The General Assembly curriculum helps you gain fluency in end-to-end UX processes, tools, and documentation and put them to work on the path to a new career as a User Experience Designer.

Why General Assembly

Since 2011, General Assembly has graduated more than 40,000 students worldwide from the full time & part time courses. During the 2020 hiring shutdown, GA's students, instructors, and career coaches never lost focus, and the KPMG-validated numbers in their Outcomes report reflect it. *For students who graduated in 2020 — the peak of the pandemic — 74.4% of those who participated in GA's full-time Career Services program landed jobs within six months of graduation.  General Assembly is proud of their grads + teams' relentless dedication and to see those numbers rising. Download the report here .

Your next step? Submit an application to talk to the General Assembly Admissions team

Note: reviews are referenced from Career Karma - https://careerkarma.com/schools/general-assembly

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What is a User Researcher?

Learn about the role of User Researcher, what they do on a daily basis, and what it's like to be one.

• What is a User Researcher
• How to Become
• Certifications
• Tools & Software
• LinkedIn Guide
• Interview Questions
• Work-Life Balance
• Professional Goals
• Resume Examples
• Cover Letter Examples

Start Your User Researcher Career with Teal

Definition of a User Researcher

What does a user researcher do, key responsibilities of a user researcher.

• Identifying research questions and objectives in collaboration with product teams to inform design and development.
• Designing and executing qualitative and quantitative research studies, such as interviews, surveys, usability tests, and field studies.
• Analyzing research data to uncover user behaviors, pain points, and needs.
• Communicating research findings to stakeholders through reports, presentations, and workshops to drive evidence-based decision-making.
• Collaborating with designers, product managers, and engineers to translate research insights into actionable product features and improvements.
• Creating user personas, journey maps, and experience flowcharts to help teams understand the user's perspective.
• Ensuring ethical research practices and the protection of participant data privacy.
• Keeping abreast of user research methods and tools, as well as advancements in technology that may affect user behavior.
• Advocating for the importance of user research within the organization and fostering a user-centered design culture.
• Facilitating usability testing sessions and synthesizing feedback to guide iterative design processes.
• Developing and maintaining research repositories to enable the sharing and reuse of insights across the organization.
• Measuring and tracking user experience outcomes over time to assess the impact of product changes and improvements.

Day to Day Activities for User Researcher at Different Levels

Daily responsibilities for entry level user researchers.

• Assisting with the recruitment of study participants
• Helping to prepare research materials, such as surveys and interview guides
• Supporting senior researchers during user testing and interviews
• Collecting and organizing data from user research sessions
• Learning to analyze qualitative and quantitative data
• Participating in team meetings and sharing findings
• Engaging in professional development to learn various user research methods

Daily Responsibilities for Mid Level User Researchers

• Independently planning and conducting user research studies
• Developing research protocols and defining user personas
• Analyzing user behavior and synthesizing research findings
• Presenting insights and recommendations to cross-functional teams
• Collaborating with designers and product managers to integrate user feedback
• Advocating for user needs and influencing product decisions
• Mentoring junior researchers and contributing to best practices

Daily Responsibilities for Senior User Researchers

• Leading the development of research frameworks and methodologies
• Managing complex, strategic research initiatives that span multiple products
• Translating research findings into strategic insights for senior leadership
• Building and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders
• Driving innovation in research practices and contributing to thought leadership
• Overseeing the work of mid-level and junior researchers
• Shaping the user research culture and advocating for user-centered design principles

Types of User Researchers

Usability researcher, quantitative user researcher, qualitative user researcher, strategic user researcher, accessibility researcher, what's it like to be a user researcher , user researcher work environment, user researcher working conditions, how hard is it to be a user researcher, is a user researcher a good career path, faqs about user researchers, how do user researchers collaborate with other teams within a company, what are some common challenges faced by user researchers, what does the typical career progression look like for user researchers.

How To Become a User Researcher in 2024

Related Career Paths

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Shaping visual concepts that captivate audiences, driving brand identity and innovation

The researcher’s journey: leveling up as a user researcher

In this article Dave charts the growth of researcher-as-individual contributor from junior, to mid-level, to senior researcher, and gives us three key axes to assess our own progress.

This article was first published on the PlanGrid blog and is republished here with the kind permission of the author.

On January 3, 2011, I delivered the greatest usability study ever conducted. It was, truly, an incomparable study, with a detailed report that would leave academics everywhere singing its praise from the rooftops. For the first time, my college professors would have been proud of my work. The report was perfect: beautifully typeset in LaTeX, fully hyperlinked, and methodologically reproducible.

This world-shattering report was delivered and then…nothing happened. Two years following this report, none of its original findings translated into product action. Anything that did change was the result of subsequent, duplicate efforts.

As a newly-minted researcher, the burning question of “why didn’t that work?” kicked off a six year journey that’s still pressing on. At a higher level, the question is about doing useful, effective work: “what does it take for research to positively influence product and design, and how do I do that?”

There’s no simple answer; it’s a broad interplay of dynamics involving people, processes, and structure. Effective research hinges on organizational ways of working and the team’s desire to learn (spoiler alert: there are times when it just won’t work). It also lies in your own mastery of the research process, technique, and ability to influence the team.

Here we’ll focus on the last pieces, charting the growth of researcher-as-individual contributor from junior, to mid-level, to senior researcher. To make it easier to assess your own progress, we’ll look at it along three axes:

• [Thinking] Process mastery: ownership of the research process
• [Execution] Technical competence: technique, method, and output
• [Impact] Organizational influence: empowerment, alignment, and direction

The research process

A quick baseline: in terms of “doing research” (the defining trait of a researcher) we’re talking about execution, orchestration, or facilitation of the sometimes-linear process of:

• Figuring out what to learn
• Deciding how to learn it
• Uncovering or observing evidence
• Making sense of what was learned (“synthesis” and “insights”)
• Deciding how to act on it
• Ensuring consistent action

We use ownership of the process as a proxy for growth and maturity in the role. Your journey begins in the middle and slowly spreads outward to embrace the whole cycle: from basic mechanics and execution toward projects, program level initiatives, and higher-order strategy. It’s an exciting ride.

Junior researcher

A junior researcher starts with prepackaged questions or predefined methods and executes on defined units of work. It’s hard to understand potential outcomes when you don’t have clear experience that relates your execution to specific kinds of output. Each project is a new opportunity to build experience across contexts and methods to learn the types of things you’ll find and how they feed into product.

Junior level ownership

I. Process mastery

At this execution-focused stage, your questions around projects will focus on the nuts and bolts:

• Who? – Target audience
• What? – Method
• When? – When do you want it?

When a product manager says “we should do a usability test” or a designer “needs to talk to customers,” it’s a chance to hone basic skills. Growth comes through experience and reflection, forcing yourself to ask “why do we want to do this?”, “what are we really trying to find out?”, and “is this the right way to get there?”

II. Technical competence

Every interview in and of itself can be a hurdle, and it’s hard to see the forest (project) for the trees (each instance of execution). As a junior level researcher, you must become competent in executing on the basics:

• Interviewing
• Interview note-taking
• Interview debriefing
• Observation
• Data collection
• User testing
• Simple reporting

Research synthesis outputs are facts, incidents, and simple behavioral insights. You’re ready to move on when these basic pieces can be smartly combined and deployed to ensure a successful project.

III. Organizational influence

Junior researchers strive to empower the organization with insights, and answer on-hand questions. Your influence develops on the strength of that execution, and the sense of judgment that you hone as you learn what your users need and how they do their work:

• Credible reporting
• Fair, honest judgement of design and product
• Interaction-level and usability authority

Failure to have an impact (e.g. aforementioned report on January 3, 2011) is especially instructive: “It’s so clear to me that X is true, and I believe we should do Y. But nobody else sees it — what’s happening?” There’s an outside-in perspective flip that precedes growth, akin to the ideas underlying the practice of service design. It’s not about the great studies that you can do, it’s about finding out what the team needs to push work forward.

Mid-level researcher

By now, you’ve developed a sense for product and design, and can deliver strong, evidence-based recommendations. This speaks to a new level of technical competence (derive meaningful insights and connect them to design or product strategy) as well as influence (be seen as a respected, measured point-of-view and valid source of insight).

Now your questions snap a level higher to organize projects and ensure meaningful output:

• What? – What are you trying to figure out?
• Why? – Why is this important for us to answer?
• You recommend Who, What (method), and When

Facility with a range of methods allow you to assess trade-offs and select methods with a reliable sense of outcome. Understanding how projects run, you work backwards from expected outcomes and proactively plan your efforts.

From the project-level vantage point, you draw on well-developed basics in new ways and adapt methods to the project at hand. It’s here you take ownership over the project, working as a research partner to push design and product outcome. Mid-level growth in execution also extends basic reporting to employ more robust methods of synthesis and communication:

• Project planning
• Project management
• Structured design and research methods (e.g. mixed-method studies, progressive iterative research while embedded in a team)
• Complex synthesis (e.g., personas, journey mapping, service blueprinting, jobs to be done)

Mid-level research outputs provide rich insights and start to depict the important stories that ground, humanize, and build out meaningful context.

