Optimal Blog

Want to do great user research? Maybe you already have tonnes of quantitative research done through testing, surveys and checking. Data galore! Now you really want to get under the skin of your users, understand the why behind their decisions. Getting human-centric with products can mean creating better performing, stronger and more intuitive products that provide an awesome user experience (UX). An in-depth understanding of your users and how they tick can mean the difference between designing products that just work and products that intuitively speak your users language, make them happy, engaged and keep them coming back.

This is where qualitative research comes into play. Understanding how your users tick becomes clearer through user interviews. Interviewing users will provide human insights that make all the difference, the nuance that pulls your product or interface out of the fray and into the light. 

How do you interview confidently? Whether this is your first foray into the world of user interviewing or wanting to step up your game, there are a few common pitfalls along the way. We cover off 7 of the most common mistakes, and how to avoid them, helping you avoid these on your way to interview greatness! 

How do you conduct a user research interview?

There are several ways of doing qualitative user research.  Here we will talk about in-person user interviews. Great user interviewing is a skill in itself. And relies on great prep, quality participants and excellent analysis of the results. But don’t be put off, all of this can be learned, and with the right environment and tools can be simple to implement.  Want to find out more in detail about how to conduct an interview? Take a look here.

Even if you’re an old hand we’re not all gifted interviewing experts, it’s okay if you lack expertise. In fact, totally nailing interview technique is almost impossible thanks to a ton of different factors. It's your job to keep what you can under control, and record the interview well in the moment for later analysis. Keeping safe all those lovely human centric insights you unearth. 

Here are seven practical user research interview mistakes you could be making, and how to fix them:

1. Not having enough participants

It can be intimidating doing any sort of user research. Particularly when you need to find participants. And a random selection, not just those down the hall in the next office (though sometimes they can be great). And getting a large enough pool of participants that make the data meaningful, and the insights impactful.

Not to worry, there are ways to find a giant pool of reliable interview participants. Either dive into existing users that you are familiar with, and they with you. Or get in touch with us to recruit a small or large sample of participants. 

2. Not knowing enough about your interview participants

Interviews are two-way streets, so if you’re hoping to encourage anyone to be open and honest in an interview setting you’ll need to do your homework on the person you’re interviewing. This may not always be applicable if you’re looking for a truly random sample of people. Understanding a little more about your participants should help the conversation flow, and when you do go off-script, it is natural and curiosity driven.

3. Not creating an open interview environment

Everything about your user interview environment affects the outcome of the interview. Your participants need to feel confident and comfortable. The space needs to remove as many distractions as possible. A comfortable workstation, laptop that works, and even the air conditioning at a good temperature can all play a part in providing a relaxed environment. So when it comes to the interview they are able to demonstrate and explain their behaviour or decisions on their own terms.

Of course, in this modern day, the availability of remote and virtual interviewing has changed the game slightly. Allowing your participants to be in their own environment can be beneficial. Be careful to take note of what you can see about their space. Is it crowded, dim, busy or noisy? If you don’t have full control over the environment be sure to note this in a factual way.

4. Not having a note-taker in the room

Good note-taking is a skill in its own right and it’s important to have someone skilled at it. Bringing a dedicated note-taker into the user interviews also frees you up to focus on your participant and your interviewing. Allowing the conversation to flow. Leaving the note-taker to focus on marking down all of the relevant points of interest. 

5. Using a bad recording setup

Deciding to audio (and/or video) record the interview is a great option. When choosing this option, recording can be  possibly the most important aspect of the interview setup process. Being able to focus on the interview without worrying about your recording equipment is key. Make sure that your recording equipment is high quality and in a central position to pick up everything you discuss - don’t trip at the first hurdle and be left with unusable data. 

A dedicated note-taker can still be of value in the room, they can monitor the recording and note any environmental or contextual elements of the interview process. Taking the stress off of you for the recording set up, and any adjustments.

Another option is Reframer. It’s a great recording tool that can free you up to focus on your participant and the interview. Reframer will audio record your interview,auto time-stamp and provide a standardized format for recording all of your interviews. Post analysis becomes simple and quick. And even quicker to share the data and insights.

6. Not taking the time to prepare your interview questions

Lack of preparation can be a fatal error for any user research and user interviews are no different. Interviews are a qualitative research method, and your questions don’t need to be as strict as those in a quantitative questionnaire, for example. However, you will still need a standardised script to regulate your user interviews and make sure all of your participants are asked the same set of questions. Always leaving plenty of room to go off script to get under the skin of why your participant interacts with your product in a particular way!

