5 key areas for effective ResearchOPs

What is UX research?

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User experience (UX) research, or user research as it’s commonly referred to, is an important part of the product design process. Primarily, UX research involves using different research methods to gather information about how your users interact with your product. It is an essential part of developing, building and launching a product that truly meets the requirements of your users. 

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UX research is essential at all stages of a products' life cycle:

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1. Planning
2. Building
3. Introduction
4. Growth & Maturity

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While there is no one single time to conduct UX research it is best-practice to continuously gather information throughout the lifetime of your product. The good news is many of the UX research methods do not fit just one phase either, and can (and should) be used repeatedly. After all, there are always new pieces of functionality to test and new insights to discover. We introduce you to best-practice UX research methods for each lifecycle phase of your product.

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1. Product planning phase

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While the planning phase it is about creating a product that fits your organization, your organization’s needs and meeting a gap in the market it’s also about meeting the needs, desires and requirements of your users. Through UX research you’ll learn which features are necessary to be aligned with your users. And of course, user research lets you test your UX design before you build, saving you time and money.

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Qualitative Research Methods

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Usability Testing - Observational

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One of the best ways to learn about your users and how they interact with your product is to observe them in their own environment. Watch how they accomplish tasks, the order they do things, what frustrates them, and what makes the task easier and/or more enjoyable for your subject. The data can be collated to inform the usability of your product, improving intuitive design, and what resonates with users.

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Competitive Analysis

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Reviewing products already in the market can be a great start to the planning process. Why are your competitors’ products successful and how well do they behave for users. Learn from their successes, and even better build on where they may not be performing the best and find your niche in the market.

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Quantitative Research Methods

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Surveys and Questionnaires

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Surveys are useful for collecting feedback or understanding attitudes. You can use the learnings from your survey of a subset of users to draw conclusions about a larger population of users.

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There are two types of survey questions:
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Closed questions are designed to capture quantitative information. Instead of asking users to write out answers, these questions often use multi-choice answers.

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Open questions are designed to capture qualitative information such as motivations and context.  Typically, these questions require users to write out an answer in a text field.

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2. Product building phase

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Once you've completed your product planning research, you’re ready to begin the build phase for your product. User research studies undertaken during the build phase enable you to validate the UX team’s deliverables before investing in the technical development.

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Qualitative Research Methods

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Focus groups

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Generally involve 5-10 participants and include demographically similar individuals. The study is set up so that members of the group can interact with one another and can be carried out in person or remotely.
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Besides learning about the participants’ impressions and perceptions of your product, focus group findings also include what users believe to be a product’s most important features, problems they might encounter while using the product, as well as their experiences with other products, both good and bad.

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Quantitative Research Methods

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Card sorting gives insight into how users think. Tools like card sorting reveal where your users expect to find certain information or complete specific tasks. This is especially useful for products with complex or multiple navigations and contributes to the creation of an intuitive information architecture and user experience.

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Tree testing gives insight into where users expect to find things and where they’re getting lost within your product. Tools like tree testing help you test your information architecture.
Card sorting and tree testing are often used together. Depending on the purpose of your research and where you are at with your product, they can provide a fully rounded view of your information architecture.

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3. Product introduction phase

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You’ve launched your product, wahoo! And you’re ready for your first real life, real time users. Now it’s time to optimize your product experience. To do this, you’ll need to understand how your new users actually use your product.

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Qualitative Research Methods

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Usability testing involves testing a product with users. Typically it involves observing users as they try to follow and complete a series of tasks. As a result you can evaluate if the design is intuitive and if there are any usability problems.

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User Interviews - A user interview is designed to get a deeper understanding of a particular topic. Unlike a usability test, where you’re more likely to be focused on how people use your product, a user interview is a guided conversation aimed at better understanding your users. This means you’ll be capturing details like their background, pain points, goals and motivations.

