Radical Collaboration: how teamwork really can make the dream work

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.

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.

Wireframes. Mockups. HTML. Fonts. Elements. Users. If you’re familiar with user interface design, these terms will be your bread and butter.An integral part of any website or application, user interface design is also arguably one of the most important. This is because your design is what your users see and interact with. If your site or app functions poorly and looks terrible, that’s what your users are going to remember.

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But isn’t UX design and UI design the same thing? Or is there just an extremely blurred line between the two? What’s involved with UI design and, more importantly, what makes good design?

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What is UI design exactly?

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If you’re wondering how to test UI on your website, it’s a good idea to first learn some of the differences between UX and UI design. Although UI design and UX design look similar when written down, they’re actually two totally separate things. However, they should most definitely complement each other.

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UX design, according to Nielsen Norman Group, “encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” Meanwhile, UI design focuses more on a user’s interaction, the overall design, look and feel of a system. The two still sound similar, right?For those of you still trying to wrap your ahead around the difference, Nielsen Norman Group has a great analogy up on its site that helps to explain it:

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"As an example, consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.”

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This just goes to show the complementary relationship between the two and why it’s so important.User interface was popularized in the early 1970s, partly thanks to Fuji Xerox’s ‘Xerox Alto Workstation’ — an early personal computer dubbed “the origin of the PC”. This machine used various icons, multi windows, a mouse, and e-mail, which meant that some sort of design and design principles were needed to create consistency for the future. It was here that human-centred UI was born. UI design also covers graphical user interface design (GUI design). A GUI is the software or interface that works as the medium between a user and the computer.

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It uses a number of graphical elements, such as screen cursors, menus, and icons so that users can easily navigate a system. This is also something that has stemmed from Fuji Xerox back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.Since then, UI has developed quickly and so has its design principles. When the Xerox Alto Workstation was first born, Fuji Xerox came up with eight of its own design principles. These were:

• Metaphorically digitize the desk environment
• Operating on display instead of entering on keyboard
• What you see is what you get
• Universal but fewer commands
• Same operation for the same job at different places
• Operating computers as easily as possible
• No need to transfer to different jobs
• System customized as desired by users

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Over time, these principles have evolved and now you’ll likely find many more added to this list. Here are just a few of the most important ones identified in “Characteristics of graphical and web user interfaces” by Wilbert Galitz.

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UI design principles:

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Principle #1: Clarity

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Usability.gov says that the “best interfaces are almost invisible to the user”.Everything in the system, from visual elements, functions, and text, needs to be clear and simple. This includes layout as well as the words used — stay away from jargon and complex terms or analogies that users won’t understand.Aesthetic appeal also fits into this principle. Ensure colors and graphics are used in a simple manner, and elements are grouped in a way that makes sense.

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Principle #2: Consistency

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The system should have the same or similar functions, uses and look throughout it for consistency. For example, the same color scheme should be used throughout an app, or the terminology on a website should be consistent throughout. Users should also have an idea of what to expect when they use your system. As an example, picture a retail shopping app. You’d expect that any other retail shopping app out there will have similar basic functions: a place to log in or create an account, account settings, a way to navigate and browse stock, a way to purchase stock at the press of a button. However, this doesn’t mean copying another app or website exactly; there should just be consistency so users know what to expect when they encounter your system.Apple even states an “app should respect its users and avoid forcing them to learn new ways to do things for no other reason than to be different”.

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Principle #3: Flexibility and customizability

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Is there more than one way people can access your system and its functions? Can people perform tasks in a number of different ways, too?Providing your users with a flexible system means people are more in control of what they’re doing. Galitz mentions this can also be done through allowing system customization.Don’t forget use on other kinds of devices, too. In a time when Google is using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal, and research from Ericsson shows smartphones accounted for 75% of all mobile phone sales in Q4 2015, you know that being flexible is important.

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Examples of good UI design

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For a list of some of the best user interface examples, check out last year’s Webby Awards category for Best Interface Design. The 2016 category winner was the Reuters TV Web App, while the People’s Choice winner was AssessYourRisk.org.As an aside, this is the second year that the Webby Awards introduced this category — just goes to show how important it is to have good UI design!While you don’t want your site or application to look exactly the same as these winners, you still want yours to function well and be aesthetically pleasing.

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To help you get there, there are a number of UI design tools and UI software available.Here’s a list of some of the many out there:

• UXPin - An online UI design tool that allows you to create wireframes, mockups, and prototypes all on one platform.
• InVision - A prototyping and collaboration tool. More in-depth than Balsamiq, and it allows you to go from mockup to high-fidelity in minutes.
• Balsamiq - A simple mockups tool for wireframing, which allows users to test out ideas in the early stage of interface design.
• Atomic - An interface design tool that allows you to design in your browser and collaborate with others on your projects.

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Have you got any favorite UI design examples, or tips for beautiful design? We’d love to see them — comment below and let us know!

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Further reading

• “UI, UX: Who does what? A designer’s guide to the tech industry” - An article from Fastcodesign that provides a breakdown of some of the design roles in the tech industry.
• “7 rules for creating gorgeous UI (Part 1)” - A great guide from Erik D. Kennedy for creating good UI design, with some fantastic tips to help you get started.
• “10 usability heuristics for user interface design” - An article from Nielsen Norman Group’s Principal Jakob Nielsen explaining some of the key principles to keep in mind when designing a user interface.