August 15, 2021
5 min

Mixed methods research in 2021

User experience research is super important to developing a product that truly engages, compels and energises people. We all want a website that is easy to navigate, simple to follow and compels our users to finish their tasks. Or an app that supports and drives engagement.

We’ve talked a lot about the various types of research tools that help improve these outcomes. 

There is a rising research trend in 2021.

Mixed method research - what is more compelling than these user research quantitative tools? Combining these with awesome qualitative research! Asking the same questions in various ways can provide deeper insights into how our users think and operate. Empowering you to develop products that truly talk to your users, answer their queries or even address their frustrations.

Though it isn’t enough to simply ‘do research’, as with anything you need to approach it with strategy, focus and direction. This will funnel your time, money and energy into areas that will generate the best results.

Mixed Method UX research is the research trend of 2021

With the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Ford and many more big organizations offering newly formed job openings for mixed methods researchers it becomes very obvious where the research trend is heading.

It’s not only good to have, but now becoming imperative, to gather data, dive deeper and generate insights that provide more information on our users than ever before. And you don't need to be Facebook to reap the benefits. Mixed method research can be implemented across the board and can be as narrow as finding out how your homepage is performing through to analysing in depth the entirety of your product design.

And with all of these massive organizations making the move to increase their data collection and research teams. Why wouldn’t you?

The value in mixed method research is profound. Imagine understanding what, where, how and why your customers would want to use your service. And catering directly for them. The more we understand our customers, the deeper the relationship and the more likely we are to keep them engaged.

Although of course by diving deep into the reasons our users like (or don’t like) how our products operate can drive your organization to target and operate better at a higher level. Gearing your energies to attracting and keeping the right type of customer, providing the right level of service and after care. Potentially reducing overheads, by not delivering to expected levels.

What is mixed method research?

Mixed methods research isn’t overly complicated, and doesn’t take years for you to master. It simply is a term used to refer to using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. This may mean using a research tool such as card sorting alongside interviews with users. 

Quantitative research is the tangible numbers and metrics that can be gathered through user research such as card sorting or tree testing.

Qualitative research is research around users’ behaviour and experiences. This can be through usability tests, interviews or surveys.

For instance you may be asking ‘how should I order the products on my site?’. With card sorting you can get the data insights that will inform how a user would like to see the products sorted. Coupled with interviews you will get the why.

Understanding the thinking behind the order, and why one user likes to see gym shorts stored under shorts and another would like to see them under active wear. With a deeper understanding of how and why users decide how content should be sorted are made will create a highly intuitive website. 

Another great reason for mixed method research would be to back up data insights for stakeholders. With a depth and breadth of qualitative and quantitative research informing decisions, it becomes clearer why changes may need to be made, or product designs need to be challenged.

How to do mixed method research

Take a look at our article for more examples of the uses of mixed method research. 

Simply put mixed method research means coupling quantitative research, such as tree testing, card sorting or first click testing, with qualitative research such as surveys, interviews or diary entry.

Say, for instance, the product manager has identified that there is an issue with keeping users engaged on the homepage of your website. We would start with asking where they get stuck, and when they are leaving.

This can be done using a first-click tool, such as Chalkmark, which will map where users head when they land on your homepage and beyond. 

This will give you the initial qualitative data. However, it may only give you some of the picture. Coupled with qualitative data, such as watching (and reporting on) body language. Or conducting interviews with users directly after their experience so we can understand why they found the process confusing or misleading.

A fuller picture, means a better understanding.

Key is to identify what your question is and honing in on this through both methods. Ultimately, we are answering your question from both sides of the coin.

Upcoming research trends to watch

Keeping an eye on the progression of the mixed method research trend, will mean keeping an eye on these:

1. Integrated Surveys

Rather than thinking of user surveys as being a one time, in person event, we’re seeing more and more often surveys being implemented through social media, on websites and through email. This means that data can be gathered frequently and across the board. This longitude data allows organizations to continuously analyse, interpret and improve products without really ever stopping. 

Rather than relying on users' memories for events and experiences data can be gathered in the moment. At the time of purchase or interaction. Increasing the reliability and quality of the data collected. 

2. Return to the social research

Customer research is rooted in the focus group. The collection of participants in one space, that allows them to voice their opinions and reach insights collectively. This did used to be an overwhelming task with days or even weeks to analyse unstructured forums and group discussions.

However, now with the advent of online research tools this can also be a way to round out mixed method research.

3. Co-creation

The ability to use your customers input to build better products. This has long been thought a way to increase innovative development. Until recently it too has been cumbersome and difficult to wrangle more than a few participants. But, there are a number of resources in development that will make co-creation the buzzword of the decade.

4. Owned Panels & Community

Beyond community engagement in the social sphere. There is a massive opportunity to utilise these engaged users in product development. Through a trusted forum, users are far more likely to actively and willingly participate in research. Providing insights into the community that will drive stronger product outcomes.

What does this all mean for me

So, there is a lot to keep in mind when conducting any effective user research. And there are a lot of very compelling reasons to do mixed method research and do it regularly. 

To remain innovative, and ahead of the ball it remains very important to be engaged with your users and their needs. Using qualitative and qualitative research to inform product decisions means you can operate knowing a fuller picture.

One of the biggest challenges with user research can be the coordination and participant recruitment. That’s where we come in.

Taking the pain out of the process and streamlining your research. Take a look at our Qualitative Research option, Reframer. Giving you an insight into how we can help make your mixed method research easier and analyse your data efficiently and in a format that is easy to understand.