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Quantitative Research Methods

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A/B Testing is a way to compare two versions of a design in order to work out which is more effective. It’s typically used to test two versions of the same webpage, for example, using a different headline, image or call to action to see which one converts more effectively. This method offers a way to validate smaller design choices where you might not have the data to make an informed decision, like the color of a button or the layout of a particular image.

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Flick-click testing shows you where people click first when trying to complete a task on a website. In most cases, first-click testing is performed on a very simple wireframe of a website, but it can also be carried out on a live website using a tool like first-time clicking.

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4. Growth and maturity phase

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If you’ve reached the growth stage, fantastic news! You’ve built a great product that’s been embraced by your users. Next on your to-do list is growing your product by increasing your user base and then eventually reaching maturity and making a profit on your hard work.

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Growing your product involves building new or advanced features to satisfy specific customer segments. As you plan and build these enhancements, go through the same research and testing process you used to create the first release. The same holds true for enhancements as well as a new product build — user research ensures you’re building the right thing in the best way for your customers.

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Qualitative research methods

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User interviews will focus on how your product is working or if it’s missing any features, enriching your knowledge about your product and users.

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It allows you to test your current features, discover new possibilities for additional features and think about discarding  existing ones. If your customers aren’t using certain features, it might be time to stop supporting them to reduce costs and help you grow your profits during the maturity stage.

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Quantitative research methods

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Surveys and questionnaires can help gather information around which features will work best for your product, enhancing and improving the user experience. 

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A/B testing during growth and maturity occurs within your sales and onboarding processes. Making sure you have a smooth onboarding process increases your conversion rate and reduces wasted spend — improving your bottom line.

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Final Thoughts: Why Continuous UX Research Matters

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UX research testing throughout the lifecycle of your product helps you continuously evolve and develop a product that responds to what really matters - your users.

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Talking to, testing, and knowing your users will allow you to push your product in ways that make sense with the data to back up decisions. Go forth and create the product that meets your organizations needs by delivering the very best user experience for your users.

Figma has long been the go-to tool for UI/UX designers, known for its intuitive interface and real-time collaboration. In fact, over 95% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Figma, and 13 million monthly active users trust it to design and prototype digital experiences.

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If you’re already designing in Figma, integrating with Optimal can help to validate your ideas early, reduce costly mistakes, and deliver experiences users actually want.

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The Hidden Cost of Skipping Design Validation

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Validating designs before development and catching usability issues early has a measurable impact on both users and the business. Research consistently shows that:

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• Early usability testing and design validation can reduce later redesign or bug-fix costs by a significant margin up to 40-50%.
• Integrating customer insights into design decisions can increase user satisfaction by up to 70%.
• Companies that prioritize UX design experience a 50% faster time-to-market for their products.

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Figma + Optimal: Prototype Testing and Design Validation

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Instead of waiting for post-launch analytics or expensive redesigns, you can test your Figma prototypes with real users in hours, not weeks with Optimal. Get quantitative data, watch recordings, analyze heatmaps, and actually see where users struggle, all before a single line of code is written.

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Here’s a look into 4 practical ways teams use Figma and Optimal together.

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4 Ways to Test Figma Designs with Optimal

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1. Preference Testing: Let Users Pick the Winner

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Ever had a debate with your team about which design direction to take? Let data decide.

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Here's how:

• Create a Figma frame with two designs side-by-side (think: two homepage variations, competing button styles, different navigation approaches)
• Copy your Figma link and drop it into an Optimal first-click test
• Ask participants: "Which design do you prefer?"
• Watch the results roll in with heatmaps showing exactly where users clicked

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2. Concept Testing: Does Your Idea Actually Make Sense?

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You've got a bold new concept. It makes perfect sense to you. But will users get it?

