Why is research so important in design?

It goes without say that nowadays there are very many UX Designers, and there will be more people joining this field and there is room for everyone if at all you are reading this as a beginner and wondering if UX is the right career path for you.

There are adequate jobs in the field of UX but one has to go an extra mile, especially as a newbie. You have to be ‘a jack of all trades’ and know most if not all the important concepts of the field of UX which include research, wireframing, prototyping, creating information architecture and effective communication which I would say is the most critical skill you need.

In this article, you will get to learn one of the skills you need as a UX designer, which is research and you will get to know methods of conducting research and the importance of research.

The main focus of UX Research is understanding user behavior, needs and their motivation. This is done through observation and obtaining feedback through methods like interviewing and surveys.

There are two main goals of UX Research

1. Prioritizing the user, by putting them at the front and center of design.
2. Making sure that business needs are met.

Qualities of a good UX Researcher:

1. Empathetic- A researcher should be able to understand someone else’s feelings or thought in a given situation.
2. Collaborative- Should be able to work with a wide range of people, personalities and work styles.
3. Pragmatic- Is practical in the way they approach problem solving.

Research is in three main categories:

1. Foundational/strategic/generative research- is the research done before anything is designed and gives important feedback by answering the questions:What should we build?What are our user problems?How can we solve these user problems?These are examples of common foundational research methods:Interviews Competitive audits Surveys Focus groups Field studies Diary studies
2. Design/ Tactical research- is the research that takes place during the design phase and answers the question: How should we build the product?

The goal of Design Research is to inform on how the product should be built and give designer the chance to rectify issues that occurs as the users interact with the prototype.

Feedback from the users is paramount because users are at the front and center of design. In order to get user feedback, there needs to be a prototype that is given to the users and the feedback gotten will inform adjustments to the final product.

Some of the questions that users are asked during design research include:

· How can you describe your experience when using the prototype?

· How easy or difficult was the prototype to use? and why?

· Did you encounter any challenges when using the prototype?

Examples of design research methods include:

· A/B testing

· Café/guerilla studies

· Card sorting

· Intercepts

3. Post-Launch research- this happens at the end of the product development cycle and the goal is to help validate that the designed product meets user needs based on metrics put in place.

Post launch research seeks to understand how users experienced the product and whether the user experience was poor or good.

It answers the question, did we succeed?

Here are examples of post-launch research methods :

· Surveys

· Usability studies — This is a technique of evaluating a product by testing it on users.

· A/B Testing

· Logs analysis