7. Not having a plan of action for organizing your data

Qualitative data is unstructured, which can make it hard to organize and analyze. Recording and including all of your interviews on one platform so you can analyze the insights and conclusions together makes it easier to review.  Reframer can do all of this in one place allowing all of your organizational stakeholders access to the data. 

Don’t miss anything in your interviews, you put in the time, the effort and the investment into doing them. Make sure that they are recorded, available and analyzed in one place. For the team to see, use and report against.

Wrap Up

User interviews can be intimidating, to organise, to prep for and even finding your participants can be hard. But user interviews needn’t be too much of a headache. With the Optimal Workshop platform, we take the pain out of the process with participant selection, recording, analyzing and reporting.

If you want a single platform to record, analyze and store your data, take a look at Optimal Workshop and Reframer. And get interviewing!

As an information architect, I’ve worked on loads of website redesigns. Interestingly, every single one of these projects has come about because the website has had navigation problems. But before you go ahead and change up your information architecture (IA), how do you figure out whether the new navigation is any better than the existing one? How do you know if it’s worth the hours of design to implement it?

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In this article, I’ll walk you through how to benchmark a site navigation using tree testing.

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The initial groundwork

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When you start any project, you need to identify success metrics. How would the project sponsor (or your client if you’re in an agency) consider the project to be a success? What KPIs determine how the project is doing?

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Put your stake in the ground, draw a line in the sand — or whatever metaphor you wish to use. This is how you objectively determine how far you’ve gone from where you started. At the same time, benchmarking is the perfect exercise to figure out the areas that need improvement. To do this, you’ll need to lay down the groundwork.

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If you’re benchmarking your IA as part of a web redesign project, great! Hopefully, that means you’ve already gone through the exercise of determining who your users are and what it is that your users would be doing on the site. If not, it’s time to find out. User research is a crucial part of benchmarking. If you don’t know who your users are and why they’re on your site, how can you improve it?

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Of course, everyone has a different approach to benchmarking information architecture. Different navigation problems merit different solutions. This is one that I’ve talked myself into for a global navigation project and it’s worked out for me. If you have a different approach, please share! I’m always open to new processes.

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Without further preamble, here’s the quick rundown of my approach to assessing and benchmarking a site navigation:

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1. Conduct user research with the end goal to identify target users and user intent
2. From user research, determine at most 8-10 primary user tasks to test with the identified target users
3. Tree test the existing navigation with target users - using those user tasks
4. Tree test a competitor navigation with target users - using the same user tasks
5. Tree test a proposed navigation - using the same user tasks.

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Step 1: Know who your users are

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If it’s a new project, who is your target audience? Set up some kind of intercept or survey to find out who your users are. Find out what kind of people are coming to your site. Are they shopping for new cars or used cars? Are they patients or healthcare providers? If patients, then what kind of patients? Chronic care, acute care? If the project timeline doesn’t allow for this, discuss this with your project stakeholders. Ideally, they should have some idea of who their target audience is and you should at least be able to create proto user segments to direct your discovery.

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If you have more than one user group, it’s best to identify the primary user group to focus efforts. If you have to design for everyone, you end up getting nowhere, satisfying no one. And guess what? This is not a novel idea.

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“When you design for everyone, you design for no one.” — @aarron http://t.co/JIJ2c82d Ethan Marcotte (@beep) May 24, 2012

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Your project stakeholder won’t like to hear this, but I would start with one user group and then iterate with additional user groups. Focus your efforts with one user group and do a good job. Then rinse and repeat with the remaining user groups. Your job is not done.

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Determine what your users do

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Interview or survey a couple of people who use your website and find out what they are doing on your site. What are they trying to do? Are they trying to find out information about services you provide? Are they trying to purchase things from your online store? How did they get there? Why did they choose your site over another website?

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Identify priority user tasks

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From your user interviews, could you identify 8-10 priority user tasks that you could use? For this, we’re trying to figure out what tasks to use in a navigation test. What are the main reasons why users would be on your site? How would the navigation best serve them? If your navigation says nothing about your users’ tasks, then you have your work cut out for you.

