HOW TO MAP OUT A UX RESEARCH PLAN (pt 2)
RESEARCH QUESTIONS, KPIs & RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Hi again! This is a continuation of my series: “How to map out a UX Research Plan”. It is to help you plan yourself ahead of an intensive UX research. It touches everything you would need to get started and how best to document your project.
If you have not read part one, I’d recommend you do by clicking on my profile.
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Now let’s continue from where we stopped. You have your Research Goals ready, you have probably interviewed your stakeholders and you have a better understanding of the project you’re about to embark on. What’s next for you is to prepare your detailed research questions, set your key performance indicators and your method of research.
Element 3: Research Questions
These are not technically the questions you would directly ask your interviewees, or your interview script. These are the questions you would like this research to answer. For example, if your research goal was to find out why a certain feature is not being used by your users, your research questions could be: Why are users not using *** feature? What problems do they run into during this user flow or the steps that they take to complete it? Are there any design changes we can do to improve on this feature? Are there any reasons why people don’t use this feature?
These questions will help you know where to focus on and how to pay attention to certain aspects of the research.
Element 4: Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
This is a very critical aspect of your research. It is how you measure the progress of your research and its success. Whatever we do in life as humans, we are either successful at it or otherwise. You do not want to spend so much time, resources and energy into something without even knowing the results. If successful, great. If not, you try again…right? Well, it’s the same for almost everything we do as designers and this is no different.
There are different KPIs for UX research and they depend on what your goals are. For example, if your research goal is to understand why your users are not using a feature, your KPI will be to check for the percentage of users who dropped off or converted. And also to determine how many errors they run into while using the feature. You could also ask for their opinions and reviews through a SUS.
To give you a better understanding of what I’m talking about, I will quickly define some types of KPIs and tell you when they are mostly used.
These KPIs are
a. Time on task: This KPI measures how long a user takes to complete a task. The shorter it is, the better your UX design is.
b. Use of Navigation vs Search: This is for a product with both or one of these features. If you are conducting a usability test and you see most of your users using one of these features over the other, you can decide how to give the best experience to them while using their preferred one. Or how easy it is to be found on your product.
c. User error rate: This indicates the part of your design that users fail to understand or causes users to make errors. Eg. clicking on a wrong button or icon. This KPI will help you know where to make improvements on your design. Pay attention to EVERY error, hesitation or confusion so as not to miss this. A user flow might be great but the user might not understand what they are doing.
d. Drop off rate: This indicates how many users abandoned a task without completing it. It could be out of frustration, boredom, network delay or distractions. It shows how many users quit before getting to the end of a flow. You want to try and decrease this rate as much as you can.
e. Conversion rate: This is the opposite of Drop off rate. It is something you want to try and increase in every iteration because it shows you the number of users to complete a task. Eg. Downloading your app from your landing page, purchasing an item, subscribing to your product.
f. System usability scale (SUS): This measures the usability of your product. Questions like “How easy/difficult was it to complete this task”, and replies like “I found it very easy/complex to use” will help you get great feedback about your product. An SUS is a scale that rates from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. You ask your users to click on the ones they relate with and use that quantifiable data to determine the success or failure of your UX design.
g. Retention rate: This calculates the percentage of users that continues to use your product over a period of time. It indicates that your product is of use to them and they are enjoying your services. You really want to increase that too.
Note that you do not have to use everything at once, just use the one that matches your goal as I gave in the example above. There are also various other KPIs so do well to research them.
We have come to the end of Part 2, I hope this has been helpful to you also and you look forward to the last part which will cover your research methodology, your participants and your script.
Till then, do some research and keep working hard!
Joyce N. Eboh
missjoycered@gmail.com
