What do you prioritize when doing qualitative research?

In the field of user research, every method is either qualitative, quantitative – or both. Understandably, there’s some confusion around these 2 approaches and where the different methods are applicable.This article provides a handy breakdown of the different terms and where and why you’d want to use qualitative or quantitative research methods.

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Qualitative research

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Let’s start with qualitative research, an approach that’s all about the ‘why’. It’s exploratory and not about numbers, instead focusing on reasons, motivations, behaviors and opinions – it’s best at helping you gain insight and delve deep into a particular problem. This type of data typically comes from conversations, interviews and responses to open questions.The real value of qualitative research is in its ability to give you a human perspective on a research question. Unlike quantitative research, this approach will help you understand some of the more intangible factors – things like behaviors, habits and past experiences – whose effects may not always be readily apparent when you’re conducting quantitative research.A qualitative research question could be investigating why people switch between different banks, for example.

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When to use qualitative research

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Qualitative research is best suited to identifying how people think about problems, how they interact with products and services, and what encourages them to behave a certain way. For example, you could run a study to better understand how people feel about a product they use, or why people have trouble filling out your sign up form. Qualitative research can be very exploratory (e.g., user interviews) as well as more closely tied to evaluating designs (e.g., usability testing).Good qualitative research questions to ask include:

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• Why do customers never add items to their wishlist on our website?
• How do new customers find out about our services?
• What are the main reasons people don’t sign up for our newsletter?

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How to gather qualitative data

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There’s no shortage of methods to gather qualitative data, which commonly takes the form of interview transcripts, notes and audio and video recordings.Here are some of the most widely-used qualitative research methods:

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• Usability test – Test a product with people by observing them as they attempt to complete various tasks.
• User interview – Sit down with a user to learn more about their background, motivations and pain points.
• Contextual inquiry – Learn more about your users in their own environment by asking them questions before moving onto an observation activity.
• Focus group – Gather 6 to 10 people for a forum-like session to get feedback on a product.

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How many participants will you need?

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You don’t often need large numbers of participants for qualitative research, with the average range usually somewhere between 5 to 10 people. You’ll likely require more if you're focusing your work on specific personas, for example, in which case you may need to study 5-10 people for each persona.While this may seem quite low, consider the research methods you’ll be using. Carrying out large numbers of in-person research sessions requires a significant time investment in terms of planning, actually hosting the sessions and analyzing your findings.

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Quantitative research

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On the other side of the coin you’ve got quantitative research. This type of research is focused on numbers and measurement, gathering data and being able to transform this information into statistics.Given that quantitative research is all about generating data that can be expressed in numbers, there multiple ways you make use of it. Statistical analysis means you can pull useful facts from your quantitative data, for example trends, demographic information and differences between groups. It’s an excellent way to understand a snapshot of your users.A quantitative research question could involve investigating the number of people that upgrade from a free plan to a paid plan.

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When to use quantitative research

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Quantitative research is ideal for understanding behaviors and usage. In many cases it's a lot less resource-heavy than qualitative research because you don't need to pay incentives or spend time scheduling sessions etc). With that in mind, you might do some quantitative research early on to better understand the problem space, for example by running a survey on your users.Here are some examples of good quantitative research questions to ask:

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• How many customers view our pricing page before making a purchase decision?
• How many customers search versus navigate to find products on our website?
• How often do visitors on our website change their password?

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How to gather quantitative data

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Commonly, quantitative data takes the form of numbers and statistics.

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Here are some of the most popular quantitative research methods:

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• Card sorts – Find out how people categorize and sort information on your website.
• First-click tests – See where people click first when tasked with completing an action.
• A/B tests – Compare 2 versions of a design in order to work out which is more effective.
• Clickstream analysis – Analyze aggregate data about website visits.

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How many participants will you need?

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While you only need a small number of participants for qualitative research, you need significantly more for quantitative research. Quantitative research is all about quantity. With more participants, you can generate more useful and reliable data you can analyze. In turn, you’ll have a clearer understanding of your research problem.This means that quantitative research can often involve gathering data from thousands of participants through an A/B test, or with 30 through a card sort. Read more about the right number of participants to gather for your research.

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Mixed methods research

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While there are certainly times when you’d only want to focus on qualitative or quantitative data to get answers, there’s significant value in utilizing both methods on the same research projects.Interestingly, there are a number of research methods that will generate both quantitative and qualitative data. Take surveys as an example. A survey could include questions that require written answers from participants as well as questions that require participants to select from multiple choices.

