Moderated vs unmoderated research: which approach is best?

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.

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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.

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General user research guides

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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.

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Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research

Mike Kuniavsky

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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.

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• Goodreads link

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Just Enough Research

Erika Hall

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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.

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• Goodreads link

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Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction

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Harry Hochheiser, Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng

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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.

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• Goodreads link

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Information architecture

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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.

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Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites

Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld

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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.

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• Goodreads link

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How to Make Sense of Any Mess

Abby Covert

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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.

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• Goodreads link

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User interviews

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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!

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Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

Steve Portigal

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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!

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• Goodreads link

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Usability testing

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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.

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Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Steve Krug

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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.

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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.

• Goodreads link

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Design

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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.

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The Design of Everyday Things

Don Norman

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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.

• Goodreads link

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101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization

Vijay Kumar

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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.

• Goodreads link

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See our list on Goodreads

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We've put together a list of all of the above books on Goodreads, which you can access here.

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Further reading

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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.

Natalie and Lulu have forged a unique team culture that focuses on positive outputs (and outcomes) for their app’s growing user base. In doing so, they turned the traditional design approach on its head and created a dynamic and supportive team. 

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Natalie, Director of Design at Hatch, and Lulu, UX Design Specialist, recently spoke at UX New Zealand, the leading UX and IA conference in New Zealand hosted by Optimal Workshop, on their concept of “radical collaboration”.

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In their talk, Nat and Lulu share their experience of growing a small app into a big player in the finance sector, and their unique approach to teamwork and culture which helped achieve it.

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Background on Natalie Ferguson and Lulu Pachuau

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Over the last two decades, Lulu and Nat have delivered exceptional customer experiences for too many organizations to count. After Nat co-founded Hatch, she begged Lulu to join her on their audacious mission: To supercharge wealth building in NZ. Together, they created a design and product culture that inspired 180,000 Kiwi investors to join in just 4 years.

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Contact Details:

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Email: natalie@sixfold.co.nz

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalieferguson/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/lulupach/

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Radical Collaboration - How teamwork makes the dream work 💪💪💪

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Nat and Lulu discuss how they nurtured a team culture of “radical collaboration” when growing the hugely popular app Hatch, based in New Zealand. Hatch allows everyday New Zealanders to quickly and easily trade in the U.S. share market. 

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The beginning of the COVID pandemic spelled huge growth for Hatch and caused significant design challenges for the product. This growth meant that the app had to grow from a baby startup to one that could operate at scale - virtually overnight. 

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In navigating this challenge, Nat and Lulu coined the term radical collaboration, which aims to “dismantle organizational walls and supercharge what teams achieve”. Radical collaboration has six key pillars, which they discuss alongside their experience at Hatch.

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Pillar #1: When you live and breathe your North star

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Listening to hundreds of their customers’ stories, combined with their own personal experiences with money, compelled Lulu and Nat to change how their users view money. And so, “Grow the wealth of New Zealanders” became a powerful mission statement, or North Star, for Hatch. The mission was to give people the confidence and the ability to live their own lives with financial freedom and control. Nat and Lulu express the importance of truly believing in the mission of your product, and how this can become a guiding light for any team. 

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Pillar #2: When you trust each other so much, you’re happy to give up control

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As Hatch grew rapidly, trusting each other became more and more important. Nat and Lulu state that sometimes you need to take a step back and stop fueling growth for growth’s sake. It was at this point that Nat asked Lulu to join the team, and Nat’s first request was for Lulu to be super critical about the product design to date - no feedback was out of bounds. Letting go, feeling uncomfortable, and trusting your team can be difficult, but sometimes it’s what you need in order to drag yourself out of status quo design. This resulted in a brief hiatus from frantic delivery to take stock and reprioritize what was important - something that can be difficult without heavy doses of trust!

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Pillar #3: When everyone wears all the hats

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During their journey, the team at Hatch heard lots of stories from their users. Many of these stories were heard during “Hatcheversery Calls”, where team members would call users on their sign-up anniversary to chat about their experience with the app. Some of these calls were inspiring, insightful, and heartwarming.

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Everyone at Hatch made these calls – designers, writers, customer support, engineers, and even the CEO. Speaking to strangers in this way was a challenge for some, especially since it was common to field technical questions about the business. Nevertheless, asking staff to wear many hats like this turned the entire team into researchers and analysts. By forcing ourselves and our team outside of our comfort zone, we forced each other to see the whole picture of the business, not just our own little piece.