At mid-level, you work within the organization to reframe team questions and incite action with results. You realize that it’s never enough to run a good project and deliver great insights: no matter how “true” or “logical” your findings, they will not promote themselves if you don’t bring the team along:

• Embed and partner with functional teams
• Empower other project teams to do effective research
• Reframe and focus research questions
• Develop a respected point of view on product-level decisions

Understanding what comes out of different research methods, paired with a keen sense of how the organization works, is the next step in ensuring positive product and design impact through research.

The shift from medium to senior level started in late March of 2015 when my consulting team delivered a scientific disaster modeling system for a client. They had tried to redesign an on-premise solution for the cloud, spending millions of dollars and two years shipping a system their customers wouldn’t accept. It wasn’t usable, attempted to do everything but could do nothing well, and it ignored pages of feedback customers felt were essential. Given the messy context of the project, I ran a user-centered discovery and testing program designed to force focus on the project and help pave the way for successful delivery.

During discovery with customer proxies and subject matter experts, we built a set of personas encapsulating the goals, needs, and workflow scenarios of the system’s main users. Within our client and with their top customers we socialized the persona “Daniel” as our primary target: we claimed that if V1 could solve for Daniel’s specific needs (without specifying how), all parties would see real and immediate value from the system. Slowly, with open lines of feedback and iteration, client and customers agreed that Daniel represented their core and most pressing needs. We aligned on a goal: if, by a specified date, our system could support Daniel’s target scenarios, the project’s first phase would be a success.

We tested conceptual and functional prototypes with the client’s customers, learning and iterating until real users could achieve Daniel’s core tasks in the system. The customers, especially non-user buyers, invariably piled on feedback outside the bounds our V1 scope (much like before). With clear alignment on Daniel’s needs, we could address feedback honestly and openly, maintaining focus in development: “Given what you’ve seen so far, do you believe [this input] would help Daniel with [goal] in [target scenario]?” The client and their customers came to trust and respect our team’s ability to act–or not–on their feedback with a clear lens. Phase 1 ended as a success.

Senior researcher

As a senior researcher, you leverage learning in new ways beyond specific project work. Organizations already spin off more data and knowledge (in nice functional silos) than any team can make use of — you look to unlock this knowledge, frame rich stories, and foster broad alignment. This is higher order impact at a ‘research program’ level that must also be balanced with project execution.

At senior level, you look to the higher order purpose of every project, request, and activity, often suggesting your own project work based on perceived team needs. Your sphere of awareness shifts from a pure focus on user behavior, needs, and context, and must encompass the organizational reality that supports or stifles meaningful work:

• Why? – What is our organizational and user impact?
• You shape, reframe, or reject the entire process accordingly

Owning the edges of the process entails focus on understanding what the organization needs, and ensuring it leads to meaningful action. It’s work that may go far beyond the standard role descriptor of user research: your job is to wrest fruit from the garden of knowledge, but, if it’s not productive, you may need to shovel fertilizer.

Moving to the program level, ownership of the research process requires you work in regular partnership with other teams to employ projects strategically. Senior level technical competence is tied tightly to ways of disseminating knowledge, increasing alignment, and ultimately fostering higher order impact than any individual project may achieve:

• Centralizing customer feedback
• Wide audience communication & presentation
• Roadmap planning
• Framing and storytelling
• Workshop facilitation

Beyond insights and rich stories, senior level researcher output is alignment, shared understanding, and direction.

At a senior level, your work introduces new language, shapes the organization’s thinking about users, context, work, and direct organizational inquiry to align with strategic priorities:

• Strategic partner to product and design functions
• Reshape higher-order processes
• Centralize and unlock existing knowledge
• Direct organizational research focus

This includes understanding how to use individual projects to inject structure and clarity into product development and turn learning into broader organizational understanding.

As you follow the path of research, a logical extension of the function includes centralizing, framing, exposing, and continually communicating your organization’s point of view on the industry and the user’s needs in context. Empowering teams to learn on their own and ensuring meaningful compassion for users’ context and needs — at organizational scale — is the beginning of “and beyond.”

It does not, however, reduce the need for project-level execution; this will always remain a difficult balance. It may mean a strategic individual contributor role, building out a research function to take on the higher order work, or something else, entirely…

This snapshot is based on personal experience, researching researchers, related reading , and some light extrapolation. If you are a researcher on the journey, at “beyond,” or managing this journey for others, I’d love to hear about your experience.

Special thanks to Abhik Pramanik, Christiana Lackner, Chantal Jandard, Alissa Briggs, and the PlanGrid design team.

Dave is a designer, researcher and jiu-jitsu fighter, currently research lead at Plangrid in San Francisco. He's also a self-professed wine / design / book nerd.

Join the discussion Cancel reply

Hi Dave I like the process you have set out for research. Is it ok for me to use it for the research we do. I work for a not for profit in India. Thanks Nandita

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Leading In and With UX Research

Growing research teams show a company’s commitment to user-centered and insight-driven decision-making. With growing teams, research leadership becomes a central topic. And with user research often having the most comprehensive picture of the user, the question of how research can lead other disciplines also comes up.

Research Leadership is a broad and integrated topic, but somehow the different facets rarely make it in UX research conference programs or dedicated articles. So we brought together three experts, who are research leaders themselves, to share their perspectives on research leadership.

This is a summary of the expert panel on research leadership that you can watch in its full length here .

The panelists

What makes a great research leader?

Coming from hands-on research to a leadership role: what was the biggest change, what have been the most challenging moments as a ux research leader and how did you overcome them, how do you communicate the value of ux in the organization, how do you grow an environment for the ux team to grow successfully, 🎥 watch full panel talk.

Some takeaways from the conversation:

A successful leader is eventually becoming obsolete by ensuring the team has what it needs to grow, feels empowered, and is able to do excellent research. Anna describes the aspiration of building out a team that is so strong and well-positioned that the role of the leader may not be as necessary anymore.

Being a research leader is also about advocating for user research , ensuring research has its forum in an organization. It helps when you come from a research background and understand what it takes to build a robust research program.

As a research leader, you have to help your team withstand scrutiny . For example, people may try to discredit UX research data that requires a considerable shift in the planned direction or is not in line with people's opinions.

Here are some thoughts around the research background of a researcher leader from the panel talk:

It's a significant shift from hands-on research practice to a position where you manage individual contributors or even managers who manage individual contributors.

Especially the output becomes way more intangible . This can be challenging to acknowledge in the first place, as running research studies, bringing insights into a report, and sharing them with the organization is a relatively tangible output.

You will go from making people successful by contributing insights and data about the customer's needs to making people successful by providing tools, resources, and support coaching. It's a mindset shift, but it's still about helping people make decisions .

As a research leader, you will need to figure out when to let go and coach instead . It's about enabling people to explore solutions and grow in their way.

Growing into a research management role is not the only way to develop your research career. Anna describes, that she sees a lot of different ways to grow a research career:

It can be hard to realize that your research data is not clean enough.

It's challenging to deliver evidence-based news that people don't want to hear but could harm the organization if being ignored.

People may overestimate how much is under the control of the research leader and expect you to find a solution for something they are struggling with or change the organization's culture more directly. This is challenging to handle as a leader in research as you will learn that this process is not straightforward.

The way to go is to build trust with the team and be as transparent as possible.

One person at a time . Find the people who will listen first, and let them become allies for research by helping them to make their decisions with more confidence. They may want to have research firmly in their workflow from then on.

Use all available tools and formats to bring research into the conversation and educate about UX research continuously, from 1:1 discussions to seminars. Build relationships with people from other disciplines continously.

John developed the approach of bringing in the value of user research by asking questions about product decisions:

Always be unapologetic about your research findings : Even if you feel the pressure to defend your work, keep in mind that there's no need to defend research evidence. Instead, it's more about being prepared to answer questions about your research when getting challenged and eventually expecting that people may not understand user research insights in the first place.

Klara described that this is about a mix of different things: Ensuring having the right tools in place, offering a support system for new joiners in the research team, providing space for the team to do things in their own way, ensuring to coach each individual but also the team as a whole to understand where the team is going, and most crucially: building trust with the team .

For Klara, this has to do with being your authentic self and also creating space for others to be that authentic self as well:

Additionally, jointly creating UX measurements to prove the impact of the UX research work in the broader organization will support the team development and eventually bring the team more budget as a side effect.

Want to read more? Check out our articles about Enterprise UX Research and how to communicate the Value of UX as a researcher .

Sina is a UX Researcher and Content Strategist at Condens. With a background in social media strategy and digital transformation, she learned how to engage with people in developing products and services and why putting the users in the center will lead to more substantial outcomes and superior user experiences. Sina is excited to drive user research at Condens and to enable better user research for others at the same time by bringing their perspectives into the product development of Condens and by creating valuable content for UX Researchers.

