Elevate your UX research with this powerful tool
Are you a new UX researcher? Elevate your UX research with this powerful tool!
Notably is an online platform where you can collect, analyze, and share qualitative research. It uses artificial intelligence to help you organize and work on your data.
I used it for a usability study. Here is the step-by-step how-to guide for UX researchers who would like to try Notably:
After you give a title to your study, Notably provides you with a Research Plan Template, in which you write the background of your study, research goals, target audience, research activities, and research output. Completing this research plan at the beginning of your study will help you be more deliberate with your actions and decisions throughout the study.
The next step is to either upload your data on Notably if you have already collected your data or use the Notably platform to collect your data. You can record your interviews using Notably. If you do so, you have the complete verbatim transcriptions for your interviews!
This alone is a fantastic plus. Because I collected my data before I knew about Notably, I had to find another platform to help me transcribe data verbatim. I used Otter.ai, which lets you upload three videos for free transcriptions.
Then, I used Express Scribe, a transcription software on which you can upload your videos. However, it does not provide automatic transcriptions; you have to do the work manually. And it is NOT free, even though it claims it is free! Downloading Express Scribe is free. But there is a trial period in which you can use it for free. After that period, the software won’t even open. Instead, this annoying window pops up:
I used Express Scribe to transcribe the rest of my interview data manually, which took forever. I am telling you all these difficulties I had so you can appreciate Notably more.
After you are done uploading all the interview transcripts in Notably, the next step is to tag the data. Tagging helps you understand your data better, get deeper into the meaning, and eventually helps you find the patterns in your data. You can tag your data the way your heart desires. But Notably also provides global tags to help UX researchers get started by providing some pre-defined global tags.
Some example global tags from Notably are motivation, which refers to the “underlying reason or emotion preceding an outcome”; needs, which refers to “unexpressed or observed must-haves and priorities”; opportunity, which refers to “a possibility to explore”; and pain point, which refers to “parts of experience or conversation that represents pain, friction or frustration.” There are several other global tags you can use from Notably. However, you can use your tags and as many as you want.
When the tagging is complete, you move on to the analysis section. This is where the magic begins. You see all your tags on one screen. It looks overwhelming and so messy. However, this does not last for too long. When you start dragging and dropping tags on top of each other as you see the connection between them, patterns start appearing. In the end, you have big blocks with all the related tags inside. Now, it is time to label the themes.
Labeling themes depends on your skills and expertise in UX research. Experience also helps in seeing the big picture to help you identify a theme.
Once you are done labeling the themes, Notably generates a map of your themes:
Or, if you want, you can color your themes:
Notably also lets you download all the tags in a .csv format and run sentiment analysis on tags if you wish to.
I recommend this tool to all UX researchers.
There is one caveat, though. Notably is free for only ONE research project. After that, you need to pay. As you can see below, the prices are not so cheap:
If you are a new UX researcher, you can use the free version and do one study using Notably to elevate your research. However, the best would be for your company to purchase Notably software so that you can continue conducting well-organized studies with awesome results!
