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UX Research Cheat Sheet

February 12, 2017 2017-02-12

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

In This Article:

When to conduct user research.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good things to do during discovery:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What Is User Research, and What Is Its Purpose?

User research, or UX research, is an absolutely vital part of the  user experience design process.

Typically done at the start of a project, it encompasses different types of research methodologies to gather valuable data and feedback. When conducting user research, you’ll engage with and observe your target users, getting to know their needs, behaviors, and pain points in relation to the product or service you’re designing.

Ultimately, user research means the difference between designing based on guesswork and assumptions, and actually creating something that solves a real user problem. In other words: Do not skip the research phase!

If you’re new to user research, fear not. We’re going to explain exactly what UX research is and why it’s so important. We’ll also show you how to plan your user research and introduce you to some key user research methods .

We’ve divided this rather comprehensive guide into the following sections. Feel free to skip ahead using the menu below:

• What is user research?
• What is the purpose of user research?
• How to plan your user research.
• An introduction to different research methods—and when to use them.

Ready? Let’s jump in.

1. What is user research?

User experience research is the systematic investigation of your users in order to gather insights that will inform the design process. With the help of various user research techniques, you’ll set out to understand your users’ needs, attitudes, pain points, and behaviors (processes like task analyses look at how users actually navigate the product experience —not just how they should or how they say they do). 

Typically done at the start of a project—but also extremely valuable throughout—it encompasses different types of research methodology to gather both qualitative and quantitative data in relation to your product or service.

Before we continue, let’s consider the difference between qualitative and quantitative data .

Qualitative vs. Quantitative data: What’s the difference?

Qualitative UX research results in descriptive data which looks more at how people think and feel. It helps to find your users’ opinions, problems, reasons, and motivations. You can learn all about in-depth in this video by professional UX designer Maureen Herben:

Quantitative UX research , on the other hand, generally produces numerical data that can be measured and analyzed, looking more at the statistics. Quantitative data is used to quantify the opinions and behaviors of your users.

User research rarely relies on just one form of data collection and often uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods together to form a bigger picture. The data can be applied to an existing product to gain insight to help improve the product experiences, or it can be applied to an entirely new product or service, providing a baseline for UX, design, and development.

From the data gathered during your user research phase, you should be able to understand the following areas within the context of your product or service:

• Who your users are
• What their needs are
• What they want
• How they currently do things
• How they’d like to do them

As you consider the  why  of user research, remember that it’s easier than you might realize to overlook entire groups of users. It’s important to ensure that you’re conducting inclusive UX research and that starts in the earliest stages!

2. What is the purpose of user research?

The purpose of user research is to put your design project into context. It helps you understand the problem you’re trying to solve; it tells you who your users are, in what context they’ll be using your product or service, and ultimately, what they need from you, the designer! UX research ensures that you are designing with the user in mind, which is key if you want to create a successful product.

Throughout the design process, your UX research will aid you in many ways. It’ll help you identify problems and challenges, validate or invalidate your assumptions, find patterns and commonalities across your target user groups, and shed plenty of light on your users’ needs, goals, and mental models.

Why is this so important? Let’s find out.

Why is it so important to conduct user research?

Without UX research, you are essentially basing your designs on assumptions. If you don’t take the time to engage with real users, it’s virtually impossible to know what needs and pain-points your design should address.

Here’s why conducting user research is absolutely crucial:

User research helps you to design better products!

There’s a misconception that it’s ok to just do a bit of research and testing at the end of your project. The truth is that you need UX research first, followed by usability testing and iteration throughout.

This is because research makes the design better. The end goal is to create products and services that people want to use. The mantra in UX design is that some user research is always better than none .

It’s likely at some point in your UX career that you will come across the first challenge of any UX designer—convincing a client or your team to include user research in a project.

User research keeps user stories at the center of your design process.

All too often, the user research phase is seen as optional or merely “nice-to-have”—but in reality, it’s crucial from both a design and a business perspective. This brings us to our next point…

User research saves time and money!

If you (or your client) decide to skip the research phase altogether, the chances are you’ll end up spending time and money developing a product that, when launched, has loads of usability issues and design flaws, or simply doesn’t meet a real user need. Through UX research, you’ll uncover such issues early on—saving time, money, and lots of frustration!

The research phase ensures you’re designing with real insights and facts — not guesswork! Imagine you release a product that has the potential to fill a gap in the market but, due to a lack of user research, is full of bugs and usability issues. At best, you’ll have a lot of unnecessary work to do to get the product up to scratch. At worst, the brand’s reputation will suffer.

UX research gives the product a competitive edge. Research shows you how your product will perform in a real-world context, highlighting any issues that need to be ironed out before you go ahead and develop it.

User research can be done on a budget

There are ways that you can conduct faster and less costly user research , utilizing Guerrilla research outlined later on in this article (also handy if budget and time are an issue). Even the smallest amount of user research will save time and money in the long run.

The second challenge is how often businesses think they know their users without having done any research. You’ll be surprised at how often a client will tell you that user research is not necessary because they know their users!

In a 2005 survey completed by Bain, a large global management consulting firm, they found some startling results. 80% of businesses thought they knew best about what they were delivering. Only 8% of those businesses’ customers agreed.

The survey may be getting old, but the principle and misperception still persist.

In some cases, businesses genuinely do know their customers and there may be previous data on hand to utilize. However, more often than not, ‘knowing the users’ comes down to personal assumptions and opinions.

