5 ways to create more Impact with your UX Research
Sometimes as a researcher you can find yourself wondering if the work you’re doing is being heard or even going anywhere. I can think of times I was presenting findings and just getting the feeling that people were waiting for it to be over so they could resume business as usual.
While part of this is due to a lack of UX maturity at organizations, there are a lot of proactive things UX designers/researchers can do to ensure the way they report findings leaves their audience with a sense of appreciation and understanding for the work in front of them
Create context
This can be as simple as providing the “why” and the “how.” These are the first questions people have and without them they may be thinking about it throughout your whole presentation.
What to do:
💡 By simply providing some quick information at the beginning of your presentation and using plain language, it can go a long way in getting your audience to appreciate the work moving forward.
Why was this research done?
- What was the business context? Does it tie into any company missions / sprints/ quarterly goals?
- Who was involved? which key stakeholders / sponsors supported this work? Which key business areas/personas were being looked at?
How was the research done?
- What methodologies did you use? How many people? How long did it take?
By setting this stage, it can help people put your insights and findings into context and potentially lead to some interesting discussions, since everybody is on the same page.
Rationalize Methodologies
I recall one time presenting research related to information architecture to a group of executives ( we ran a series of card sorts and tree tests) and only till the end did someone ask me what a tree test even was. (!!)
At that moment I realized that all of the data I was sharing related to our tree test results went over their head because they didn’t know what the point of the activity was or the significance in the related data. This was totally my fault because I assumed the audience had a certain level of understanding and didn’t do a good job at setting the stage.
What I should have done:
🤦♀️ Know your audience -> Just including a slide in the beginning of my presentation with context for how my research method works + how to read the data would go a long way for me, especially with an audience of non designers/researchers.
Build Empathy
It can be easy to create a document or presentation filled with text. While its important to flesh out your research results and write as much as you can, remember at the end of the day you’re presenting to an audience and it can be hard to digest all the information you’re sharing.
One benefit of doing research is you get the direct voice of the consumer / user. You should do your best to leverage this and make sure it’s in your report. Hearing / observing your user struggle with a product is a lot more impactful than just reading an observation from a researcher.
What to do?
Leverage your research to create bite size rich content
💎 For qualitative data
- Include quotes, video snippets, images, or anything that can
🔢 For quantitative data:
- Include charts, word clouds (for surveys), graphics, or any visuals that represent your data
Connect the dots
When nearing the end of your presentation, think about what takeaways you can give to your team.
What to do:
⚡️A popular tactic researchers use is to employ “how might we” statements
For example:
“How might we use design components to improve users’ expectations for how long our onboarding flow will take them?”
statements like these can help product/design teams take tangible next steps based on the work you have done.
Other times you may suggest doing a collaborative design thinking workshop or perhaps another round of research. Whatever it is, giving the team clear, actionable steps will help them feel in line with research
Make it accessible
Research should not feel buried away or isolated. It’s easy to lose insights in email threads or slack chats. One thing you can do to take your work one step further is to create an easy way for teams to access the research done to date
🧠 What to do:
- leverage tools such as Airtable, Dropbox, Coda, Notion, or even Google Docs to log and track research and make reports accessible.
- Create some documentation to help teams know where research is stored and how to access it
- Stick to some consistency in reporting / naming / stylizing your research reports
People will ultimately want to access your research later. The easier you enable them to do this, the more impact it can make over time
Resources
If you’re interested, I have a couple resources available for UX designers / researchers looking to clean up their reporting.
My UXR toolkit contains everything you need to plan, organize, and share UX research: https://aadildigital.gumroad.com/l/uxrtoolkit
I also have a free Figma template file to create research case studies for your organization or personal portfolio: https://www.figma.com/community/file/1110979839025368786