How to Conduct User Experience Research Like a Professional

Whether you’re looking to develop a broad UX design skillset, or you’re exploring UX research as a design specialization , here’s your complete introduction to conducting user research like a pro. 

Hello, I’m Raven, a mentor for aspiring UX designers enrolled in the CareerFoundry UX Design Course . I also work as a UX Research Assistant at IBM and studied behavioral science at the University of Texas. I have 10 years of experience studying and analyzing human behavior—user research is definitely my thing.

During the past few years, I’ve worked with major companies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations to develop and improve impactful products and applications. I’ve moderated focus groups, designed and administered surveys, carried out usability testing, and conducted user interviews. I also know a thing or two about creating a good persona!

In this guide, we’re going to cover the basics of UX research. We’ll start with exactly what it is, and then move on to discuss the various steps and associated terminology of UX research , as well as its role and value within the broader design process . We’ll then review the most common UX research methods, diving into how they’re conducted and a few best practices.

If you’re particularly interested in one of these topics, simply select it from the list below to jump straight to it. I’ve also added videos throughout the guide for those of you who prefer to learn with both eyes and ears—and I recommend you save this set of free UX research tutorials for later, too. Sound good? Let’s get started!

Introduction To User Experience (UX) Research

• What is UX research?
• What’s the difference between good and bad UX research?
• What are the five steps of UX research?
• What’s the role of research in the UX design process?
• Whats the value of UX research?

Introduction To User Experience Research Methods

• User Groups
• Usability Testing
• User Interviews
• Online Surveys
• User Personas
• What Next? User Research Analysis

1. What is UX research?

You read my bio in the introduction. Using only this information, could you explain why I recently switched from one time management app to another? Probably not. In order to answer this question, you need more context. UX research provides that context.  So, what is UX research and what is its purpose ?

“User research is how you will know your product or service will work in the real world, with real people. It’s where you will uncover or validate the user needs which should form the basis of what you are designing.”

— Chris Mears, UXr

According to Design Modo , UX research is; “The process of understanding user behaviors, needs, and attitudes using different observation and feedback collection methods.” One of the other benefits of user experience research is that it helps us understand how people live their lives so that we can respond to their needs with informed design solutions. Good UX research involves using the right method at the right time during the development of a product.

Maria Arvidsson, Head of Product and UX at Usabilla , describes UX research as:

“The means through which you try to understand your users’ needs, behaviors and motivations and validate your assumptions and solutions.”

2. What’s the difference between good and bad UX research?

The biggest sign of an amateur UX designer is excluding end users from the design process. At the very start of my career I held the attitude that I could test any app, website, or product on myself, replacing the act of speaking with users. Never a good idea. It took time for me to learn a more professional approach, which is to start the design process by listening to the end user. Overall, UX research helps us avoid our biases since we are required to design solutions for people who are not like us.

“Insights that are received directly from user experience research are like muscle memory; the more you do research, the more insights you build up. But just like muscle memory, YOU have to be a part of the hard work in order to enjoy the lasting benefits of it that are specific to you. While it may be tempting to outsource research to a specialized team (and sometimes you can’t avoid it), you should try your utmost best to engage in at least a little bit of the research so that the insights grow under your skin instead of being handed to you from someone else who has sweated it.” 

—UX designer Ali Rushdan Tariq from ARTariq

A quick plug before we continue: If you’re looking to become a professional in this subdomain of UX, be sure to take a look at our guide to becoming a UX researcher

3. What are the five steps of UX research?

Created by Erin Sanders , the Research Learning Spiral provides five main steps for conducting UX research. The first two steps are about forming questions and hypotheses, and the last three steps are about gathering knowledge through selected UX research methods.

• 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.

4. What’s the role of research in the UX design process?

UX research is the starting point for a project . Research helps us learn about the users and their behavior, goals, motivations, and needs. It also shows us how they currently navigate a system, where they have problems and, most importantly, how they feel when interacting with our product.

UX research comes first in the UX design process because without it, our work can only be based on our own experiences and assumptions, which is not objective. As Neil Turner, founder of UX for the Masses told us, a good foundation is key to successful design:

“Good user research is key to designing a great user experience. Designing without good user research is like building a house without solid foundations—your design will soon start to crumble and eventually fall apart.”

5. What’s the value of UX research?

In the current digital product landscape, the real value of UX research is its ability to reduce uncertainty in terms of what users want and need , which yields benefits for the product, the business, and, of course, the users themselves.

1. Product Benefits

UX research provides data about the end user of the product, how and when the user will use the product, and the main problems the product will solve. UX research is also helpful when UX designers and the rest of the team (and stakeholders) have to decide between multiple design solutions.

2. Business Benefits

UX research brings a lot of a value to businesses. By knowing the end users and incorporating design requirements upfront, businesses can speed up the product development process, eliminate redesign costs, and increase user satisfaction.

3. User Benefits

One of the greatest values of user experience research is that it’s unbiased user feedback. Simply put, UX research speaks the user’s thoughts—without any influence from outside authority. It also serves as a bridge between users and the company.

“User experience research provides powerful insights that allow companies to humanize their customers and insert their needs, intentions, and behaviors into the design and development process. In turn, these insights enable companies to create experiences that meet—and sometimes exceed—customer needs and expectations. User experience research should be conducted well before the first sketch is drawn and integrated throughout the concept, iterative design, and launch phases of a product.”

—Janelle Estes, Director of Research Strategy at UserTesting

UX research is based on observation, understanding,  and analysis.  With the help of various UX research techniques, you will:

• O bserve your users , keeping an eye out for non-verbal clues as to how they are feeling;
• Develop an understanding of the user’s mental model : what does the user anticipate when using a certain product? Based on their previous experience, how do they expect this particular product to work?
• A nalyze  the insights you’ve gathered and try to identify patterns and trends. Eventually, these insights will inform the decisions you make about the product and how it is designed.

With that in mind, let’s consider some of the most valuable user research techniques.

1. User Groups

User groups—also called “focus group discussions” or “focus groups”—are structured interviews that quickly and inexpensively reveal the desires, experiences, and attitudes of a target audience. User groups are a helpful user experience research method when a company needs a lot of insight in a short amount of time. If you are unsure when to use a user experience research method, user groups can be a good one to start with.

Why Do We Conduct User Groups?

User groups can help your company better understand:

1) How users perceive a product

2) What users believe are a product’s most important features

3) What problems users experience with the product

4) Where users feel the product fails to meet expectations

User groups can also be used to generate ideas of what users want to see in the future.

What people say and what people do are often very different, therefore user groups do not provide an accurate measurement of behavior . And because user groups are conducted with more than one user at a time, participants may influence each other’s opinions and preferences (aka “groupthink”), thus introducing bias and producing inaccurate data.

Best Practices For User Groups

Getting the most out of your user group is straightforward if you consider the following best practices when conducting this particular user research technique.

• Ask good questions: Make sure your questions are clear, open-ended, and focused on the topics you’re investigating.
• Choose a few topics: On average, plan to discuss 3-5 topics during a 90-minute focus group.
• Include the right amount of people: A good focus group should include 3-6 users—large enough to include a variety of perspectives, but small enough so everyone has a chance to speak.

“Conducting user research allows you to dive deep beneath the surface of what your users say they want, to instead uncover what they actually need. It’s the key to ensuring that your products and features will actually solve the problems that your clients face on a day to day basis. User research is imperative if you want to create a successful, habit forming product.”

— Jennifer Aldrich, UX and Content Strategist at InVisionApp

How To Conduct User Experience Research With User Groups

Conducting user groups can be broken down into a few major steps:

• Create a schedule that provides enough time for recruiting, testing, analyzing, and integrating results.
• Assemble your team, and establish roles: choose a moderator, note-taker, and discussion leader.
• Define the scope of your research: what questions will you ask? And how in-depth do you want to explore the answers? This will determine the number of people and the number of groups that need to be tested.
• Create a discussion guide that includes 3-5 topics for discussion.
• Recruit potential or existing users who are likely to provide good feedback.
• Conduct user group testing, and record data.
• Analyze and report findings.

“It’s really hard to design products by user groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

—Steve Jobs

2. Usability Testing

According to the usability.gov website, usability testing refers to “evaluating a product or service by testing it with representative users.” During a test, participants will be asked to complete specific tasks while one or more observers watch, listen, and record notes. The main goal of this user experience testing method is to identify usability problems, collect qualitative data, and determine participants’ overall satisfaction with the product.

Why Do We Perform Usability Testing?

Usability testing helps identify problems before they are coded. When development issues are identified early on, it is typically less expensive to fix them. Usability testing also reveals how satisfied users are with the product , as well as what changes are required to improve user satisfaction and performance .

Unfortunately, usability testing is not 100% representative of the real life scenario in which a user will engage with your product. Also, because the data is qualitative, this kind of UX testing method doesn’t provide the large samples of feedback a questionnaire might. The good news it that the qualitative feedback you receive can be far more accurate and insightful.