“It’s only natural to assume that everyone uses the Web the same way we do, and—like everyone else—we tend to think that our own behavior is much more orderly and sensible than it really is.” (Don’t Make Me Think ‘Revisited’, Steve Krug, 2014.) A must on every UX Designer’s bookshelf!

What we think a user wants is not the same as what a user thinks they want. Without research, we inadvertently make decisions for ourselves instead of for our target audience. To summarize, the purpose of user research is to help us design to fulfill the user’s actual needs, rather than our own assumptions of their needs.

In a nutshell, UX research informs and opens up the realm of design possibilities. It saves time and money, ensures a competitive edge, and helps you to be a more effective, efficient, user-centric designer.

3. How to plan your user research

When planning your user research , it’s good to have a mix of both qualitative and quantitative data to draw from so you don’t run into issues from the value-action gap, which can at times make qualitative data unreliable.

The value-action gap is a well-known psychology principle outlining that people genuinely don’t do what they say they would do, and is commonly referred to as what people say vs. what people do.

More than 60% of participants said they were “likely” or “very likely” to buy a kitchen appliance in the next 3 months. 8 months later, only 12% had. How Customers Think, Gerald Zaltman, 2003

When planning your user research, you need to do more than just User Focus Groups—observation of your users really is the key. You need to watch what your users do.

Part of being a great user researcher is to be an expert at setting up the right questions and getting unbiased answers from your users.

To do this we need to think like the user.

Put yourself in your user’s shoes without your own preconceptions and assumptions on how it should work and what it should be. For this, we need empathy (and good listening skills) allowing you to observe and challenge assumptions of what you already think you know about your users.

Be open to some surprises!

4. When to use different user research methods

There’s a variety of different qualitative and quantitative research methods out there. If you’ve been doing the CareerFoundry UX Design course , you may have already covered some of the list below in your course.

It isn’t an exhaustive list, but covers some of the more popular methods of research. Our student team lead runs through many of them in the video below.

Qualitative Methods:

• Guerrilla testing: Fast and low-cost testing methods such as on-the-street videos, field observations, reviews of paper sketches, or online tools for remote usability testing.
• Interviews: One-on-one interviews that follow a preset selection of questions prompting the user to describe their interactions, thoughts, and feelings in relation to a product or service, or even the environment of the product/service.
• Focus groups: Participatory groups that are led through a discussion and activities to gather data on a particular product or service. If you’ve ever watched Mad Men you’ll be familiar with the Ponds’ cold cream Focus Group !
• Field Studies: Heading into the user’s environment and observing while taking notes (and photographs or videos if possible).
• In-lab testing: Observations of users completing particular tasks in a controlled environment. Users are often asked to describe out loud their actions, thoughts, and feelings and are videoed for later analysis
• Card sorting : Used to help understand Information Architecture and naming conventions better. Can be really handy to sort large amounts of content into logical groupings for users.

Quantitative Methods:

• User surveys: Questionnaires with a structured format, targeting your specific user personas. These can be a great way to get a large amount of data. Surveymonkey is a popular online tool.
• First click testing: A test set up to analyse what a user would click on first in order to complete their intended task. This can be done with paper prototypes, interactive wireframes or an existing website.
• Eye tracking: Measures the gaze of the eye, allowing the observer to ‘see’ what the user sees. This can be an expensive test and heatmapping is a good cheaper alternative.
• Heatmapping: Visual mapping of data showing how users click and scroll through your prototype or website. The most well-known online tool to integrate would be Crazyegg.
• Web analytics: Data that is gathered from a website or prototype it is integrated with, allowing you to see the demographics of users, page views, and funnels of how users move through your site and where they drop off. The most well-known online tool to integrate would be Google Analytics .
• A/B testing: Comparing two versions of a web page to see which one converts users more. This is a great way to test button placements, colors, banners, and other elements in your UI.

Further reading

Now you know what user research is and why it’s so important. If you’re looking for a way to get trained in this particular discipline, there’s good news—owing to demand and popularity, there’s a growing number of UX research bootcamps out there.

If you’d like to learn more about UX research, you may find the following articles useful:

• What Does A UX Researcher Actually Do? The Ultimate Career Guide
• How to Conduct User Research Like a Professional
• How to Build a UX Research Portfolio (Step-by-Step Guide)

User research is the process of understanding the needs, behaviors, and attitudes of users to inform the design and development of products or services. It involves collecting and analyzing data about users through various methods such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing.

2. How to conduct user research?

User research can be conducted through various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, and usability testing. The method chosen depends on the research goals and the resources available. Typically, user research involves defining research objectives, recruiting participants, creating research protocols, conducting research activities, analyzing data, and reporting findings.

3. Is user research the same as UX?

User research is a part of the broader UX (User Experience) field, but they are not the same. UX encompasses a wide range of activities such as design, testing, and evaluation, while user research specifically focuses on understanding user needs and behaviors to inform UX decisions.

4. What makes good user research?

Good user research is characterized by clear research goals, well-defined research protocols, appropriate sampling methods, unbiased data collection, and rigorous data analysis. It also involves effective communication of research findings to stakeholders, as well as using the findings to inform design and development decisions.

5. Is user research a good career?

User research is a growing field with many opportunities for career growth and development. With the increasing importance of user-centered design, there is a high demand for skilled user researchers in various industries such as tech, healthcare, and finance. A career in user research can be fulfilling for those interested in understanding human behavior and designing products that meet user needs.