Optimal Blog

As humans, we have a unique talent. Our brains are designed to identify patterns and fill in blanks. That’s why we see shapes in clouds, faces in the tea leaves at the bottom of our mugs and patterns in rock formations.

This ability to create a whole that’s more than the sum of its parts isn’t an unknown phenomenon. In fact, it’s one of the underlying ideas of what’s known as the gestalt principles of visual perception.

As UX designers, user researchers and web designers, an understanding of these principles can help you to better understand how your users perceive and interpret your products and services – and build better human experiences.

What are the Gestalt Principles?

All the way back in the 1920s, a group of German psychologists (Wolfgang Köhler, Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka) wanted to better understand how humans perceive the world around them. They were interested in learning more about how the human brain makes sense of chaos.

These “gestalt psychologists” found that humans tend to group different elements together, identify patterns and find order in disorder. Interestingly, the psychologists found that humans don’t do this randomly – there are a number of principles that our brains use.

At the time, the growing field of design began to use the gestalt psychology principles in order to create designs that are more than the sum of their parts. The hidden arrow between the E and the X in the FedEx logo is just one example of this.

Understanding the Gestalt Principles

What happens when someone first sees the logo of your organization? How do they experience seeing the design for the first time? Gestalt psychology has a powerful role to play in how we perceive objects. If you want to create products and services that resonate with the people you intend to serve, understanding the gestalt principles is a good place to start – and it’s not that difficult.

With a solid understanding of these principles, you’ll be able to better direct people to what you want them to see, know which elements to use and when, and build better human experiences. 

Here are the gestalt pricinples that we’ll be covering:

• Similarity
• Figure/Ground
• Proximity
• Closure
• Common region
• Symmetry and order
• Continuity
• Common fate

Similarity

Principle: The gestalt principle of similarity states that when things appear to share some visual characteristics, they are assumed to be related in some way and we group them. These things don’t need to be identical, they just need to share a visible trait such as shape, size or color.

Look down from a high-rise building at a parking lot and you’ll immediately start grouping cars that are the same color. This is the principle of similarity and it’s a useful tool for UX designers.

How to use this principle: You can use color in your products and services to indicate items with common functionality, for example in CTA buttons or links. On the other hand, you can use shape to indicate grouping.

Figure/Ground

Principle: Our brains instinctively distinguish between objects in the foreground and objects in the background. 

Usually, we will interpret the larger area of an image as the background and the smaller part of the image as the foreground. Whenever someone first opens your mobile app or lands on your website, the figure/ground gestalt principle shows them what they should be focusing on.

How to use this principle: Use figure/ground to guide users to what you want them to see. This is particularly useful when you have something active that you need them to take action on, for example, a sign-up form or a search bar. In the case of the sign-up form, having the rest of the screen fade into the background can show users that the form is currently what they should be focusing on.

Proximity

Principle: Things close together appear to be more related than things that are further apart.

The gestalt principle of proximity is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal, and can easily override other factors like color and shape. Mechanisms of perception (like proximity) compete with one another, and it’s important to understand which mechanisms you can use to accomplish your goals.

How to use this principle: You can use the gestalt law of proximity to get your users to identify the organization or structure that you want them to see without using borders. A good example of this would be grouping items on an online shopping website.

Closure

Principle: When we look at a complex arrangement of individual elements, we first try and identify a single, recognizable pattern.

The law of closure allows us to look at an image with missing parts, fill in the gaps and recognize the complete image so we can understand the pattern. This law is commonly used in logo design, where our brains fill in the gaps to understand the complete image.

How to use this principle: You can use closure to create delight (as in the example above), but it’s important to recognize that closure can also be used to mislead and to harm. As Andy Rutledge explains, even when closure works, it could be telling you a lie. It’s your job as a UXer to be aware of this.

Common region

Principle: When objects are located within the same closed region, we perceive them as being grouped together.

Common region is closely related to proximity and is an excellent tool for separating groups of objects, even if they’re close in proximity, size, color or shape.

How to use this principle: Use visible borders or barriers in your designs to create a sense of separation between different groups of objects.  

Symmetry and order

Principle: Our brains tend to group together objects that are symmetrical with each other.

In German, the law of symmetry and order is known as prägnanz, which translates to “good figure”.

How to use this principle: Your designs should be balanced and complete, or you risk having users spend time trying to perceive a larger overall picture.

Focal point

Principle: What stands out visually will capture a user’s attention first.

Focal points are areas of interest or difference within a composition. You can create a focal point by giving it more weight than other elements.