Best Practices For Usability Testing

• Test with five users: Testing five users is typically enough to identify a design’s most important usability problems.
• Invite your team to the testing sessions: Anyone who is involved with how fast and how well problems are addressed should be invited to the usability testing sessions. These stakeholders may include the executive team, and lead developers or designers.
• Keep the findings brief and to-the-point: When you report the findings of a usability test, limit the comments to the ones that are really important. One good rule of thumb is to include the top three positive comments and the top three problems. The overall report should be no more than approximately 50 comments and 30 pages.

How to Conduct UX Research with Usability Testing

Usability testing can be broken down into a few major steps:

• Identify what needs to be tested and why (e.g. a new product, feature, etc.)
• Identify the target audience (or your desired customers).
• Create a list of tasks for the participants to work through.
• Recruit the right participants for the test.
• Involve the right stakeholders.
• Apply what you learn.

“One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that ‘you are not the user.’ If you work on a development project, you’re atypical by definition. Design to optimize the user experience for outsiders, not insiders.”

– Jakob Nielsen

3. User Interviews

A well-known user experience methodology is an interview. An interview is a user experience research method used to discover the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of users (and potential users) of a product. Interviews are typically conducted by one interviewer speaking to one user at a time for 30 minutes to an hour. Interviews can take place face-to-face, over the phone, or via video streaming.

Why Do We Conduct Interviews?

Of all the user experience design methods, interviews are typically conducted at the beginning of the product development cycle when reviewing product goals. Because of the one-to-one nature of the interview, individual concerns and misunderstandings can be directly addressed and cleared up.

Face-to-face interviews also allow you to capture verbal and nonverbal cues, such as emotions and body language, which may identify enthusiasm for the product or discomfort with the questions.

When thinking about what research methodology to use, bear in mind that interviews are also a good supplement to online surveys: conducting an interview beforehand helps you refine questions for the survey, while conducting an interview afterwards allows you to gain explanations for survey answers.

There are a few drawbacks, however. First, because interviews require a team of people to conduct them, personnel costs are usually difficult to keep low. Sample size is also limited to the size of the interviewing staff.

Best Practices For User Interviews

• Hire a skilled interviewer: A skilled interviewer asks questions in a neutral manner, listens well, makes users feel comfortable, and knows when and how to probe for more details.
• Create a discussion guide: Write up a discussion guide (or an interview protocol) for all interviewers to follow. This guide should include questions and follow-up questions.
• Get informed consent: Before conducting the interview, make sure to get permission or consent to record the session. It’s also good to have one or two note takers on hand.

How To Conduct User Experience Research With User Interviews

Conducting an interview can be broken down into a few major steps:

• Prepare a discussion guide, or a list of questions to ask participants.
• Select a recording method (e.g. written notes, tape recorder, video).
• Conduct at least one trial run of the interview.
• Recruit the right participants for the interview.
• Conduct the interview.
• Analyze and report the results.

“Curiosity is a natural outcome of caring, and it is the single greatest contributor to effective user research … Caring and curiosity engender personal investment, and investment motivates a researcher to develop a deep understanding of users.”

– Demetrius Madrigal

4. Online Surveys

A survey is a research tool that typically includes a set of questions used to find out the preferences, attitudes, and opinions of your users on a given topic. Today, surveys are generally conducted online and in various lengths and formats. Data collected from surveys is received automatically, and the survey tool selected generally provides some level of analysis, the data from which can then be used for user experience studies further down the line to inform your product.

“It is so important to avoid using leading questions when it comes to surveys. It’s a common mistake that many people make. For example phrasing a question like “What do you dislike about Uber?” assumes the user has a negative preference for the service off the bat. A more neutral phrase would be “Tell us about your experience getting around town.” – this elicits more natural user feedback and behavior instead of forcing them down a funnel.”

– Top tip from UXBeginner

Why Do We Conduct Online Surveys?

Unlike traditional surveys, online surveys enable companies to quickly collect data from a broad (and sometimes remote) audience for free—or a low price. Surveys also help you discover who your users are , what your users want to accomplish, and what information your users are looking for.

Unfortunately, what users say versus what they do are two different things and can often yield inaccurate results. Furthermore, poorly worded questions can negatively influence how users respond. Length can also be an issue—many people hate taking long surveys. This is why it’s important to create short surveys so users are more likely to complete them and participate in future research efforts.

Best Practices For Online Surveys

• Keep it short: Keep your surveys brief, especially if participants will be compensated little or not at all. Only focus on what is truly important.
• Keep it simple: Make sure questions can be easily understood: ambiguous or complex wording can make questions more difficult to understand, which can bring the data into question.
• Keep it engaging: Include a mix of both multiple choice questions and open-ended questions (or questions in which users complete the answer).

How To Conduct User Experience Research With Online Surveys

Conducting an online survey can be broken down into a few major steps:

• Identify goals and objectives of the survey.
• Create survey questions.

Note: Consider collecting information about how satisfied users are with your product, what users like/dislike, and if they have suggestions for improvement.

• Select an online survey tool (e.g. SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics).
• Recruit participants.
• Conduct the survey.

“We have to arm ourselves with data, research … and a clear understanding of our users so our decisions are not made out of fear but out of real, actionable information. Although our clients may not have articulated reasons for why they want what they want, it is our responsibility to have an ironclad rationale to support our design decisions.”

– Debra Levin Gelman

5. User Personas

A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. A persona is generally based on user research and includes the needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns of your target audience. You can find out how to create a user persona in this detailed guide .

Why Do We Create User Personas?

Whether you’re developing a smartphone app or a mobile-responsive website, any user experience research job will require you to understand who will be using the product. Knowing your audience will help influence the features and design elements you choose, thus making your product more useful. A persona clarifies who is in your target audience by answering the following questions:

• Who is my ideal customer?
• What are the current behavior patterns of my users?
• What are the needs and goals of my users?

Understanding the needs of your users is vital to developing a successful product. Well-defined personas will enable you to efficiently identify and communicate user needs. Personas will also help you describe the individuals who use your product, which is essential to your overall value proposition.

Unfortunately, creating personas can be expensive — it all depends on how deep into user research your organization is willing to go. There is also no real “scientific logic” behind persona building, which makes some people a little more hesitant to accept them.

Best Practices For User Personas

• Create a well-defined user persona: A great persona contains four key pieces of information: header, demographic profile, end goal(s), scenario.
• Keep personas brief: As a rule of thumb, avoid adding extra details that cannot be used to influence the design. If it does not affect the final design or help make any decisions easier: omit it.
• Make personas specific and realistic: Avoid exaggerated caricatures, and include enough detail to help you find real-life representation.

How To Conduct User Experience Research By Creating Personas

Creating user personas can be broken down into these main steps:

• Discuss and identify who your target users are with stakeholders (e.g. UX team, marketing team, product manager).
• Survey and/or interview real users to get their demographic information, pain points, and preferences.
• Condense the research, and look for themes to define your groups.
• Organize your groups into personas.
• Test your personas.

“Be someone else. It takes great empathy to create a good experience. To create relevant experiences, you have to forget everything you know and design for others. Align with the expected patience, level of interest, and depth of knowledge of your users. Talk in the user’s language.”

– Niko Nyman

Which User Experience Research Method Should You Use?

Now that you know more about the various user experience research methods, which one do you choose? Well, it all depends on your overall research goals.

You’ll also need to consider what stage you’re at in the design process. If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to focus on understanding your users and the underlying problem . What are you trying to solve? Who are you trying to solve it for? At this early stage in the design process, you’ll typically use a mixture of both qualitative and quantitative methods such as field studies, diary studies, surveys, and data mining.

Once you’ve established a direction for your design, you’ll start to think about actually building your product. Your UX research will now focus on evaluating your designs and making sure that they adequately address your users’ needs . So, you’ll choose research methods that can help you to optimize your designs and improve usability—such as card sorting and usability testing.

Eventually, you’ll have finalized your design and developed a working product—but this doesn’t mean your research is done! This is the ideal time to investigate how well the product performs in the real world. At this point, you’ll focus mainly on quantitative research methods , such as usability benchmarking, surveys, and A/B testing.

To help you with the task of choosing your research methods, let’s explore some important distinctions between the various techniques.

Behavioral vs. Attitudinal Research

As mentioned before, there is a big difference between “what people do” versus “what people say.” Attitudinal research is used to understand or measure attitudes and beliefs, whereas behavioral research is used to measure behaviors. For example, usability testing is a behavioral user research method that focuses on action and performance. By contrast, user research methods like user groups, interviews, and persona creation focus on how people think about a product.

UX designers often conduct task analysis to see not how users say they complete tasks in a user flow, but how they actually do.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

When conducting UX research and choosing a suitable method, it’s important to understand the difference between quantitative and qualitative research.

