Simply put, ResearchOps is about making sure your research operations are robust, thought through and managed.
Having systems and processes around your UX research and your team keep everyone (and everything) organized. Making user research projects quicker to get started and more streamlined to run. And robust sharing, socializing, and knowledge storage means that everyone can understand the research insights and findings and put these to use - across the organization. And even better, find these when they need them.
Using the same tools across the team allows the research team to learn from each other, and previous research projects and be able to compare apples with apples, with everyone included. Bringing the team together across tools, research and results.
We go into more detail in our ebook ResearchOps Checklist about exactly what you can do to make sure your research team is running at its best. Let’s take a quick look at 5 way to ensure you have the grounding for a successful ResearchOps team.
1. Knowledge management 📚
What do you do with all of the insights and findings of a user research project? How do you store them, how do you manage the insights, and how do you share and socialize?
Having processes in place that manage this knowledge is important to the longevity of your research. From filing to sharing across platforms, it all needs to be standardized so everyone can search, find and share.
2. Guidelines and process templates 📝
Providing a framework for how to run research projects is are important. Building on the knowledge base from previous research can improve research efficiencies and cut down on groundwork and administration. Making research projects quicker and more streamlined to get underway.
3. Governance 🏛
User research is all about people, real people. It is incredibly important that any research be legal, safe, and ethical. Having effective governance covered is vital.
4. Tool stack 🛠
Every research team needs a ‘toolbox’ that they can use whenever they need to run card sorts, tree tests, usability tests, user interviews, and more. But which software and tools to use?
Making sure that the team is using the same tools also helps with future research projects, learning from previous projects, and ensuring that the information is owned and run by the organization (rather than whichever individuals prefer). Reduce logins and password shares, and improve security with organization-wide tools and platforms.
5. Recruitment 👱🏻👩👩🏻👧🏽👧🏾
Key to great UX research is the ability to recruit quality participants - fast! Having strong processes in place for screening, scheduling, sampling, incentivizing, and managing participants needs to be top of the list when organizing the team.
Wrap Up 💥
Each of these ResearchOps processes are not independent of the other. And neither do they flow from one to the other. They are part of a total wrap around for the research team, creating processes, systems and tools that are built to serve the team. Allowing them to focus on the job of doing great research and generating insights and findings that develop the very best user experience.
Afterall, we are creating user experiences that keep our users engaged and coming back. Why not look at the teams user experience and make the most of that. Freeing time and space to socialize and share the findings with the organization.
Think your company is truly user-centric? Think again. Our groundbreaking report on UX Research (UXR) in 2024 shatters common assumptions about our industry.
We've uncovered a startling gap between what companies say about user-centricity and what they actually do. Prepare to have your perceptions challenged as we reveal the true state of UXR integration and its untapped potential in today's business landscape.
The startling statistics 😅
Here's a striking finding: only 16% of organizations have fully embedded UXR into their processes and culture. This disconnect between intention and implementation underscores the challenges in demonstrating and maximizing the true value of user research.
What's inside the white paper 👀
In this comprehensive white paper, we explore:
How companies use and value UX research
Why it's hard to show how UX research helps businesses
Why having UX champions in the company matters
New ways to measure and show the worth of UX research
How to share UX findings with different people in the company
New trends changing how people see and use UX research
Stats sneak peek 🤖
- Only 16% of organizations have fully embedded UX Research (UXR) into their processes and culture. This highlights a significant gap between the perceived importance of user-centricity and its actual implementation in businesses.
- 56% of organizations aren't measuring the impact of UXR at all. This lack of measurement makes it difficult for UX researchers to demonstrate the value of their work to stakeholders.
- 68% of respondents believe that AI will have the greatest impact on the analysis and synthesis phase of UX research projects. This suggests that while AI is expected to play a significant role in UXR, it's seen more as a tool to augment human skills rather than replace researchers entirely.
The UX research crossroads 🛣️
As our field evolves with AI, automation, and democratized research, we face a critical juncture: how do we articulate and amplify the value of UXR in this rapidly changing landscape? We’d love to know what you think! So DM us in socials and let us know what you’re doing to bridge the gap.
Are you ready to unlock the full potential of UXR in your organization? 🔐
Download our white paper for invaluable insights and actionable strategies that will help you showcase and maximize the value of user research. In an era of digital transformation, understanding and leveraging UXR's true worth has never been more crucial.