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Looking back at the earlier example of how people move from a free plan to a paid plan, applying both research approaches to the question will yield a more robust or holistic answer. You’ll know why people upgrade to the paid plan in addition to how many. You can read more about mixed methods research in this article:

• What is mixed methods research?

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Where to from here?

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With an understanding of qualitative and quantitative user research, the next best step would be to start learning more about the various methods that fall under each of these research approaches and how to actually conduct research effectively.

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Here are some of the best articles to read next:

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• How to write great questions for your research – Great research starts with the right questions. Learn how to write effective questions before you start your next project.
• Which comes first: card sorting or tree testing? – Card sorting and tree testing are complementary methods, but which one should you use first?
• How to encourage people to participate in your study – Seemingly one of the hardest parts of conducting research is finding willing participants. It’s actually not that difficult.

For those new to the qualitative research space, there’s one question that’s usually pretty tough to figure out, and that’s the question of how many participants to include in a study. Regardless of whether it’s research as part of the discovery phase for a new product, or perhaps an in-depth canvas of the users of an existing service, researchers can often find it difficult to agree on the numbers. So is there an easy answer? Let’s find out.

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Here, we’ll look into the right number of participants for qualitative research studies. If you want to know about participants for quantitative research, read Nielsen Norman Group’s article.

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Getting the numbers right

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So you need to run a series of user interviews or usability tests and aren’t sure exactly how many people you should reach out to. It can be a tricky situation – especially for those without much experience. Do you test a small selection of 1 or 2 people to make the recruitment process easier? Or, do you go big and test with a series of 10 people over the course of a month? The answer lies somewhere in between.

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It’s often a good idea (for qualitative research methods like interviews and usability tests) to start with 5 participants and then scale up by a further 5 based on how complicated the subject matter is. You may also find it helpful to add additional participants if you’re new to user research or you’re working in a new area.

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What you’re actually looking for here is what’s known as saturation.

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Understanding saturation

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Whether it’s qualitative research as part of a master’s thesis or as research for a new online dating app, saturation is the best metric you can use to identify when you’ve hit the right number of participants.

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In a nutshell, saturation is when you’ve reached the point where adding further participants doesn’t give you any further insights. It’s true that you may still pick up on the occasional interesting detail, but all of your big revelations and learnings have come and gone. A good measure is to sit down after each session with a participant and analyze the number of new insights you’ve noted down.

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Interestingly, in a paper titled How Many Interviews Are Enough?, authors Greg Guest, Arwen Bunce and Laura Johnson noted that saturation usually occurs with around 12 participants in homogeneous groups (meaning people in the same role at an organization, for example). However, carrying out ethnographic research on a larger domain with a diverse set of participants will almost certainly require a larger sample.

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Ensuring you’ve hit the right number of participants

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How do you know when you’ve reached saturation point? You have to keep conducting interviews or usability tests until you’re no longer uncovering new insights or concepts.

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While this may seem to run counter to the idea of just gathering as much data from as many people as possible, there’s a strong case for focusing on a smaller group of participants. In The logic of small samples in interview-based, authors Mira Crouch and Heather McKenzie note that using fewer than 20 participants during a qualitative research study will result in better data. Why? With a smaller group, it’s easier for you (the researcher) to build strong close relationships with your participants, which in turn leads to more natural conversations and better data.

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There's also a school of thought that you should interview 5 or so people per persona. For example, if you're working in a company that has well-defined personas, you might want to use those as a basis for your study, and then you would interview 5 people based on each persona. This maybe worth considering or particularly important when you have a product that has very distinct user groups (e.g. students and staff, teachers and parents etc).

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How your domain affects sample size

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The scope of the topic you’re researching will change the amount of information you’ll need to gather before you’ve hit the saturation point. Your topic is also commonly referred to as the domain.

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If you’re working in quite a confined domain, for example, a single screen of a mobile app or a very specific scenario, you’ll likely find interviews with 5 participants to be perfectly fine. Moving into more complicated domains, like the entire checkout process for an online shopping app, will push up your sample size.

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As Mitchel Seaman notes: “Exploring a big issue like young peoples’ opinions about healthcare coverage, a broad emotional issue like postmarital sexuality, or a poorly-understood domain for your team like mobile device use in another country can drastically increase the number of interviews you’ll want to conduct.”

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In-person or remote

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Does the location of your participants change the number you need for qualitative user research? Well, not really – but there are other factors to consider.