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Step 2: Tree test your existing navigation

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How would you benchmark without some metrics? There are a couple kinds of metrics that we could collect: quantitative and qualitative. For quantitative, I’m assuming that you have some kind of analytics running on your site as well as event tracking. Track which navigation links are getting the most interaction. Be sure to use event tracking on both primary, utility, and footer links. Name them accordingly. Try and determine which links get the most interaction, on which pages, and follow where the users tend to end up.

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Of course, with quantitative data, you don’t have a really good understanding of the reasons behind user behavior. You can make assumptions, but those won’t get you very far. To get this kind of knowledge, you’ll need some qualitative data in the form of tree testing, also known as navigation testing.

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I’ve only used Optimal Workshop’s First-click testing tool for tree testing, so I can’t speak to the process with other services (I imagine that it would be similar). Here are the general steps below — you can find a more detailed process in this Tree Testing 101 guide.

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Create/import a sitemap for your existing site navigation.

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For my recent project, I focused benchmarking on the primary navigation. Don’t combine different types of navigation testing in one — you can do that in a usability test. Here, we’ll just be testing the primary navigation. Search and utility links are secondary, so save those for another time.

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Set up user tasks and questions.

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Take the user tasks you’ve identified earlier and enter them into a tree test. From this point on, go with best practices when setting up your tree test.

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• Limit to 8-10 tasks so that you don’t overwhelm your participants. Aim to keep your tree test to 15 minutes long or less so your participants don’t get exhausted, either.
• Prepare pre-study questions — These are a good way to gather data about your participants, reconfirming their priority and validating any assumptions you have about this user group.
• Prepare post-task questions — Use confidence and free-form feedback questions to feel out how confident the user is in completing each task.

For more tips on setting up your tree test, check out this Knowledge Base article.

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Run your tree test!

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• Do a dry run with someone who is not on your team so you can see if it makes sense.
• Do a moderated version with a test participant using screen-sharing. The test participant could think aloud and that could give you more insight to the findability of the task. Keep in mind that moderated sessions tend to run longer than unmoderated sessions so your metrics will be different.
• Execute, implement, and run!

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Analyze your tree test results

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Once you’ve finished testing, it’s time to look for patterns. Set up the baseline metrics using success rate, time spent, patterns in the pietrees — this is the fun stuff!

Focus on the tasks that did not fare as well, particularly the ones that had an overall score of 7 or below. This is an easy indicator that you should pay more attention to the labeling or even the choice you indicated as the correct answer.

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What’s next?

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From here, you can set up the same tree test using a competitor’s site tree and the same user tasks. This is helpful to test whether a competitor’s navigation structure is an improvement over your existing one. It also helps with discussions where a stakeholder is particularly married to a certain navigation scheme and you’re asked to answer: which one is better? Having the results from this test helps you answer the question objectively.

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• here are the reasons why a user is on your site
• here is what they’re trying to do
• here is what happens when they try to find this on your site
• here is what happens when they try to find the same thing on your competitor’s

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When you have a proposed sitemap, test it again with the same tasks and you can use these to figure out whether the changes you made changed anything. You can also conduct this test over time.

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A few more things to note

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You could daisy-chain one tree test after another to test an existing nav and a competitor’s. Just keep in mind that you may need to limit the number of user tasks per tree test so that you don’t overwhelm the participant.

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Further reading

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• "How to get the most out of tree testing" - This presentation from Steve Byrne contains some key things you need to keep in mind when planning and running a tree test.
• "Tree testing in the design process - Part 1: The research phase" - This blog by Dave O'Brien discusses how tree testing fits in when you're designing a website.
• "Treejack takes a trip with American Airlines" - This article shows how Treejack is used in a real-life scenario.

Qualitative user research is about exploration. Exploration is about the journey, not only the destination (or outcome). Gaining information and insights about your users through interviews, usability testing, contextual, observations and diary entries. Using these qualitative research methods to not only answer your direct queries, but to uncover and unravel your users ‘why’.

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It can be important to use qualitative research to really dig deep, get to know your users and get inside their heads, and their reasons. Creating intuitive and engaging products that deliver the best user experience. 

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What is qualitative research? 🔎

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The term ‘qualitative’ refers to things that cannot be measured numerically and qualitative user research is no exception. Qualitative research is primarily an exploratory research method that is typically done early in the design process and is useful for uncovering insights into people’s thoughts, opinions, and motivations. It allows us to gain a deeper understanding of problems and provides answers to questions we didn’t know we needed to ask. 