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Pillar #4: When you do what’s right, not what’s glam

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In an increasingly competitive industry, designers and developers are often tempted to consistently deliver new and exciting features. In response to rapid growth, rather than adding more features to the app, Lulu and Nat made a conscious effort to really listen to their customers to understand what problems they needed solving. 

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As it turned out, filing overseas tax returns was a significant and common problem for their customers - it was difficult and expensive. So, the team at Hatch devised a tax solution. This solution was developed by the entire team, with almost no tax specialists involved until the very end! This process was far from glamorous and it often fell outside of standard job descriptions. However, the team eventually succeeded in simplifying a notoriously difficult process and saved their customers a massive headache.

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Pillar #5: When you own the outcome, not your output.

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Over time Hatch’s user base changed from being primarily confident, seasoned investors, to being first-time investors. This new user group was typically scared of investing and often felt that it was only a thing wealthy people did.

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At this point, Hatch felt it was necessary to take a step back from delivering updates to take stock of their new position. This meant deeply understanding their customers’ journey from signing up, to making their first trade. Once this was intimately understood, the team delivered a comprehensive onboarding process which increased the sign-up conversion rate by 10%!

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Pillar #6: When you’re relentlessly committed to making it work

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Nat and Lulu describe a moment when Allbirds wanted to work with Hatch to allow ordinary New Zealanders to be involved in their IPO launch on the New York stock exchange. Again, this task faced numerous tax and trade law challenges, and offering the service seemed like yet another insurmountable task. The team at Hatch nearly gave up several times during this project, but everyone was determined to get this feature across the line – and they did. As a result, New Zealanders were some of the few regular investors from outside the U.S that were able to take part in Albirds IPO. 

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Why it matters 💥

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Over four years, Hatch grew to 180,000 users who collectively invested over $1bn. Nat and Lulu’s success underscores the critical role of teamwork and collaboration in achieving exceptional user experiences. Product teams should remember that in the rapidly evolving tech industry, it's not just about delivering the latest features; it's about fostering a positive and supportive team culture that buys into the bigger picture.

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The Hatch team grew to be more than team members and technical experts. They grew in confidence and appreciated every moving part of the business. Product teams can draw inspiration from Hatch's journey, where designers, writers, engineers, and even the CEO actively engaged with users, challenged traditional design decisions, and prioritized solving actual user problems. This approach led to better, more user-centric outcomes and a deep understanding of the end-to-end user experience.

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Most importantly, through the good times and tough, the team grew to trust each other. The mission weaved its way through each member of the team, which ultimately manifested in positive outcomes for the user and the business.

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Nat and Lulu’s concept of radical collaboration led to several positive outcomes for Hatch:

• It changed the way they did business. Information was no longer held in the minds of a few individuals – instead, it was shared. People were able to step into other people's roles seamlessly. 
• Hatch achieved better results faster by focusing on the end-to-end experience of the app, rather than by adding successive features. 
• The team became more nimble – potential design/development issues were anticipated earlier because everyone knew what the downstream impacts of a decision would be.

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Over the next week, Lulu and Nat encourage designers and researchers to get outside of their comfort zone and:

• Visit customer support team
• Pick up the phone and call a customer
• Challenge status quo design decisions. Ask, does this thing solve an end-user problem?

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If there’s one universal truth in user research, it’s that at some point you’re going to need to find people to actually take part in your studies. Be it a large number of participants for quantitative research or a select number for in-depth, in-person user interviews. Finding the right people (and number) of people can be a hurdle.

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With the right strategy, you can source exactly the right participants for your next research project.

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We share a practical step-by-step guide on how to find participants for user experience research.

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The difficulties/challenges of user research recruiting 🏋️

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It has to be acknowledged that there are challenges when recruiting research participants. You may recognize some of these:

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• There are so many channels and methods you can use to find participants, different channels will work better for different projects.
• Repeatedly using the same channels and methods will result in diminishing returns (i.e. burning out participants).
• It’s a lengthy and complex process, and some projects don’t have the luxury of time.
• Offering the right incentives and distributing them is time-consuming.
• It’s hard to manage participants during long-term or recurring studies, such as customer research projects.