Quantitative research   gathers data that is measurable. It gives you clear-cut figures to work with, such as how many users purchased an item via your e-commerce app, or what percentage of visitors added an item to their wishlist. “Quant methods”, as they’re sometimes called in the industry, help you to put a number on the usability of your product. They also allow you to compare different designs and determine if one version performs significantly better than another.

Qualitative research   explores the reasons or motivations behind these actions. Why did the user bounce from your website? What made them “wishlist” an item instead of purchasing it? While quantitative data is fixed, qualitative data is more descriptive and open-ended. You can learn all about qualitative research in the video guide below, in which CareerFoundry graduate and professional UX designer Maureen Herben takes you through the most common qualitative user research processes and tools.

A further distinction to make is between how qualitative and quantitative studies go about collecting data. Studies that are qualitative in nature are based on direct observation. For example, you’ll gather data about the user’s behaviours or attitudes by observing them directly in action. Quantitative studies gather this data indirectly—through an online survey, for example.

Qualitative research methods (e.g. usability testing, user groups, interviews) are better for answering questions about why or how to fix a problem, whereas quantitative methods (e.g. online surveys) are great for answering questions about how many and how much.

Ideally, you’ll use a mixture of both qualitative and quantitative methods throughout your user research, and work hard to ensure that the UX research you conduct is inclusive !

6. What Next? Conducting User Research Analysis

Once you’ve conducted extensive user research, you’ll move on to the analysis phase. This is where you’ll turn the raw data you’ve gathered into valuable insights. The purpose of UX research analysis is to interpret what the data means; what does it tell you about the product you’re designing, and the people you’re designing it for? How can you use the data you’ve gathered to inform the design process?

Watch this video to learn how to conduct user research analysis in five simple steps:

Final thoughts

“User experience research is the work that uncovers and articulates the needs of individuals and/or groups in order to inform the design of products and services in a structured manner.”

—Nick Remis, Adaptive Path

Overall, the purpose of user experience research is simple: to discover patterns and reveal unknown insights and preferences from the people who use your product. It basically provides the context for our design. Research also helps us fight the tendency to design for ourselves (or our stakeholders)—and returns the focus on designing for the user.

If you’d like to learn more about UX research, check out these articles:

• What Does a UX Researcher Actually Do? The Ultimate Career Guide
• The Ultimate Guide to UX Research Bootcamps
• Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid in Your UX Research Portfolio
• Interview Toolkit: Top 5 UX Research Questions to Prepare For

And to get inspired, check out these 15 quotes from influential designers in the industry.

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The 4 Faces Of A Great User Experience Research Leader

Warren is a design leader working to improve our experiences with products, services and systems by putting people first. He leads the Experience Design practice at EY Vancouver, working with clients including the City of Vancouver, the Government of Canada and Microsoft. He's an active contributor as part of EY's Global Future Consumer and Future Cities teams. In previous lives he led strategy, UX and digital design teams at DDB London and FCV Vancouver scooping major awards for work with Hasbro, Volkswagen and Philips.

Valuable research is a critical foundation to any customer experience design practice. A great research team can be a key collaborator in the process of making strategic and tactical business decisions, but all too often research teams are kept hidden away creating reports and dashboards that will never be given the change to unleash their […]

Valuable research is a critical foundation to any customer experience design practice.

A great research team can be a key collaborator in the process of making strategic and tactical business decisions, but all too often research teams are kept hidden away creating reports and dashboards that will never be given the change to unleash their opportunities.

To tap into the goldmine that research can provide, you need a leader who understands deeply the methodologies of research, but is also able to communicate with business leaders, operational design and development teams, and external clients.

A great user research leader is part  researcher , part  designer  and part  consultant.

The User Experience Researcher

A good user research manager obviously has to know how to assess, strategize, plan, conduct, lead, and evaluate research projects and programs of all different kinds - mixing qualitative and quantitative methods with ease, and providing results that provide actionable insight and business decision support. They will most likely have recommendations for what user research tools to use and when is the best time to employ them.

They will embody the traits of a great practitioner - to listen first, to question deeply and empathetically, and to rigorously interrogate all forms of data to uncover insight and truth.

A good research manager will know when to use generative and evaluative research methods. (Some great answers on this topic around  the distinctions between Design Research and Market Research ).

They need to choose the right research for the problem you are trying to solve, and can even use research to make sure you’ve picked the right problem to solve in the first place.

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The User Experience Designer

A good user research manager needs to  communicate research findings to others  clearly, simply and in a way that can be actioned.

The modern user research manager doesn’t just create reports, they collaborate with teams and clients to solve business problems - so skills like writing well, sketching, ideation, prototyping and other kinds of problem solving are also very beneficial to help guide teams to take learnings from research into real-world solutions.

The User Experience Consultant

A good user research manager will need to  work with internal and/or external clients  to conceive and lead appropriate research activities and programs to meet business needs. They need to set and manage realistic expectations for the work and its outcomes.

They will be able to clearly tell the most important stories from the research that they’ve conducted, in an appropriate format suitable for audiences from senior executives to developers, to front-line staff.

(The  executive summary  is a powerful tool for a researcher to master.)

Sometimes they will go into battle for the team’s methods - justifying the value of insights from the relatively small sample sizes involved in qualitative research, for example.

A good research team leader will be able to clearly and carefully articulate those findings that powerful people don’t always want to hear.

Great ones will be able to generate new work and raise the profile of the team by spotting opportunities for research to add business value of one kind or another (selling more stuff, retaining customers, reaching new customers, etc.).

The User Experience Leader

A good user research manager needs to be able to  lead and manage a research team , including people who aren’t their direct reports and may even be vastly more senior - in my own work I often recommend that executives participate directly in user-research as immersion is by far the best way for executives to learn what customers really think!

User research managers need to know how to lead individuals and teams, they need to manage resources and delegate work effectively, hire and motivate great staff, grow team skills, mentor junior team members. A good leader creates opportunities for their team and then let’s them do their job, providing rock solid support when necessary.

User Experience: Putting customers first

A great research team is part of the foundations of any customer-centric practice. If you are seeking to build or empower your own research team and develop the capabilities to help put customers first, consider attending my workshop on  Building and Leading Effective Digital Teams , or just  get in touch to talk  about your business needs.

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User Research-Driven Leadership is Product Management

Ronke Majekodunmi

Updated: July 8, 2024 - 5 min read

Innovation thrives when we can seize opportunities in moments of struggle.  

We’ve entered the age of the customer, where understanding their lives, motivations, and challenges is paramount. Our customers seek solutions to overcome obstacles and achieve their goals, knowing their bonuses, pay raises, and promotions are linked to their success. They turn to us for our products, solutions, and services.

Free User Persona Template

Get to know your users to build the right solution for the right audience.

Understanding Customer Needs is the Path to Innovation

Our customers desire familiarity and understanding from us, not only of their stories but also of their actual needs, which often differ from their initial requests. They expect us to grasp their entire journey, the tasks they must complete, the reasons behind these tasks, the consequences of failure, cultural influences, and their use of alternative tools to meet their objectives.

They prefer minimal human interaction and expect our products, solutions, and services to enhance their work lives without the need for customer support. Current financial uncertainties drive this shift, compelling customers to seek value in their investments.

Our customers exist independently of our products. Therefore, it's crucial that we understand their lives beyond our offerings. Recognizing their moments of struggle, when they face challenges or fail to complete tasks, is key. These are the opportunities for innovation. To achieve this, we rely on the expertise of our user experience research (UXR) partners. They provide insights that guide our user experience design teams, helping us to understand our customers' stories and their lives beyond our products.

Product and Research Partnership

Our user experience research (UXR) partners can help us solidify the four key aspects: who, when, where, and why. This allows us to move beyond relying solely on personas and ideal customer profiles. Understanding these dimensions will guide us in determining what we need to build.

When our customers face challenges, we want them to turn to our products, solutions, and services. Our UXR partners can capture these critical moments, enabling us to create a roadmap that responds to these distressing instances. This approach ensures our solutions are problem-focused, relevant, and impactful.

Research-driven leadership in product management

We’ve all heard the old sayings: “Build it, and they will come” or “Design a product, then find people who need it.” Times have changed. Today, successful products do the job they were designed for, addressing real customer needs. Influential product leaders and cross-functional teams identify struggling moments and problems worth solving for their customers.

Product leaders who inspire and nurture intellectual fortitude within cross-functional teams pave the way for fearless innovation. True innovation occurs when we take the time to understand our customers' stories and their lives beyond our products, solutions, and services. By capturing their challenges and moments of hardship, we can identify when they need different solutions or improvements. Our user experience research (UXR) partners are crucial in uncovering these insights, enabling our customers to turn to our products. Let’s explore what this means for product management.

1. User Experience Insight

Our user experience research (UXR) partners play a crucial role in helping product leaders and multifunctional teams discover, substantiate, and differentiate between what customers need versus what they communicate. They also assist in pinpointing areas for improving existing products.