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Qualitative research could be considered the ‘why’. Where quantitative user research uncovers the how or the what users want. Qualitative user research will uncover why they make decisions (and possibly much more).

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Priorities ⚡⚡⚡⚡

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When undertaking user research it is great to do a mix of quantitative and qualitative research. Which will round out the numbers with human driven insights.

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Quantitative user research methods, such as card sorting or tree testing, will answer the ‘what’ your users want, and provide data to support this. These insights are number driven and are based on testing direct interaction with your product. This is super valuable to report to stakeholders. Hard data is difficult to argue what changes need to be made to how your information architecture (IA) is ordered, sorted or designed. To find out more about the quantitative research options, take a read.

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Qualitative user research, on the other hand, may uncover a deeper understanding of ‘why’ your users want the IA ordered, sorted or designed a certain way.  The devil is in the detail afterall and great user insights are discoverable. 

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Priorities for your qualitative research needs to be less about the numbers, and more on discovering your users ‘why’. Observing, listening, questioning and looking at reasons for users decisions will provide valuable insights for product design and ultimately improve user experience.

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Usability Testing - this research method is used to evaluate how easy and intuitive a product is to use.  Observing, noting and watching the participant complete tasks without interference or questions can uncover a lot of insights that data alone can’t give. This method can be done in a couple of ways, moderated or unmoderated. While it can be quicker to do unmoderated and easier to arrange, the deep insights will come out of moderated testing. 

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Observational - with this qualitative research method your insights will be uncovered from observing and noting what the participant is doing, paying particular attention to their non-verbal communication. Where do they demonstrate frustration, or turn away from the task, or change their approach? Factual note taking, meaning there shouldn’t be any opinions attached to what is being observed, is important to keep the insights unbiased.

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Contextual - paying attention to the context in which the interview or testing is done is important. Is it hot, loud, cold or is the screen of their laptop covered in post-its that make it difficult to see? Or do they struggle with navigating using the laptop tracker? All of this noted, in a factual manner, without personal inferring or added opinion based observations can give a window into why the participant struggled or was frustrated at any point.

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These research methods can be done as purely observational research (you don’t interview or converse with your participant) and noting how they interact (more interested in the process than the outcome of their product interaction). Or, these qualitative research methods can be coupled with an

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Interview - a series of questions asked around a particular task or product. Careful note taking around what the participant says as well as noting any observations. This method should allow a conversation to flow. Whilst the interviewer should be prepared with a list of questions around their topic, remain flexible enough to dig deeper where there might be details or insights of interest. An interviewer that is comfortable in getting to know their participants unpicks reservations and allows a flow of conversation, and generates amazing insights.

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With an interview it can be of use to have a second person in the room to act as the note taker. This can free up the interviewer to engage with the participant and unpick the insights.

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Using a great note taking side kick, like our Reframer, can take the pain out of recording all these juicy and deep insights. Time-stamping, audio or video recordings and notes all stored in one place. Easily accessed by the team, reviewed, reports generated and stored for later.

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Let’s consider 🤔

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You’re creating a new app to support your gym and it’s website. You’re looking to generate personal training bookings, allow members to book classes or have updates and personalise communication for your members. But before investing in final development it needs to be tested. How do your users interact with it? Why would they want to? Does it behave in a way that improves the user experience? Or does it simply not deliver? But why?

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First off, using quantitative research like Chalkmark would show how the interface is working. Where are users clicking, where do they go after that. Is it simple to use? You now have direct data that supports your questions, or possibly suggests a change of design to support quicker task completion, or further engagement.

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While all of this is great data for the design, does it dig deep enough to really get an understanding of why your users are frustrated? Do they find what they need quickly? Or get completely lost? Finding out these insights and improving on them can make the most of your users’ experience.

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When quantitative research is coupled with robust qualitative research that prioritizes an in-depth understanding of what your users need, ultimately the app can make the most of your users’ experience.

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Using moderated usability testing for your gym app, observations can be made about how the participant interacts with the interface. Where do they struggle, get lost, or where do they complete a task quickly and simply. This type of research enhances the quantitative data and gives insight into where and why the app is or isn't performing.

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Then interviewing participants about why they make decisions on the app, how they use it and why they would use it. These focussed questions, with some free flow conversation will round out your research. Giving valuable insights that can be reviewed, analyzed and reported to the product team and key stakeholders. Focussing the outcome, and designing a product that delivers on not just what users need, but in-depth understand of why. 