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The process:

• Build wireframes or mockups in Figma (they don't need to be pixel-perfect)
• Import your Figma link into an Optimal first-click or prototype test
• Create tasks like “Click the option that best matches what you’re trying to do.” or “Click where you would sign up.”
• Analyze whether users successfully understand and navigate your concept

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3. Prototype Testing: Find the Friction Before Development

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You've built a clickable prototype with multiple screens and interactions. It looks polished. But does it actually work for users?

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Step-by-step:

• Build a complete interactive prototype in Figma
• Ensure all frames and flows are complete in Figma before importing into Optimal.
• Copy your Figma prototype URL (works even with password-protected links)
• Paste it into an Optimal prototype test
• Define realistic tasks: "You want to buy running shoes under $100. Complete the purchase."
• Watch video recordings and analyze usability metrics, clickmaps, misclicks, successes/failures, and heatmaps

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What you'll discover might surprise you. Users will:

• Click on things you never intended to be clickable
• Miss obvious CTAs you thought were perfectly placed
• Get lost in navigation that seemed intuitive to your team
• Abandon tasks at friction points you didn't know existed

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4. AI Prototype Testing: Validate AI-Generated Designs

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The rise of AI design tools like Figma Make has changed the game. You can now generate a functional prototype from a text prompt in minutes. But just because AI can create it doesn't mean users can use it.

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Quick workflow:

• Generate a prototype using Figma Make
• Copy the URL and drop it into an Optimal live site test
• Add your testing tasks
• Review recordings to spot usability issues

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This is perfect for rapid experimentation. 

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Getting Started Is Simple

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1. Prep your Figma file - Have a prototype or design ready
2. Copy the link - Grab your Figma share URL
3. Create your test - Choose first-click, prototype test, or live site test in Optimal
4. Paste and configure - Add your Figma URL and write your test tasks
5. Launch - Use your own participants or tap into Optimal's panel or Managed Recruitment services
6. Analyze - Review results and iterate

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Launch Designs Users Love

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Figma gives you the power to design and prototype rapidly, while Optimal gives you the insights to make sure those designs actually work for real users. Together, they create a workflow built on real insights, not guesswork.

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By testing early and often, teams can reduce risk, build confidence in their designs, and move into development knowing their work has already been validated by users. Gather insights quickly, collaborate more effectively, and keep projects moving forward with evidence-backed decisions.

Ready to validate your next Figma prototype? Use Optimal as part of your workflow and start testing with real users today.

Hi, I’m Martin. I work as a UX researcher at Trade Me having left Optimal Experience (Optimal Workshop's sister company) last year. For those of you who don’t know, Trade Me is New Zealand’s largest online auction site that also lists real estate to buy and rent, cars to buy, jobs listings, travel accommodation and quite a few other things besides. Over three quarters of the population are members and about three quarters of the Internet traffic for New Zealand sites goes to the sites we run.

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Leaving a medium-sized consultancy and joining Trade Me has been a big change in many ways, but in others not so much, as I hadn’t expected to find myself operating in a small team of in-house consultants. The approach the team is taking is proving to be pretty effective, so I thought I’d share some of the details of the way we work with the readers of Optimal Workshop’s blog. Let me explain what I mean…

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What agile at Trade Me looks like

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Over the last year or so, Trade Me has moved all of its development teams over to Agile following a model pioneered by Spotify. All of the software engineering parts of the business have been ‘squadified’. These people produce the websites & apps or provide and support the infrastructure that makes everything possible.Across Squads, there are common job roles in ‘Chapters’ (like designers or testers) and because people are not easy to force into boxes, and why should they be, there are interest groups called ‘Guilds’.The squads are self-organizing, running their own processes and procedures to get to where they need to. In practice, this means they use as many or as few of the Kanban, Scrum, and Rapid tools they find useful. Over time, we’ve seen that squads tend to follow similar practices as they learn from each other.