2. Discovery Phase 

The collaboration between UXR and product management (PM) is not just important, it's vital during the discovery process. UXR ensures that we move beyond our hypotheses and view customers beyond the lens of our products. They can identify and assess risks and obstacles, advising us on how to overcome them. Their insights are essential for cross-functional teams to gather information, evaluate alternative solutions, and decide what to build.

3. Product Validation 

Validation is a critical part of the product development process. Product managers rely on UXR partners to validate hypotheses and product features. Once design partners approve a prototype, UXR leads testing with relevant audiences. Feedback and insights from users help confirm if we are solving a problem, addressing a struggling moment, or achieving product-market fit .

4. Product Launch 

The collaboration continues post-launch. UXR partners help measure audience reactions and analyze product performance. Together, we can identify necessary iterations to build on the momentum and ensure the product, feature, or functionality continues to meet customer needs and expectations.  

Final Thoughts on UXR-Product Partnership

The relationship between product managers and user experience researchers is highly effective due to excellent communication, transparency, and, most importantly, trust. Product leaders share everything—the strengths and weaknesses—with their UXR partners and involve them and design colleagues in all meetings with customers, multidisciplinary teams, and leadership. They also share the product vision, strategy, roadmap, customer and business value, metrics, and data. This collaboration enables UXR partners to ask additional questions and find creative solutions to problems, ultimately driving the product's success.

To truly understand our customers' stories beyond our product and to recognize their end-to-end journey and unspoken needs, we rely on our user experience research partners. They capture the struggling moments that define our customers' experiences. Our UXR colleagues understand the complexity of human decision-making processes. Our goal is to be so attuned to our customers that we can anticipate their needs and provide solutions without them having to verbalize their struggles.

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Updated: July 8, 2024

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UX Leader: Essential Skills for Any UX Practitioner

Apply practical leadership skills to your UX role, regardless of your title

Master critical leadership skills: driving design vision, translating UX into business value, communicating ideas and insights, and managing feedback. Create buy-in for UX and bring your team's vision to life.

"A strong framework for what it means to be a UX leader (at any level); Offers you practical tips, processes, and guidelines to achieve it in an engaging format."

Bryn Williams, Capital One

Who Should Attend

 who should attend.

• Current or aspiring UX leaders of a project or product
• UX leads and UX managers

What You’ll Learn

 what you’ll learn.

Establish a foundation for leadership

• Defining UX leadership
• Leadership vs. management
• Identifying your leadership strengths

Craft a UX and design vision

• Communicate your vision
• Translate vision into a UX roadmap
• Build a UX culture

Translate UX into business value

• Calculate UX impact for strategic influence
• Map and measure UX improvements
• Align UX to business metrics

Communicate ideas and insights

• Publicize research findings and design direction
• Present persuasively
• Evangelize UX

Manage feedback

• Give constructive feedback
• Respond to subjective or unhelpful feedback
• Discuss and implement design changes

This Course Includes

 this course includes.

• Hands-on activities with feedback from the instructor
• Personalized growth plan through self-assessments and reflections (Miro)
• Recommended reading list

 Why NN/g

• Expert instructor presenting their own content
• Live interaction with instructor and peers (Zoom)
• Discussion and Q&A opportunities with instructor
• Course slides in a downloadable PDF
• Private network of UX professionals (Slack)

Related Courses

 related courses.

UX Certification Credit

 ux certification credit.

Attending this course and passing the exam earns 1 UX Certification credit , which also counts towards the optional UX Management Specialty .

Learn more about NN/g's UX Certification Program.

Participant Comments

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"Great practical application of knowledge, and pacing of the presentation."

Rafal Borkowski, UXOX.PL

"It empowered me, reminded of useful tools, and provided me with a plan to start with."

Fernanda Dias, SAP SE

"Really insightful course that covered leadership skills in general and then relating these to UX."

Sian King, triptease

"Kara was well spoken and brimming with knowledge. This is by far the most beneficial course I've taken here so far."

Shaina Antila, Collegis Education

"Great content and delivery — I'm definitely going to need to review and make a plan for implementing this stuff. Got me excited again about the things I love about UX."

Conan Heiselt, TechSmith

"Great course. Was very interested in learning more about showing business value, measuring outcomes, and speaking the language of stakeholders."

Tina Bizaca, MacMillan Learning

"Kate made the course a mix of listening and practicing, which gives more feeling of being able to apply the knowledge."

Iryna Fruhman, Amway, Munich Germany

"Provides a solid framework in approaching leadership challenges."

Julia, MR HealthTeach

"It opened my mind on how to measure the UX impact in more dept and new ways I haven't thought of."

Samuel Bauer, Switzerland

"Gives practical solutions to tackle difficult discussions you might have with stakeholders. It has empowered me to dive in to the discussion than to avoid them."

Lotte Bijl, Online Department, Rotterdam Netherlands

"If you are thinking about becoming a UX leader this is a great course that informs you about the soft skills that can help you become a better UX leader."

Lindonar Jon-Ming, Online Department, Rotterdam Netherlands

"This course has given me a roadmap to guide my company toward a unified vision for what we want our UX to be."

Amber Asaro, eClinicalWorks

"Being an experiential learner, I enjoyed the team work activities done throughout the day and got to pick the brains of people from different industries & backgrounds. Anna was very generous with her knowledge and succinct in her communication. Easy to digest."

Desiree Seow, Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore

"The course provided insight into several frameworks that will assist and equip UX practitioners to be successful at pitching, clarifying thought for UX exec presentations and reinforce how to be a good UX leader."

Liane Ghosh, Dell Technology, Bangalore, India

"I really enjoyed this session. The content framing set the expectation right. I believe the framework will really help in enabling one to be a better leader for the team. Thanks."

Joel, GovTech Singapore

"Definitely a course to go to if you've a UX designer who's looking to broaden your UX management skill in all aspects."

Shawn Ee, KPMG, Singapore

"Go for this course if you are looking for ways to grow as a UX professional. This section helped me evaluate my strengths as a UX leader (I'm a UX team of 1) and gave me a clear idea of what I can start doing when I get back to work."

Catherine Francis, Ground Labs, Singapore

"Love the flow for this class. Perfect mixture of theory and activity. Great job!"

Isa Sofian, Alliance Bank, KL, Malaysia

"Using case study for team role play really enrich our learning experience by walking us through the whole process and the concept is empowering. Really appreciate the great effort put into the training material to provide us such a great insight how being a UX leader should navigate through our daily tasks and responsibilities. Will definitely put the skills into practice."

Jennifer Laurette, 360 Degree Digital, Singapore

"This was INCREDIBLY timely. So many valuable insights I feel confident I can incorporate with my team as needs arise — and as we grow!"

Brennen Schmidt, Deloitte

"This was a fantastic course that far exceeded my expectations. I would recommend it to anyone who has a role in supporting UX in their organization. Kara is so engaging, knowledgeable and inspiring!"

Chelsey Schaffel, zu.com Communications

"Not only a great course on being a UX Leader, but also transferable to many leadership roles."

Nathan Hogman, Ocean Networks Canada

"The course was informative, interactive and dynamic. Thank you!"

Rita Feldman, College of American Pathologists

"This course was outstanding in that it provided several opportunities to apply what I learned in class."

Rachel Finch, Intel

"I loved all the interactive sessions! I also loved Rachel's presentation style."

Serene Mireles, GE Healthcare

"Rachel was amazing! Her course brought an entire table of strangers into an amazing lil design team. The activities were practical, not only helped us learn the material, but our group bonded over them and now use each other as a guide and resource."

Christin Balda

"This workshop provided excellent information & examples for why it's so important that UX Teams and stakeholders find common language so that we're all working towards the same goal."

Cassandra Reid, Northrop Grumman

"Probably one of the best classes I've attended on leadership — not just UX leadership. Takeaways that were immediately viable and straightforward to implement. Would recommend to anyone in a leadership role."

Sean Jones, RFCU

"I liked how it made it easy to recognise which areas I need to improve on and read more about. Now I have a plan of action to become a better UX leader both inside my organisation and as a professional."

Lucia Amado, Dublin, Ireland

"As usual, the course was practical, well researched and delivered flawlessly. Thanks NN/g!"

Christopher Gadd, European Medicines Agency, Amsterdam

"I liked learning about the different areas of UX leadership and reflecting on ways I could improve outside of my area of focus."

Will Leidheiser, State Farm, Atlanta

"Loved the course material, the breakout rooms and the engagement with the speaker and the moderators throughout :)"

Richard Tanner, Atradius, Cardiff

"I really liked to have skills types broke down and with practical examples on how to improve it. Makes easier to create a clear personal plan."

Bibiana De Carli, Booking.com, Amsterdam

"Good base level leadership course with a UX focus. Specifically meant for macro overview of what it means to lead and basics around that, not a tactical overview on performance management or coaching. Rather, it's about guiding, building, and leading s UX strategy."

Jason Chiu, Export Development Canada

"This course enabled me in shaping and defining clear new goals that I could achieve in the upcoming years in my career. The materials provided during this course will be a timeless tool that I could use to personalise my professional and personal growth into becoming a better leader."