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Wrap Up 🥙

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Quantitative and qualitative user research do work hand in hand, each offering a side to the same coin. Hard number driven data with quantitative user research will deliver the what needs to be addressed. With focussed quantitative research it is possible to really get a handle on why your users interact with your product in a certain way, and how. 

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The Optimal Workshop platform has all the tools, research methods and even the note taking tools you need to get started with your user research, now, not next week! See you soon.

We take a look at three qualitative research methods which can be started quickly with a bit of planning, and minimal participants while delivering great data insights.

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What is qualitative research? 🤔

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The term ‘qualitative’ refers to things that cannot be measured numerically and qualitative research is no exception. Qualitative research is primarily an exploratory research method that is typically done early in the design process. It's useful for uncovering insights into people’s thoughts, opinions, and motivations. It allows us to gain a deeper understanding of problems and provides answers to questions we didn’t know we needed to ask. 

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Qualitative research can be viewed as the 'why' versus quantitative user research which uncovers the 'how' or the 'what' users want. Qualitative user research helps us uncover why people make decisions (and potentially much more).

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Here's three qualitative research exercises you can start today:

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1. Usability testing 👨🏼💻

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Usability testing is a research method designed to evaluate how easy something is to use by testing it with representative users. In most cases, this ‘something’ is a prototype of a website or interface. Or it could just as easily be an existing website or product that requires more understanding of how it is currently used to identify faults or issues.

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These tests typically involve observing a participant as they work through a series of tasks involving the product being tested. It’s a good idea to bring a notetaker along, so you can focus on asking questions. After you’ve conducted several usability tests, you can analyze your observations to identify the most common issues.

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This can be a very practical start to the user research process. Observing, questioning and noting how a user interacts with your product in a very real environment can offer up some fantastic insights. 

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How many participants do I need to get started?

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Usability testing is done in a real world environment which means you need your participant to complete tasks on a laptop or mobile phone. Ideally this is in a controlled environment, an office or space that can be managed. Usability testing relies on the facilitator being present. So, to start you only need five participants which helps as it isn't too many people to find and set up.

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What to note: Usability testing is a great way to get an understanding of how exactly the participant interacts with the product. Note how they complete tasks, where their frustrations may be. Also look beyond what they are saying and observing what they are doing.  This is invaluable to get the full picture of how they feel and analyzing the user experience.

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2. Contextual inquiry 👀

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Contextual inquiry is the observation of behaviours and reactions when users undertake specific tasks. By observing and paying attention to unspoken communication, you can uncover insights into behaviour and even expectations.

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Giving the participant a set of tasks and observing how they complete these can be quite enlightening. Often what we do can be quite different to what we say we are doing. 

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By noting all of this during the testing session, and keeping our notes factual, they can provide context for why the participant may have changed their decision in a task or even abandoned it entirely.  Ensuring that you don’t try and infer why they are feeling a certain way, and how that may influence their decisions is important to gaining insights.

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How many participants do I need to get started?

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Like usability testing this method only needs a minimal one-on-one environment to get started.  A facilitator sets the test and observes the participant interacting with the product. You can start with as few as five participants, which means getting started with qualitative testing can be very quick to implement.

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What to note: How they move or act while they complete tasks.   Do they cross their arms, scratch their head or  even sigh?  Little things like trouble using the keyboard, can be implicit in how well they interpret the website.

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3. User interviews 👩🏻💻📓✍🏻💡

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User interviews are one-on-one facilitated conversations that are used to gain in-depth understanding of behaviours, opinions, and attitudes towards a product.

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Building a relationship with the participant can be valuable, allowing the conversation to flow, and remove barriers. Interviews are an excellent opportunity to ask questions as well as dig deeper into the detail.   They allow for follow up if further clarification be needed. Interviews are usually semi-structured with a list of open questions that are flexible enough to allow the interviewer to cover the required topics but also go wherever the conversation leads. 

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Interviews are also quite flexible because they don’t necessarily have to be conducted face to face. If time and resources are tight, they work just as well over the phone or via skype. Sessions can be recorded through note taking audio or video recording.

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If you want to find out more about how to do a phone interview, have a read here. 