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We’ll simplify the process, talk about who the right participants are, and unpack some of the best ways to find them. Removing these blocks can be the easiest way to move forward.

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Who are the right participants for different types of research? 🤔

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1. The first step to a successful participant recruitment strategy is clarifying the goals of your user research and which methods you intend to use. Ask yourself:

• What is the purpose of our research?
• How do we plan to understand that?

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2. Define who your ideal research participant is. Who is going to have the answers to your questions?

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3. Work out your research recruitment strategy. That starts by understanding the differences between recruiting for qualitative and quantitative research.

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Recruiting for qualitative vs. quantitative research 🙋🏻

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Quantitative research recruiting is a numbers game. For your data analysis to be meaningful and statistically significant, you need a lot of data. This means you need to do a lot of research with a lot of people. When recruiting for quantitative research, you first have to define the population (the entire group you want to study). From there, you choose a sampling method that allows you to create a sample—a randomly selected subset of the population who will participate in your study.

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Qualitative recruiting involves far fewer participants, but you do need to find a selection of ‘perfect’ participants. Those that fit neatly into your specific demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral criteria relevant to your study. Recruiting quality participants for qualitative studies involves non-random sampling, screening, and plenty of communication.

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How many participants do you need? 👱🏻👩👩🏻👧🏽👧🏾

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How many participants to include in a qualitative research study is one of the most heavily discussed topics in user research circles. In most cases, you can get away with 5 people – that’s the short answer. With 5 people, you’ll uncover most of the main issues with the thing you’re testing. Depending on your research project there could be as many as 50 participants, but with each additional person, there is an additional cost (money and time).

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Quantitative research is obviously quite different. With studies like card sorts and tree tests, you need higher participant numbers to get statistically meaningful results. Anywhere from 20 - 500 participants, again coming back to the purpose of your test and your research budget. These are usually easier and quicker to implement therefore the additional cost is lower.

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User research recruitment - step by step 👟

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Let’s get into your research recruitment strategy to find the best participants for your research project. There are 5 clear steps to get you through to the research stage:

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1. Identify your ideal participants

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Who are they? What do they do? How old are they? Do they already use your product? Where do they live? These are all great questions to get you thinking about who exactly you need to answer your research questions. The demographic and geographic detail of your participants are important to the quality of your research results.

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2. Screen participants

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Screening participants will weed out those that may not be suitable for your specific project. This can be as simple as asking if the participants have used a product similar to yours. Or coming back to your key identified demographic requirements and removing anyone that doesn’t fit these criteria.

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3. Find prospective participants

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This is important and can be time-consuming. For qualitative research projects, you can look within your organization or ask over social media for willing participants. Or if you’re short on time look at a participant recruitment service, which takes your requirements and has a catalog of available persons to call on. There’s a cost involved, but the time saving can negate this. For qualitative surveys, a great option can be a live intercept on your website or app that interrupts users and asks them to complete a short questionnaire.

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4. Research incentives

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In some cases you will need to provide incentives. This could be offering a prize or discount for those who complete online qualitative surveys. Or a fixed sum for those that take part in longer format quantitative studies.

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5. Scheduling with participants

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Once you have waded through the emails, options, and communication from your inquiries make a list of appropriate participants. Schedule time to do the research, either in person or remotely. Be clear about expectations and how long it will take. And what the incentive to take part is.

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Tips to avoid participant burnout 📛

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You’ve got your participants sorted and have a great pool of people to call on. If you keep hitting the same group of people time and time again, you will experience the law of diminishing returns. Constantly returning to the same pool of participants will eventually lead to fatigue. And this will impact the quality of your research because it’s based on interviewing the same people with the same views.

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There are 2 ways to avoid this problem:

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1. Use a huge database of potential participant targets.
2. Use a mixture of different recruitment strategies and channels.

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Of course, it might be unavoidable to hit the same audience repeatedly when you’re testing your product development among your customer base.

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Wrap up 🌯

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Understanding your UX research recruitment strategy is crucial to recruiting quality participants. A clear idea of your purpose, who your ideal participants are, and how to find them takes time and experience. 

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And to make life easier you can always leave your participant recruitment with us. With a huge catalog of quality participants all at your fingertips on our app, we can recruit the right people quickly.

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Check out more here.