User research doesn’t need to take weeks or months. With our participant recruitment we can provide reliable and quality participants across the board that will provide data you can rely on.

Why not get in deeper with mixed method research today!

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User research and agile squadification at Trade Me

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.

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…

What agile at Trade Me looks like

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.

How our UX team fits in

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?

We represent the voice of Trade Me’s users

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.

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.

How our ‘drop everything’ approach works in practice

Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 10.00.21 am

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.

How we prioritize what needs to get done

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

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).

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?

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.

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!

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UX research methods for each product phase

What is UX research? 🤔

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. 

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

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

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.

1. Product planning phase 🗓️

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.

Qualitative Research Methods

Usability Testing - Observational

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.

Competitive Analysis

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.

Quantitative Research Methods

Surveys and Questionnaires

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.

There are two types of survey questions:

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

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.

2. Product building phase 🧱

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.

Qualitative Research Methods

Focus groups

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.


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.

Quantitative Research Methods

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.

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.

3. Product introduction phase 📦

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.

Qualitative Research Methods

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.

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.

Quantitative Research Methods

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.

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.

4. Growth and maturity phase 🪴

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.

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.

Qualitative research methods

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.

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.

Quantitative research methods

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

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.

Wrap up 🌮

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.

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.

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1 min read

How to convince others of the importance of UX research

There’s not much a parent won’t do to ensure their child has the best chance of succeeding in life. Unsurprisingly, things are much the same in product development. Whether it’s a designer, manager, developer or copywriter, everyone wants to see the product reach its full potential.

Key to a product’s success (even though it’s still not widely practiced) is UX research. Without research focused on learning user pain points and behaviors, development basically happens in the dark. Feeding direct insights from customers and users into the development of a product means teams can flick the light on and make more informed design decisions.

While the benefits of user research are obvious to anyone working in the field, it can be a real challenge to convince others of just how important and useful it is. We thought we’d help.

Define user research

If you want to sell the importance of UX research within your organization, you’ve got to ensure stakeholders have a clear understanding of what user research is and what they stand to gain from backing it.

In general, there are a few key things worth focusing on when you’re trying to explain the benefits of research:

  • More informed design decisions: Companies make major design decisions far too often without considering users. User research provides the data needed to make informed decisions.
  • Less uncertainty and risk: Similarly, research reduces risk and uncertainty simply by giving companies more clarity around how a particular product or service is used.
  • Retention and conversion benefits: Research means you’ll be more aligned with the needs of your customers and prospective customers.

Use the language of the people you’re trying to convince. A capable UX research practice will almost always improve key business metrics, namely sales and retention.

The early stages

When embarking on a project, book in some time early in the process to answer questions, explain your research approach and what you hope to gain from it. Here are some of the key things to go over:

  • Your objectives: What are you trying to achieve? This is a good time to cover your research questions.
  • Your research methods: Which methods will you be using to carry out your research? Cover the advantages of these methods and the information you’re likely to get from using them.
  • Constraints: Do you see any major obstacles? Any issues with resources?
  • Provide examples: Nothing shows the value of doing research quite like a case study. If you can’t find an example of research within your own organization, see what you can find online.

Involve others in your research

When trying to convince someone of the validity of what you’re doing, it’s often best to just show them. There are a couple of effective ways you can do this – at a team or individual level and at an organizational level.

We’ll explain the best way to approach this below, but there’s another important reason to bring others into your research. UX research can’t exist in a vacuum – it thrives on integration and collaboration with other teams. Importantly, this also means working with other teams to define the problems they’re trying to solve and the scope of their projects. Once you’ve got an understanding of what they’re trying to achieve, you’ll be in a better position to help them through research.

Educate others on what research is

Education sessions (lunch-and-learns) are one of the best ways to get a particular team or group together and run through the what and why of user research. You can work with them to work out what they’d like to see from you, and how you can help each other.

Tailor what you’re saying to different teams, especially if you’re talking to people with vastly different skill sets. For example, developers and designers are likely to see entirely different value in research.

Collect user insights across the organization

Putting together a comprehensive internal repository focused specifically on user research is another excellent way to grow awareness. It can also help to quantify things that may otherwise fall by the wayside. For example, you can measure the magnitude of certain pain points or observe patterns in feature requests. Using a platform like Notion or Confluence (or even Google Drive if you don’t want a dedicated platform), log all of your study notes, insights and research information that you find useful.

Whenever someone wants to learn more about research within the organization, they’ll be able to find everything easily.

Bring stakeholders along to research sessions

Getting a stakeholder along to a research session (usability tests and user interviews are great starting points) will help to show them the value that face-to-face sessions with users can provide.

To really involve an observer in your UX research, assign them a specific role. Note taker, for example. With a short briefing on best-practices for note taking, they can get a feel for what’s like to do some of the work you do.

You may also want to consider bringing anyone who’s interested along to a research session, even if they’re just there to observe.

Share your findings – consistently

Research is about more than just testing a hypothesis, it’s important to actually take your research back to the people who can action the data.

By sharing your research findings with teams and stakeholders regularly, your organization will start to build up an understanding of the value that ongoing research can provide, meaning getting approval to pursue research in future becomes easier. This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but it’s a practice that all researchers need to get into – especially those embedded in large teams or organizations.

Anything else you think is worth mentioning? Let us know in the comments.

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