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There can be a flow over of observational insights. This can be as simple as noting throughout the session, how they react to certain set tasks. Are there moments that they are frustrated? Do they turn back and look for another way? Or do they seem irritated by the hardware, the laptop, mouse or even the reflection on the screen? All valuable (unspoken) information on how and why the participant makes decisions.

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How many participants do I need to get started?

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As with our three qualitative research methods you need a minimal number of participants to really get started with user interviews. They rely on a facilitator that does one-on-one interviews with a set of predetermined questions. You can start with as few as five participants, and depending on the research they can be from inside or outside your company. But they should be as relaxed, and natural as possible, to allow for real responses and observations.

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What to note: User interviews are far more conversational than the previous two methods. You should have a script to work from, which will intend to uncover why your participant will want to work with your product a certain way. However, the interview allows some flexibility, with the facilitator able to dig deeper if needed, or change tack. Note the flow of conversation, and the various responses, as well as observed behaviours in a factual way.

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Reviewing your research 🕵🏼

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After completing your session it is just as important to review it. Spend the time while it’s still fresh in your mind filling in any gaps in information by reviewing the audio and/or video. Great note taking is vital and using a digital note taking software (like our very own Reframer) can make the whole process much simpler and easier, to record, review, analyze and share your data.  If you want more tips on how to take great notes in qualitative user research have a look at this.

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Delivering your data 🎁

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So, you’ve gone ahead and researched your product and you’ve got some amazing insights and data. What now? You need to pull it all together in a cohesive manner that breaks down what you’ve discovered and what it means. If you use our digital note taking software, Reframer, this can be fairly straight forward and streamlined. Having all of your notes, audio and video recordings, timestamping and observations in one place will allow the data to be generated and reviewed (and shared) swiftly. Pull together a report that can be shared among key shareholders and product managers. Present it in a way that allows your insights to clearly show where changes are needed, or improvements to the user experience can be made. It’s hard to argue with well researched data!

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Wrap Up 🌯

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If you always thought that qualitative research was too hard, or took too long, think again. Take a look at the Optimal Workshop platform and we can help you through the whole process, taking the pain out, and putting the insights in. 

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Ready to get started finding out how your users really interact with your product? Get started now, and lots of our products mean you can start today!

Qualitative user research is just as important a part of rounding out your user research as quantitative. But unlike quantitative research, the data insights can only be as good as the note-taking. This can mean that the way you do your note-taking may have a huge impact on the insights that are taken from the data. We’ll take a look at what qualitative research is, the methods for recording notes in the session and some tips on making sure your notes are robust.

What is qualitative research

Quantitative research such as card sorting or tree testing looks at the 'what' and 'how' of users who want to use your product, qualitative research looks into the why.

Making the most of your users research means you shouldn't only look at what or how users want to experience your product but also why they made those decisions. This depth of knowledge and understanding can ultimately enrich the user experience (UX) and improve your product engagement.

The type of qualitative research that we’ll be talking about is primarily in-person interviews with participants. It includes behavioural observations while completing set tasks and responding to a set of questions relating to the product.

When interviewing participants it is important to have a script, and to stick to that script. This will help drive the interview and ensure you get to the bottom of ‘why’ users are making decisions. Your focus should be on your participant, noticing spoken responses as well as how they are behaving. To this end, it can be useful to have a second person present, whose sole role is note-taking. Video or audio recording a session can be a sure way to review your session in the future, ensuring you don’t miss anything.

Note-taking methods

Pen and paper

While digital tools dominate our usability testing methods, handwritten notes or post-its can still be useful to capture what is happening in a group. This method works the best one-on-one or for smaller groups with a limited amount of data. Trying to make notes with larger groups can quickly become unwieldy.

Benefits

• The information can be collected in the moment and at the time. 
• With the physical nature of writing with pen and paper you are more likely to take fuller notes as your brain is engaged with the process. 
• No keyboard noise. Not having the physical barrier of the laptop can also help to relax the interviewee.

Downsides

• The data can’t be quickly collated into a digital format. 
• A lot of work needs to happen after the session to enter the information into a digital format that can sort and store the information for future analysis, sharing and search.

Text editor or spreadsheet

Using a text editor like Word or Google doc can be a quicker way to add the information into a digital format (skipping the step between pen and paper to digital). 

Benefits 

• The information and data can be entered quickly and accurately.
• No need to enter the information into another format after the session.
• Data can be searched quickly.

Downsides 

• The sound of the keyboard could be distracting.
• Taking notes digitally can be less engaging for the note taker.

