Answer the public series: What is UX Research
Exploring what UX research is and how it is involved in the UX process
In this new series of articles, I will be answering the publics questions on UX research. The questions are sourced from answerthepublic.com which finds frequently asked questions related to a key word or phrase you input — in this case UX research. The question I explore in this article is; what is UX Research. You can see a visualisation of the most asked questions in the image below which provides an indication of future pieces I hope to write about over the coming weeks and months.
What is UX Research
Simply put, UX research is the process of understanding a users needs, goals and pain points when interacting with a product. This is primarily in the digital space, although this is fast changing to an omnichannel experience ie online and offline. It is a process of gathering information by engaging with users at various points of the product development process to observe, interview and test with, to make sure it meets and exceeds the requirements they are trying to achieve.
When you understand what someone is trying to achieve, and what their true need and goal is, you can develop something with them at the heart of the product. A quote that really stuck with me related to this topic was by Theodore Levitt who said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”On the face of it when people buy a quarter-inch drill you just assume that was their goal. That they just wanted to buy that item. However, take it on another stage and you can see they wanted the quarter-inch drill to create a quarter-inch hole. Take it on one more stage, and you can see that they wanted to, for example, hang up a picture. Take it another another step and you can see they wanted to decorate their house to make it a home. Take it on one final stage and they wanted to make their house a home because they were starting a family.
So using this as an example, the users need and goal was never to buy a quarter-inch drill, to make a hole, to hang a picture or to make a home. Their goal was to create a family environment.
Now knowing this; was the quarter-inch drill the best solution, or was there a better way for the user to achieve their goal?
Now take this same principle and apply it to the digital world such as online shopping or reading content. They have a set goal they are trying to achieve for specific reasons, and it is only through thorough research throughout the process that you can understand just what their goal is and how we can support them to achieve it.
For those who are also less familiar with UX, there an established process called the double diamond:
This model essentially states that when creating a product you should go through 4 phases:
- Discovery
- Define
- Develop
- Deliver
The discovery phase is all about exploring the user group and finding out information. You are learning about the users needs and goals and any problems they face along the journey. It is a divergent, broad phase as shown in the double diamond diagram. This phase is focused heavily on UX research and aims to validate that you are solving the right problem, and if not what are the user problems.
The define phase is all about turning the research into clear problem statements that the user has faced so you can understand what issue you are trying to resolve or tackle. It requires prioritisation often considering the impact and size of the issue that filters out lesser problems which is why it is a convergent stage.
The develop phase is all about ideating and coming up with solutions — you know all about the user problems, you have honed in on the key ones and now you create solutions that best solve the issues through hypothesis forming/testing and initial prototypes. This can be achieved through workshops such as How might we’s or JTBD.
The final stage is deliver in which you validate the finalise prototypes and experience with users to ensure it meets their needs and goals and that you have indeed created a user first experience. This will often involve iterating through research to iron out any problems.
As you can see, the process started with, and ended with research. It also persisted throughout as all the decisions being made were based on research.
It is therefore something that is at the heart of the UX process, the blood in the veins continually feeding and supporting the process.
UX Research for me (and this is also what attracted me to UX as a profession) is also all about the psychology of the digital experience.
How people think, why they think what they think, the emotions they go through, and how we can create an experience that takes all that into account to make an invisible interaction. How many times have you interacted with an app or website or even self service system such as a self checkout and stumbled at a particular point in the journey or wondered how to do something. If you have, it is through no fault of your own but the fault of the design.
Another field/profession that UX Research is connected to is science, not just because UX is a digital psychology and psychology falls into a science, but because it is about trial and error, it is all about testing and it is all about learning.
In the same way a scientist would conduct experiments and review the performances, so do we. In the same way a scientist learns from previous versions through a test and learn approach, so do we. In the same way a scientist has hypotheses they want testing, so do we.
One of Googles philosophy's is ‘Focus on the user and all else will follow’ [1] and the only way this can be achieved is through user research. Without this, you are creating a designers experience, a stakeholders experience; a bosses experience. All of those groups have a set opinion based on their own KPIs and business objectives which will often dismiss how a user interacts with the product. If you interacted with one of their experiences you would fast feel the impersonal irrelevant nature of it.
UX research is also an expertise. It is not as simple as asking questions. UX research requires a thorough understanding of the myriad of techniques, methods, and UX principles to ensure that the information gathered is reliable, accurate and useful. Information that has no next steps but which is accurate is good to know. Information that has next steps but is inaccurate is useless. UX research professionals makes sure their research is actionable, accurate and empowers the team. Because of this, they a key part of the product machine. While we have analytics and A/B testing, UX research drives the change and makes such that we are at the pinnacle of the products potential. While we can get stats on whether a new iteration is better, how do we know if it’s at its best or if still has underlying issues. There have been many examples in teams I have worked for where we have statistical significance that Design B outperforms Design A without much UX Research involvement. That does not, however, mean the work is done.
If for example we saw Design B covert at 2% and Design A covert at 1% (a 100% increase), how do we know that we have reached its full potential. What if we are still underperforming and we could actually reach 3 or 4 percent?
How do we know what the peak performance is? We may think we are at the top of the mountain, but may well be far from it.
The involvement of UX research would mean we are not just satisfied with the data, but confident that we have reached a conclusion.
So taking this all into account, my simplified definition of what UX research is would be as follow:
UX Research is the foundations for how user first products are built. It is the omnipresent aspect that helps provide teams with confidence that they have delivered invisible, relevant, high performing products.
THE PERSON BEHIND THE WORDS
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