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How our UX team fits in

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Our UX team of three sits outside the squads, but we work with them and with the product owners across the business.How does this work? It might seem counter-intuitive to have UX outside of the tightly-integrated, highly-focused squads, sometimes working with product owners working on stuff that might have little to do with what’s being currently developed in the squads. This comes down to the way Trade Me divides down the UX responsibilities within the organization. Within each squad there is a designer. He or she is responsible for how that feature or app looks, and, more importantly, how it acts — interaction design as well as visual design.Then what do we do, if we are the UX team?

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We represent the voice of Trade Me’s users

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By conducting research with Trade Me’s users we can validate the squads’ day-to-day decisions, and help frame decisions on future plans. We do this by wearing two hats. Wearing the pointy hats of structured, detailed researchers, we look into long-term trends: the detailed behaviours and goals of our different audiences. We’ve conducted lots of one-on-one interviews with hundreds of people, including top sellers, motor parts buyers, and job seekers, as well as running surveys, focus groups and user testing sessions of future-looking prototypes. For example, we recently spent time with a number of buyers and sellers, seeking to understand their motivations and getting under their skin to find out how they perceive Trade Me.

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This kind of research enables Trade Me to anticipate and respond to changes in user perception and satisfaction.Swapping hats to an agile beanie (and stretching the metaphor to breaking point), we react to the medium-term, short-term and very short-term needs of the squads testing their ideas, near-finished work and finished work with users, as well as sometimes simply answering questions and providing opinion, based upon our research. Sometimes this means that we can be testing something in the afternoon having only heard we are needed in the morning. This might sound impossible to accommodate, but the pace of change at Trade Me is such that stuff is getting deployed pretty much every day, many of which affects our users directly. It’s our job to ensure that we support our colleagues to do the very best we can for our users.

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How our ‘drop everything’ approach works in practice

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We recently conducted five or six rounds (no one can quite remember, we did it so quickly) of testing of our new iPhone application (pictured above) — sometimes testing more than one version at a time. The development team would receive our feedback face-to-face, make changes and we’d be testing the next version of the app the same or the next day. It’s only by doing this that we can ensure that Trade Me members will see positive changes happening daily rather than monthly.

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How we prioritize what needs to get done

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To help us try to decide what we should be doing at any one time we have some simple rules to prioritise:

• Core product over other business elements
• Finish something over start something new
• Committed work over non-committed work
• Strategic priorities over non-strategic priorities
• Responsive support over less time-critical work
• Where our input is crucial over where our input is a bonus

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Applying these rules to any situation makes the decision whether to jump in and help pretty easy.At any one time, each of us in the UX team will have one or more long-term projects, some medium-term projects, and either some short-term projects or the capacity for some short-term projects (usually achieved by putting aside a long-term project for a moment).

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We manage our time and projects on Trello, where we can see at a glance what’s happening this and next week, and what we’ve caught sniff of in the wind that might be coming up, or definitely is coming up.On the whole, both we and the squads favour fast response, bulleted list, email ‘reports’ for any short-term requests for user testing.  We get a report out within four hours of testing (usually well within that). After all, the squads are working in short sprints, and our involvement is often at the sharp end where delays are not welcome. Most people aren’t going to read past the management summary anyway, so why not just write that, unless you have to?

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How we share our knowledge with the organization

Even though we mainly keep our reporting brief, we want the knowledge we’ve gained from working with each squad or on each product to be available to everyone. So we maintain a wiki that contains summaries of what we did for each piece of work, why we did it and what we found. Detailed reports, if there are any, are attached. We also send all reports out to staff who’ve subscribed to the UX interest email group.

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Finally, we send out a monthly email, which looks across a bunch of research we’ve conducted, both short and long-term, and draws conclusions from which our colleagues can learn. All of these latter activities contribute to one of our key objectives: making Trade Me an even more user-centred organization than it is.I’ve been with Trade Me for about six months and we’re constantly refining our UX practices, but so far it seems to be working very well.Right, I’d better go – I’ve just been told I’m user testing something pretty big tomorrow and I need to write a test script!