Qualitative research tool

Using a dedicated qualitative research tool can facilitate and accelerate the interpretation of your data. A dedicated qualitative research tool, like Reframer, combines the advantages of a digital tool with special features for data analysis.

Benefits

• Speeding up the analysis process.
• Removing the need to copy data into other formats. 
• Making analysis, search and storing of the data swift and accurate.
• Ability to add audio or video recordings directly into the data, keeping everything in one place.
• Sharing notes and data is easy and quick and can include stakeholders throughout the process.
• Consistency across note-taking, with a reliable and consistent format.

Downsides of using a research tool are:

• The sound of the keyboard can be distracting.

While there are benefits to all of three of these methods, note-taking in general can be quite off-putting when undertaking user research.

To help take the pain out of the process, and ease the collection of information, we’ve got 6 tips for making the most of Reframer. 

During the session it is vital to take quality notes, and the outcome of your data, and ultimately insights will rely on these. And there is an art to taking the right notes. These notes can be taken directly by you, the interviewer, or a dedicated note taker could be used. Using a qualitative research tool can ensure that the notes that are taken are consistent and easy to manage. Using a qualitative research tool, Reframer, doesn’t rely on the same person taking the notes each time, helping the data output be consistent. 

9 tips to help you take great notes

Whether you are taking notes, manually or digitally there are a few tricks to help you take better notes, resulting in better data, and ultimately better insights. It can be valuable to have one person facilitating the interview, and able to focus on the participant, while the other is the notetaker, leaving you both to focus on your role is for the session.

Here's nine tips to make sure that your note-taking is as good as it can be:

1. Record your sessions (audio or video): If you can, record the audio and/or video of your session. You’ll be able to listen or watch the session later and pick up on anything you may have missed. Loading into Reframer is quick and easy, and means that the notes and the audio/video are kept together, timestamped and shared easily.
2. Note down timestamps during the session: Make a note of the time whenever something interesting happens. This will help you to jump back into the recording later and listen or watch the part again. 
3. Capture your observations during the session: Capturing observations during the session will allow a fuller understanding of behavioural observations as well as spoken responses. Reframer can help make this simpler with tags that can be quickly added at the time to make note-taking simpler.
4. Make a note of everything – even if it doesn’t seem to matter: Sometimes even the smallest things can have a significant impact on how a participant performs in a usability test. Note down if they’re having trouble with the laptop or device, for example.
5. Stay true to the facts:  Make sure you take the position of an objective observer and don’t make assumptions about how the participant’s thinking or feeling. If you do want to add conclusions or possible explanations of behavior clearly indicate this.
6. Be consistent with your format: Be consistent about your note taking perspective (1st or 3rd person), the style (bullet points vs. floating text) and the format of the timestamps. Clearly differentiate quotes from observations. This becomes simpler with the use of Reframer, meaning you can focus on the session.
7. Carefully paraphrase: Making sure that your notes are clear, and capture what is said and happening in the session is important. It's just as important not to write it down word for word, or to infer what you believe is happening.
8. Highlight missed or incomplete parts: Using time-stamping can become very useful when it comes to noting where there may be missed or incomplete sections. This allows post analysis to quickly find where information is missing and check against audio or video files to fill in the blanks. 
9. Recap after your session: Take time as soon as possible to review the session, while it is still fresh in your mind. Make edits, add missed parts and details. Using a qualitative research tool can mean that you can quickly review the audio or video and add tags and detail to sections quickly and easily. This makes review time quicker and capturing detail easier.

Wrap up

You want to get started with your qualitative research but it all feels a little tricky. Through the Optimal Workshop platform and with our Reframer tool you can get started quickly, and we can help guide you through the process of getting your research underway.

Worried about finding participants? We have that sorted too. With 50+ million quality participants at your fingertips. 

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.

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

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There is a rising research trend in 2021.

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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.

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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.

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Mixed Method UX research is the research trend of 2021

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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What is mixed method research?

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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. 

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

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

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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How to do mixed method research

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

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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A fuller picture, means a better understanding.

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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.

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Upcoming research trends to watch

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

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1. Integrated Surveys

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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. 

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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. 

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2. Return to the social research

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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.

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

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3. Co-creation

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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.

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4. Owned Panels & Community

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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.

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What does this all mean for me

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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. 

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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Why not get in deeper with mixed method research today!