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• Budget: If you choose to conduct remote interviews/usability tests, you’ll likely find you’ve got lower costs as you won’t need to travel to your participants or have them travel to you. This also affects…
• Participant access: Remote qualitative research can be a lifesaver when it comes to participant access. No longer are you confined to the people you have physical access to — instead you can reach out to anyone you’d like.
• Quality: On the other hand, remote research does have its downsides. For one, you’ll likely find you’re not able to build the same kinds of relationships over the internet or phone as those in person, which in turn means you never quite get the same level of insights.

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Is there value in outsourcing recruitment?

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Recruitment is understandably an intensive logistical exercise with many moving parts. If you’ve ever had to recruit people for a study before, you’ll understand the need for long lead times (to ensure you have enough participants for the project) and the countless long email chains as you discuss suitable times.

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Outsourcing your participant recruitment is just one way to lighten the logistical load during your research. Instead of having to go out and look for participants, you have them essentially delivered to you in the right number and with the right attributes.

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We’ve got one such service at Optimal Workshop, which means it’s the perfect accompaniment if you’re also using our platform of UX tools. Read more about that here.

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Wrap-up

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So that’s really most of what there is to know about participant recruitment in a qualitative research context. As we said at the start, while it can appear quite tricky to figure out exactly how many people you need to recruit, it’s actually not all that difficult in reality.

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Overall, the number of participants you need for your qualitative research can depend on your project among other factors. It’s important to keep saturation in mind, as well as the locale of participants. You also need to get the most you can out of what’s available to you. Remember: Some research is better than none!

The word “persona” has many meanings. Sometimes the term refers to a part that an actor plays, other times it can mean a famous person, or even a character in a fictional play or book. But in the field of UX, persona has its own special meaning.

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Before you get started with creating personas of your own, learn what they are and the process to create one. We'll even let you in on a great, little tip — how to use Chalkmark to refine and validate your personas.

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What is a persona?

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In the UX field, a persona is created using research and observations of your users, which is analyzed and then depicted in the form of a person’s profile. This individual is completely fictional, but is created based on the research you’ve conducted into your own users. It’s a form of segmentation, which Angus Jenkinson noted in his article “Beyond Segmentation” is a “better intellectual and practical tool for dealing with the interaction between the concept of the ‘individual’ and the concept of ‘group’”.

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Typical user personas include very specific information in order to paint an in-depth and memorable picture for the people using them (e.g., designers, marketers etc).

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The user personas you create don’t just represent a single individual either; they’ll actually represent a whole group. This allows you to condense your users into just a few segments, while giving you a much smaller set of groups to target.

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There are many benefits of using personas. Here are just a few:

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• You can understand your clients better by seeing their pain points, what they want, and what they need
 
• You can narrow your focus to a small number of groups that matter, rather than trying to design for everybody
 
• They’re useful for other teams too, from product management to design and marketing
 
• They can help you clarify your business or brand
 
• They can help you create a language for your brand
 
• You can market your products in a better, more targeted way

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How do I create a persona?

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There’s no right or wrong way to create a persona; the way you make them can depend on many things, such as your own internal resources, and the type of persona you want.

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The average persona that you’ve probably seen before in textbooks, online or in templates isn’t always the best kind to use (picture the common and overused types like ‘Busy Barry’). In fact, the way user personas are constructed is a highly debated topic in the UX industry.

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Creating good user personas

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Good user personas are meaningful descriptions — not just a list of demographics and a fake name that allows researchers to simply make assumptions.

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Indi Young, an independent consultant and founder of Adaptive Path, is an advocate of creating personas that aren’t just a list of demographics. In an article she penned on medium.com, Indi states: “To actually bring a description to life, to actually develop empathy, you need the deeper, underlying reasoning behind the preferences and statements-of-fact. You need the reasoning, reactions, and guiding principles.”

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One issue that can stem from traditional types of personas is they can be based on stereotypes, or even reinforce them. Things like gender, age, ethnicity, culture, and location can all play a part in doing this.

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In a study by Phil Turner and Susan Turner titled “Is stereotyping inevitable when designing with personas?” the authors noted: “Stereotyped user representations appear to constrain both design and use in many aspects of everyday life, and those who advocate universal design recognise that stereotyping is an obstacle to achieving design for all.”

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So it makes sense to scrap the stereotypes and, in many instances, irrelevant demographic data. Instead, include information that accurately describes the persona’s struggles, goals, thoughts and feelings — all bits of meaningful data.