Keep an eye out for our upcoming blog series, where we'll delve deeper into key findings and strategies from the report. Together, we'll navigate the evolving UX landscape and elevate the value of user insights in driving business success and exceptional user experiences.
Having a library of user research books is invaluable. Whether you’re an old hand in the field of UX research or just dipping your toes in the water, being able to reference detailed information on methods, techniques and tools will make your life much easier.
There’s really no shortage of user research/UX reading lists online, so we wanted to do something a little different. We’ve broken our list up into sections to make finding the right book for a particular topic as easy as possible.
General user research guides
These books cover everything you need to know about a number of UX/user research topics. They’re great to have on your desk to refer back to – we certainly have them on the bookshelf here at Optimal Workshop.
Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research
Mike Kuniavsky
This book covers 13 UX research techniques in a reference format. There’s a lot of detail, making it a useful resource for people new to the field and those who just need more clarification around a certain topic. There’s also a lot of practical information that you’ll find applicable in the real world. For example, information about how to work around research budgets and tight time constraints.
In Just Enough Research, author Erika Hall explains that user research is something everyone can and should do. She covers several research methods, as well as things like how to identify your biases and make use of your findings. Designers are also likely to find this one quite useful, as she clearly covers the relationship between research and design.
Harry Hochheiser, Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng
Like Observing the User Experience, this is a dense guide – but it’s another essential one. Here, experts on human-computer interaction and usability explain different qualitative and quantitative research methods in an easily understandable format. There are also plenty of real examples to help frame your thinking around the usefulness of different research methods.
If you’re new to information architecture (IA), understanding why it’s such an important concept is a great place to start. There’s plenty of information online, but there are also several well-regarded books that make great starting points.
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld
You’ll probably hear this book referred to as “the polar bear book”, just because the cover features a polar bear. But beyond featuring a nice illustration of a bear, this book clearly covers the process of creating large websites that are both easy to navigate and appealing to use. It’s a useful book for designers, information architects and user researchers.
This is a great introduction to information architecture and serves as a nice counter to the polar bear book, being much shorter and more easily digestible. Author Abby Covert explains complex concepts in a way anyone can understand and also includes a set of lessons and exercises with each chapter.
For those new to the task, the prospect of interviewing users is always daunting. That makes having a useful guide that much more of a necessity!
Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights
Steve Portigal
While interviewing users may seem like something that doesn’t require a guide, an understanding of different interview techniques can go a long way. This book is essentially a practical guide to the art of interviewing users. Author Steve Portigal covers how to build rapport with your participants and the art of immersing yourself in how other people see the world – both key skills for interviewers!
Web usability is basically the ease of use of a website. It’s a broad topic, but there are a number of useful books that explain why it’s important and outline some of the key principles.
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug
Don’t Make Me Think is the first introduction to the world of UX and usability for many people, and for good reason – it’s a concise introduction to the topics and is easy to digest. Steve Krug explains some of the key principles of intuitive navigation and information architecture clearly and without overly technical language. In the latest edition, he’s updated the book to include mobile usability considerations.
As a testament to just how popular this book is, it was released in 2000 and has since had 2 editions and sold 400,000 copies.
The design–research relationship is an important one, even if it’s often misunderstood. Thankfully, authors like Don Norman and Vijay Kumar are here to explain everything.
The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman
This book, by cognitive scientist and usability engineer Don Norman, explains how design is the communication between an object and its user, and how to improve this communication as a way of improving the user experience. If nothing else, this book will force you to take another look at the design of everyday objects and assess whether or not they’re truly user-friendly.
101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization
Vijay Kumar
A guidebook for innovation in the context of product development, this book approaches the subject in a slightly different way to many other books on the same subject. The focus here is that the practice of creating new products is actually a science – not an art. Vijay Kumar outlines practical methods and useful tools that researchers and designers can use to drive innovation, making this book useful for anyone involved in product development.
We've put together a list of all of the above books on Goodreads, which you can access here.
Further reading
For experienced practitioners and newcomers alike, user research can often seem like a minefield to navigate. It can be tricky to figure out which method to use when, whether you bring a stakeholder into your usability test (you should) and how much you should pay participants. Take a look at some of the other articles on our blog if you’d like to learn more.
A great user experience (UX) is one of the largest drivers of growth and revenue through user satisfaction. However, when budgets get tight, or there is a squeeze on timelines, user research is one of the first things to go. Often at the cost of user satisfaction.