Marco Perego, The Netherlands

"I liked how Rachel kept my attention for straight 3-3.30 hours. Normally, that's not possible. I already knew some of the topics but it clicked a puzzle piece when Rachel was explaining how those fit in the bigger picture. Most of the information was new and explained well that after, I didn't even have questions. Well done! Will totally take another course."

Dilan Yuksel, Novozymes, Copenhagen Denmark

"As someone who have been in a leadership position for the same company on the past 3 years, I often feel like my practice might be outdated and I am might be missing something. The NNG training put me on top of my game again and gave me the confidence I needed to be a stronger "UX Evangelist" in my organisation."

Gabriela Braga, Envato, Melbourne, Australia

"Being a UX-leader doesn't necessarily have to be about managing others but to evangelize and spread knowledge about what UX is and how it impacts business value. Great knowledge that more should have. Overall a great course!"

Mari Arnell, Cambio Healthcare Systems, Linköping, Sweden

"One of the best UX courses I've ever taken- the quality of the presentation was very high, and the hands on exercises really helped my understanding of the subject matter."

James Bollington, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

"Great course - Rachel was an excellent speaker and the content worked really well in the remote format. The mix of activities kept you engaged all the way through. Lots of food for thought on my own leadership development and relevant takeaways for my team and wider company."

Sarah Dewar, Crowdhouse, Zurich, Switzerland

"This course was really enjoyable and the content, breakout sessions and tasks helped put learnings to practice. I found it beneficial to understand my leadership strength, how to create a shared vision, validating UX and learning about tactics for responding to feedback."

Helen Hopkins, O2 Telefonica, Reading, UK

"This course is perfect for new leaders or even experienced leaders that can use a more tactile and tangible plan. I really enjoyed the specific examples, group exercises, and tools provided for going forward."

Lane Fielder, Rackspace Technology, San Antonio, TX USA

"Rachel is an excellent presenter with a wealth of knowledge to share in an approachable and appealing manner. This course has given me fantastic tools, strategies and resources to both prepare for, and use in a leadership role."

Lani Raukawa Field, Signify Ltd, Wellington, Aotearoa. New Zealand

"Anna totally knows what she is talking about, and I highly recommend this course! She covered a lot of great points and amazed me at the speed and quality of her answers to every question from participants (and they weren't easy questions)! She was really wonderful at creating a safe space where people felt comfortable asking questions so they could really learn. :)"

Katrina, Age of Learning, Inc., Glendale, CA, USA

"Anna was masterful at incorporating the chat comments and questions. Really well organized and informative."

Christina Leclerc, Systemscope, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

"This was an amazing course. Thank you Anna. I really got a lot out of it, and I cannot wait to go through the links and suggested readings."

Rebecca Lutomske Mayeaux, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Washington, DC

"I found this course to be very inspirational and there were so many good take-aways that I can start implementing immediately."

Erica McCoy, , Madison, WI USA

"I learned a lot about leadership in design and what that looks like. I learned how to conduct some different workshops and when/how to use leadership skills and in what settings. I would say that this course is great if you are looking to be more of a strategic leader or influencer in design, in your company."

Sarah Khan, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC

"Demystifies UX leadership role and and activities, and provides highly actionable frameworks that enable UX pros to lead confidently and with empathy."

Damian O'Malley, ServiceNow Inc., San Diego, USA

"Take it if your company doesn't have a fully integrated UX team within the various project and product functions. I did benefit a lot. Liked the whole demeanor and way the instructor left the course. She was very thoughtful and caring about people's questions and specific situations. Seemed like an authority on the subject. The course materials seemed difficult to get to initially. The work settings don't allow for google docs to be used, so I needed to use my personal computer."

Bob Schaffer, AIM Specialty Health, Chicago, IL, USA

"Fantastic speaker - great presence. Content was very aligned with Leadership qualities and themes."

Mike McMurrich, THREE97, Barbados

"Anna is very knowledgeable and knows how to bring her knowledge in a engaging way that appeals both to people new to the field and industry 'veterans' alike. The course is basically a foundational resource for you as a manager to take away valuable tidbits AND to bring back to your team to help them improve basic competences needed as a UX designer. And I continue to be amazed by how well the course facilitators (Anna being a prime example) balance the content of their course with comments and questions from the participants (and in order to do so manage to keep uw with the chat)."

Joren Devocht, Teamleader, Antwerp, Belgium

"As a new Head of UX, this course was really great to re-establish my own strengths as a leader but also assess the strength of the current team in place. The effective communication part in particular helps with the continued journey to help and educate others on the discipline of UX."

Rosalyn, George @ Asda, Leeds

"Great, practical ideas and suggested approaches to many important situations/expectations faced by UX leaders everyday."

Mø Morales, Schneider Electric, Boston, MA, USA

"This course helps you understand the skills needed to be an effective UX leader and how to share them with non-designers stakeholders."

Daniel Peñaloza, Mercado Libre, Bogotá, Colombia

"An excellent grounding in understanding the various ways UX leaders can express differing modes of leadership and how to best support those efforts."

Nathan Cocks, Tundra, Melbourne, Australia

"This course covers a 360° view of what it means to being an effective UX practitioner no matter what your position or title is. It discusses daily challenges UX practitioners face and how to lead these challenges when communicating with peers and stakeholders."

Reem Sabry, Seattle, USA

"The 'being a effective leader' course really delivers the best practice and true human skills needed to inspire change. The best part is these can be learned and developed! This course provides a framework and path to development for those wanting to become better leaders."

Ben Maclaren, Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Australia

"This course really puts into perspective what being a UX leader is and breaks down the myths or perceptions in a way that is very motivational and actionable. It's always been hard for me to concretely understand "leadership" but now I feel like I can go to work on Monday and can make an impact."

Grace Sunnell, New York, USA

"I loved how deep the content was and the tactics focus. Not just concepts, but actual thing to do to improve and reach the goal one takes the course for."

Regalado Montoya, Santiago, Chile

"A lot of content shared in this course isn't always gained through natural experience. It depends on the culture of your company but it's a great way to learn how to apply leadership principles to your everyday life."

Alfredo Deschamps, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Hamden, Connecticut

"I like the course and will suggest if someone asks me how to become UX leader :)"

Yura Yarokhovich, Mobalytics, Minsk, Belarus

"This course provides a good framework of UX leadership. I can definitely relate to the mentioned difficulties designers face when communicating design and the value of UX, and this course provides specific methods and tactics dealing with the problems."

Naomi Z., Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

"For those who have difficulty convincing their clients on UX approaches or even influencing them to do certain UX activitiy (especially research), then this is the course for them. The lessons learned here very much answers those questions in a very achievable approach."

Raymon Manalo, DXC Technology, Philippines

"Consider taking this AFTER other classes. Having 14 other NNG courses under my belt made my understanding of this material very high. I am very glad to have this course as the cap to my Master UX certification."

Jason Sonderman, BetterCloud, Kansas City, USA

"As an individual contributor who is an aspiring manager, I found this course to be excellent in giving me actionable steps as well as reminding me of practices I might need to revisit (especially in terms of setting the stage for stakeholders and communicating about design feedback)."

Christine F., Tampa

"This course will definitely round out your UX management skills and provide you with a plethora of insightful and constructive ways to manage your team, other departs, executives and expectations."

Steve Ingels, Likewize, Atlanta USA

"Great to find out what are my strengths and weaknesses as a leader, I also received actionable tools and resources to help me grow by making small adjustments to my current work style."

Ola, ServiceChannel, Warsaw, Poland

"Love the content and presentation. Lots of insight and very organised set up."

Ben Webb, cinch, Manchester, England

"Absolutely valuable if you want to pursue a leadership role in UX."

Brian Alexandrowicz, Vanguard, Malvern, USA

"Overall fun, easy-going, course to take. An amazing class for anyone looking to build some leadership skills. This course gave me the confidence and tools I need to be a better UX Lead in my organization. I'm grateful I got to meet like-minded folks in my field and can take a few fun activities back to my team."

Victoria, Willis Towers Watson, Tampa, USA

"Go ahead and take it. It's great. It helps you understand how to improve specially your speech and how to better sell/present your ideas. If that's what you are looking for…go for it!"

David Fernandez, Oracle Netsuite, Madrid, Spain

"I just can say that I loved it!"

Azita Hosseini Nejad, CJe GmbH, Germany

Instructors

 instructors.

Anna Kaley is the Director of Consulting with Nielsen Norman Group. Anna has over 15 years of experience in UX architecture, design, and digital strategy. She conducts complex user research, service, and experience design for clients across many industries, including healthcare, agriculture, finance, government, tourism, retail, nonprofit, engineering, and more.

Evan Sunwall

Evan Sunwall is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. A former software developer, he enjoys helping users accomplish complex tasks, tackling the challenges of enterprise-level application design, and exploring effective management practices for design teams. 