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Creating user personas involves a lot of research and analyzing. Here are a few tips to get you started:

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1) Do your research

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When you’re creating personas for UX, it’s absolutely crucial you start with research; after all, you can’t just pull this information out of thin air by making assumptions! Ensure you use a mixture of both qualitative and quantitative research here in order to cast your net wide and get results that are really valuable. A great research method that falls into the realms of both qualitative and quantitative is user interviews.

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When you conduct your interviews, drill down into the types of behaviors, attitudes and goals your users have. It’s also important to mention that you can’t just examine what your users are saying to you — you need to tap into what they’re thinking and how they behave too.

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2) Analyze and organize your data into segments

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Once you’ve conducted your research, it’s time to analyze it. Look for trends in your results — can you see any similarities among your participants? Can you begin to group some of your participants together based on shared goals, attitudes and behaviors?

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After you have sorted your participants into groups, you can create your segments. These segments will become your draft personas. Try to limit the number of personas you create. Having too many can defeat the purpose of creating them in the first place.

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Don’t forget the little things! Give your personas a memorable title or name and maybe even assign an image or photo — it all helps to create a “real” person that your team can focus on and remember.

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3) Review and test

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After you’ve finalized your personas, it’s time to review them. Take another look at the responses you received from your initial user interviews and see if they match the personas you created. It’s also important you spend some time reviewing your finalized personas to see if any of them are too similar or overlap with one another. If they do, you might want to jump back a step and segment your data again.

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This is also a great time to test your personas. Conduct another set of user interviews and research to validate your personas.

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User persona templates and examples

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Creating your personas using data from your user interviews can be a fun task — but make sure you don’t go too crazy. Your personas need to be relevant, not overly complex and a true representation of your users.

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A great way to ensure your personas don’t get too out of hand is to use a template. There are many of these available online in a number of different formats and of varying quality.

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This example from UX Lady contains a number of helpful bits of information you should include, such as user experience goals, tech expertise and the types of devices used. The accompany article also provides a fair bit of guidance on how to fill in your templates too. While this template is good, skip the demographics portion and read Indi Young’s article and books for better quality persona creation.

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Using Chalkmark to refine personas

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Now it’s time to let you in on a little tip. Did you know Chalkmark can be used to refine and validate your personas?

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One of the trickiest parts of creating personas is actually figuring out which ones are a true representation of your users — so this usually means lots of testing and refining to ensure you’re on the right track. Fortunately, Chalkmark makes the refinement and validation part pretty easy.

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First, you need to have your personas finalized or at least drafted. Take your results from your persona software or template you filled in. Create a survey for each segment so that you can see if your participants’ perceptions of themselves matches each of your personas.

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Second, create your test. This is a pretty simple demo we made when we were testing our own personas a few years ago at Optimal Workshop. Keep in mind this was a while ago and not a true representation of our current personas — they’ve definitely changed over time! During this step, it’s also quite helpful to include some post-test questions to drill down into your participants’ profiles.

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After that, send these tests out to your identified segments (e.g., if you had a retail clothing store, some of your segments might be women of a certain age, and men of a certain age. Each segment would receive its own test). Our test involved three segments: “the aware”, “the informed”, and “the experienced” — again, this has changed over time and you’ll find your personas will change too.

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Finally, analyze the results. If you created separate tests for each segment, you will now have filtered data for each segment. This is the real meaty information you use to validate each persona. For example, our three persona tests all contained the questions: “What’s your experience with user research?” And “How much of your job description relates directly to user experience work?”

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bove, you’ll see the results for Persona #2. This tells us that 34% of respondents identified that their job involves a lot of UX work (75-100%, in fact). In addition, 31% of this segment considered themselves “Confident” with remote user research, while a further 9% and 6% of this segment said they were “Experienced” and “Expert”.

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These results all aligned with the persona we associated with that segment: “the informed”.

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When you’re running your own tests, you’ll analyze the data in a very similar way. If the results from each of your segments’ Chalkmark tests don’t match up with the personas you created, it’s likely you need to adjust your personas. However, if each segment’s results happen to match up with your personas (like our example above), consider them validated!

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For a bit more info on our very own Chalkmark persona test, check out this article.

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Further reading

   
• "From personas to user stories" - an article by Roman Pichler on how to discover the right stories and integrate them into a sprint.
   
• "Personas make users memorable for product team members" - Aurora Bedford looks at how personas support user-centered design throughout a project’s lifecycle.
   
• "Developing successful personas" - Luke Wroblewski presents notes from a talk by Tamara Adlin who outlines a set of practical ways to align stakeholder, developers, and designers to use personas.
   
• "Describing personas" - Indi Young looks at some of the problems in accurately describing personas.