This short sighted view can mean project managers are preoccupied with achieving milestones and short term goals. And UX teams get stuck researching products they weren’t actually involved with developing. As a result no one has the space and understanding to really develop a product that speaks to users needs, desires and wants. There must be a better way to produce a product that is user-driven. Thankfully there is.
What is user research and why should project managers care about it? 👨🏻💻
User research is an important part of the product development process. Primarily, user research involves using different research methods to gather information about your end users.
Essentially it aims to create the best possible experience for your users by listening and learning directly from those that already or potentially will use your product. You might conduct interviews to help you understand a particular problem, carry out a tree test to identify bottlenecks or problems in your navigation, or do some usability testing to directly observe your users as they perform different tasks on your website or in your app. Or a combination of these to understand what users really want.
To a project manager and team, this likely sounds fairly familiar, that any project can’t be managed in a silo. Regular check-ins and feedback are essential to making smart decisions. The same with UX research. It can make the whole process quicker and more efficient. By taking a step back, digging into your users’ minds, and gaining a fuller understanding of what they want upfront, it can curtail short-term views and decisions.
Bringing more user research into your development process has major benefits for the team, and the ultimately the quality of that final product. There are three key benefits:
Saves your development team time and effort. Ensuring the team is working on what users want, not wasting time on features that don’t measure up.
Gives your users a better experience by meeting their requirements.
Helps your team innovate quickly by understanding what users really want.
As a project manager, making space and planning for user research can be one of the best ways to ensure the team is creating a product that truly is user-driven.
How to bring research into your product development process 🤔
Integrate UX research throughout the development project.
It can be more difficult to integrate UX research throughout the process, as it means planning the project with various stages of research built in to check the development of features. But ultimately this approach is likely to turn out the best product. One that has been considered, checked and well thought out through the whole product development process. To help you on the way we have laid out 6 key steps to help you integrate UX research into your product development process.
It may be tempting just to ask, ‘do users like our latest release?’ This however does not get to why or what your users like or don’t like. Try instead:
What do our users really want from our product?
Where are they currently struggling while using our website?
How can we design a better product for our users?
These questions help to form the basis of specific questions about your product and specific areas of research to explore which in turn help shape the type of research you undertake.
Step 2: Create your research plan
With a few key research questions to focus on, it’s time to create your research plan.
A great research plan covers your project’s goals, scope, timing, and deliverables. It’s essential for keeping yourself organized but also for getting key stakeholder signoff.
Step 3: Prepare any research logistics
Every project plan requires attention to detail including a user research project. And with any good project there are a set of steps to help make sense of it.
Method: Based on your questions, what is the best user research method to use?
Schedule: When will the research take place? How long will it go on for? If this is ongoing research, plan how it will be implemented and how often.
Location: Where will the research take place?
Resources: What resources do you need? This could be technical support or team members.
Participants: Define who you want to research. Who is eligible to take part in this research? How will you find the right people?
Data: How will you capture the research data? Where will it be stored? How will you analyze the data and create insights and reports that can be used?
Deliverables: What is the ultimate goal for your research project?
Step 4: Decide which method will be used
Many user research methods benefit from an observational style of testing. Particularly if you are looking into why users undertake a specific task or struggle.
Typically, there are two approaches to testing:
Moderated testing is when a moderator is present during the test to answer questions, guide the participant, or dig deeper with further questions.
Unmoderated testing is when a participant is left on their own to carry out the task. Often this is done remotely and with very specific instructions.Your key questions will determine which method will works best for your research. Find our more about the differences.
Step 5: Run your research session
It’s time to gather insights and data. The questions you are asking will influence how you run your research sessions and the methods you’ve chosen.
If you are running surveys you will be asking users through a banner or invitation to fill out your survey. Unmoderated and very specific questions. Gathering qualitative data and analyzing patterns.
If you’re using something qualitative like interviews or heat mapping, you’ll want to implement software and gather as much information as possible.
Step 6: Prepare a research findings report and share with stakeholders
Analyze your findings, interrogate your data and find those insights that dive into the way your users think. How do they love your product? But how do they also struggle?
Pull together your findings and insights into an easy to understand report. And get socializing. Bring your key stakeholders together and share your findings. Bringing everyone across the findings together can bring everyone on the journey. And for the development process can mean decisions can be user-driven.
Wrap Up 🥙
Part of any project, UX research should be essential to developing a product that is user-driven. Integrating user research into your development process can be challenging. But with planning and strategy it can be hugely beneficial to saving time and money in the long run.