Rachel Krause

Rachel Krause is a Senior User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Her areas of expertise include storytelling, UX in agile, design thinking, scaling design, and UX leadership. She has also planned and conducted research on careers, UX maturity, and intranets for clients and practitioners in numerous industries.

Shanae Chapman

Shanae Chapman is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, and author. She is the Founder and CEO of Nerdy Diva, a Black woman-owned consulting firm whose mission is to inspire creative problem-solving in tech and society, with a focus on increasing access and opportunity for everyone. She leads UX consulting, tech training, and instructional design for clients across the US, and she received the 2023 Northeastern University Women Who Empower Innovator Awards for Social Impact and Alumni Entrepreneurship.

UX Conference Training Courses

• Becoming a UX Strategist
• Design Tradeoffs and UX Decision-Making
• Facilitating UX Workshops
• ResearchOps: Scaling User Research
• Design Systems and Pattern Libraries
• Defining UX-Career Progression: What Practitioners Say
• UX & Marketing: Balancing Business Goals and Supporting Users
• Successful Onboarding for New Hires in UX Roles
• Relationship Mapping: Strategically Focus on Key People
• Research Repositories for Tracking UX Research and Growing Your ResearchOps

You selected the UX Leader: Essential Skills for Any UX Practitioner Course.

This course is part of the September UX Conference . Continue to the September UX Conference registration or choose to attend more courses.

This course is part of the October UX Conference . Continue to the October UX Conference registration or choose to attend more courses.

This course is part of the November UX Conference . Continue to the November UX Conference registration or choose to attend more courses.

This course is part of the December UX Conference . Continue to the December UX Conference registration or choose to attend more courses.

How insights from user research help us build for the next billion

Sep 26, 2018

[[read-time]] min read

Sitting in her apartment in Mumbai a few years ago, Radha wondered if there were activities nearby for her two-year old son. She had recently moved to the city from a small town about 300 km away in search of better education for her children. Since then, she’d slowly built up a network of acquaintances, mostly from chance meetings traveling up and down the lift. But there was something missing. Back in her hometown, it was easy to ask Shanti Aunty across the way about local dressmakers. And—along with the keys to the family cupboard—she had inherited many business relationships from her mother-in-law; the local baker, the nearby mobile repair shop. But in such a big city, finding answers to simple local questions was more difficult.

A kernel of an insight

This kernel of an insight, gathered by Jeannie Foulsham while studying local search in India in 2014, led to the development of a product we call Neighbourly. Neighbourly is a mobile application that provides people with an easy interface to ask and find answers to neighborhood questions and is available in seven cities in India so far. And we built it in direct response to conversations with users like Radha.

This is just one example of how user experience (UX) research can build an understanding of people’s context, behavior, and comprehension to inform the design of products or services. There are hundreds of researchers across Google who gather insights to inform all of our product offerings. This research is especially key to how we approach products for the next billion users—people coming online for the first time, usually on mobile. To ensure we're living up to Google's mission of universally accessible information, we must deeply understand the similarities and differences in how these people look for and use information in their day to day lives.

Diving deeper to understand the role of technology

In the early days of developing Neighbourly, Muzayun Mukhtar, a UX researcher based in our Bangalore office, would spend hours walking the streets of Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur and many other smaller cities conducting intercept interviews , stopping people for a conversation to get a glimpse into their lives, their impressions and their relationships. She spent time in small communities called  societies , where she learned about the social dynamic between neighbors. For a deeper look at how they lived, Muzayun worked through locals to meet people in their homes for contextual inquiries to see how they solve day-to-day problems. She met people from different stages and walks of life: mothers, homemakers, those new to the community as well as neighborhood lifers. She would then take these insights back to our product teams for incorporation into the product roadmap.

We visited many communities in cities around India during the design and development of Neighbourly, including this society in Mumbai.

Discovering a core user value

As the team iterated on ideas in late 2016, Muzayun met Divya, a mother of two, for an interview at a children’s park in Borivali. Divya told her, "I’ve been struggling to find a good physiotherapist in this area for six months. People in my locality are isolated—so busy. Other than a hi or hello once in a while, we don't reach out. But that wasn't how things were when I was growing up. We used to know each other. We used to help each other.”

Delivering thoughtful, usable design

Getting feedback on our designs directly from people helped us make changes to meet their needs and increase usability

Learning through immersion

Product team members routinely join UX researchers in the field to ensure  they fully internalizes the needs and context of the people they’re building for, and ground product decisions in real user insights. As Ben Fohner, a product manager on the Neighbourly team, says: “There’s no substitute for sitting down with somebody in their living room and watching them use (or try to use!) the product you’ve built. It’s a combination of incredibly exhilarating when you see an ah-ha moment—and incredibly humbling when something just doesn’t work. Spending time face-to-face with our users was essential in building Neighbourly, and a great source of motivation for the whole team, too.”

Product teams join in for research, building intuition and grounding decisions in real insights.

Putting it all together

Neighbourly is one product among many, developed to address a specific need. However, we’ve often found instances where addressing local needs can grow to have global impact. For example, Files Go , an app that helps you free up space on your phone, was built from insights gathered primarily in India and Brazil, but it’s resonated with audiences globally.

Google aims to build products that improve the lives of as many people as possible. And from the initial insight to the finishing pixel, UX research helps product teams stay connected to the pulse of the user. By staying focused on the needs, behaviors and concerns of the people for whom we’re developing our products, we can more effectively build for everyone.

Related stories

Android 13 (Go edition): Easier to update and tailored just for you

Delivering on our $1 billion commitment in Africa

Building language models, one story at a time

How tech can support transformational growth in Africa

Renewing our commitment to Brazil

Our commitment to Latin America’s digital future

Let’s stay in touch. Get the latest news from Google in your inbox.

• Progress Software-stock
• News for Progress Software

Progress’ Semantic AI Platform Recognized as the Leader in Info-Tech Research Group's 2024 Metadata Management Data Quadrant

Progress Semaphore ranks #1 for fourth consecutive year, based on user feedback on Info-Tech's SoftwareReviews platform

BURLINGTON, Mass., Sept. 03, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Progress (Nasdaq: PRGS), the trusted provider of AI-powered infrastructure software, today announced that Progress® Semaphore™ , its metadata management and semantic AI platform, has been named the Leader and a Gold Medalist in Info-Tech Research Group's 2024 Metadata Management Data Quadrant, based on data from SoftwareReviews, the global research and advisory firm's software insights platform. The data in the report is collected from real end users, providing a comprehensive evaluation of popular products in the Metadata Management market to create a holistic, unbiased view that helps prospective purchasers make better decisions.

For the fourth consecutive year, Info-Tech Research Group has named Semaphore the leader after achieving an 8.4/10 composite satisfaction score on SoftwareReviews, which averages four different areas of evaluation: Net Emotional Footprint, Vendor Capabilities, Product Features and Likeliness to Recommend. Semaphore ranked first across all vendor capability categories, including Business Value Created (92%), Breadth of Features (91%), Quality of Features (89%), Product Strategy (89%), Usability and Intuitiveness (90%), Vendor Support (92%), Ease of Integration (91%), Ease of Administration (88%), Ease of Customization (91%), Availability and Quality of Training (89%) and Ease of Implementation (90%).

User reviews that contributed to Progress’ recognition include:

• “Semaphore is a very powerful, scalable and robust system that fits very well into the technology stack.”
• “Great performance enhancement product which allows easy multiple project data processing and real time data analysis generation. This system is excellent.”
• “(Semaphore provides) various marketing and business data integration, accessibility control and easy API management and also the data transformation functions are impressive.”

“We are honored to be acknowledged as the leader in Info-Tech Research Group's 2024 Metadata Management Data Quadrant report,” said John Ainsworth, Executive Vice President, General Manager, Application and Data Platform, Progress. “This distinction is especially meaningful because it reflects the opinions of our customers—the people who matter most to us. The ranking underscores our commitment to providing an easy-to-use platform with advanced capabilities that resonates with our valued customers. Their feedback drives our continuous evolution, innovation and development, propelled by AI, to move businesses forward.”

The Semaphore semantic AI platform enables users to manage knowledge models and automatically extract and classify both structured and unstructured data to generate rich semantic metadata. It removes layers of information complexity and helps organizations use enterprise data not just for knowledge but with the power of wisdom to act faster.

For more information about Progress Semaphore, visit https://www.progress.com/semaphore. A complimentary copy of the 2024 Metadata Management Data Quadrant report is available here.

About Progress   Progress (Nasdaq: PRGS) empowers organizations to achieve transformational success in the face of disruptive change. Our software enables our customers to develop, deploy and manage responsible AI-powered applications and experiences with agility and ease. Customers get a trusted provider in Progress, with the products, expertise and vision they need to succeed. Over 4 million developers and technologists at hundreds of thousands of enterprises depend on Progress. Learn more at www.progress.com. 

Progress and Semaphore are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the US and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.  

Press Contact:   Kim Baker  Progress  +1-800-213-3407                                                         [email protected]

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