How to use this principle: Consider the focal point principle when you need to draw a user’s attention to an element on your page. For example, a call to action button or a sign-up button.

Continuity

Principle: Elements arranged on a line or curve are perceived as more related than elements not on the same line or curve.

Once our eye begins to follow something, it will continue in that direction until it encounters another element. A good example of the continuity principle is a line with an arrow at the end. It indicates that we should follow the line to see where the arrow is pointing.

The continuity principle isn’t all about physical attributes such as lines and arrows. Continuity can also come from the logical groupings of items, for example in a field. When collecting information about a user’s location, for example, all geographical information should be arranged together.

How to use this principle: Consider the continuity principle both in terms of physical attributes and logical attributes – especially when designing forms.

Common fate

Principle: We perceive elements moving in the same direction as more related than elements that are moving in different directions or stationary.

We use the principle of common fate every day of our lives. In fact, we as humans are wired to recognize contrasting movement over any other visual cue, whether it’s color, size, contrast or tone. Consider driving down the highway. The cars moving in the same direction as you are background noise, but when a car enters your lane from a side street you tend to immediately notice and respond.

How to use this principle: This principle is key in motion design, with functional animation using common fate to guide our eye.

Wrap-up

Building a solid understanding of the gestalt principles can help you to build better human experiences. Whether you're working on a new website or the sign-up flow in a mobile app, knowing how (and when) you should deploy these principles can mean the difference between a design that's user-friendly and one that's misleading.

When faced with market research, it can be overwhelming as you try to figure out which path to take. There are methods that work better for smaller businesses or certain industries. There are methods that are better financially or more efficient depending on the city your company is centered in. The variables are endless, but regardless of how you end up tackling your market research, applying the agile principles can have a powerful influence over your approach. 

The principles of the agile manifesto cover everything from the frequency of releasing new products to technical excellence to reflecting on your work. The principles have been used in many thorough frameworks for developing software companies and can also apply to market research methods, especially qualitative research methods, which can be less clearly defined. There are twelve basic principles of agile:

1. Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software products & services.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. 
3. Deliver working products & services frequently.
4. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
5. Simplicity is essential.
6. Technical excellence and good design enhance agility.
7. Business people and developers must work together throughout the project.
8. Build projects around motivated individuals, and trust them to get the job done.
9. Promote sustainable development. 
10. Face-to-face conversation.
11. Self-organizing teams.
12. The team reflects on how to become more effective, then adjusts its behavior accordingly.

These 12 principles are, on their own, a solid way to approach product development, but when examined through the lens of market research, they can be especially helpful. Approaching all 12 principles in the face of creating a market research plan could be a bit much to think about, but they can easily be summed up into three steps. These steps are: 

1. Communication
2. Embracing change
3. Collaboration

Communication 

Through continuous, succinct, and direct communication, you can reach the first of the agile principles. This first step is the foundation for any market research plan. To create a product that customers need and to reach those customers, a company needs to know that customer. They must know who they are, what they need and don’t need, which parts of a product may be unnecessary. It is only through communication that we can gain this knowledge, making this perhaps the most critical agile principle as it is the basis of all further market research. 

This can further be examined in how the team communicates as the team must be able to communicate well, thoroughly, and openly among themselves as well as with consumers. The collaborative team must express concerns, look at the data with an open mind, and explore solutions together. 

Embracing Uncertainty

Embracing uncertainty covers the majority of the agile principles. It isn’t just about embracing uncertainty, but about using that uncertainty to your advantage. No matter how much market research you complete before launching a product, the initial feedback (and the way you segment feedback to illuminate insights) will further influence action on that product once it’s launched. By embracing the uncertainty of those initial reactions, you can find the best ways to change a product for the future. 

Beyond that, time will inevitably alter the product further. Any number of things can change your customer’s needs, from social changes to the economy, and the product you produce must be able to roll with those changes. The best way to make sure that happens is to embrace uncertainty within your market research plan. Expanding your plan so that you can collect market research data over your product’s life  will help your company embrace this portion of the agile principles.  To sum it up, one must be willing to accept this kind of change to continue pursuing excellence and work toward a product that meets your customers’ needs.

Constant Collaboration

Collaboration is essential to product development, launching software, and maintaining customer support. A large, diverse team is the best way to develop a market research plan that will cover all of the bases. A well-organized, well-motivated plan requires a variety of personality types, backgrounds, and skill levels. 

There are pitfalls and issues in any product found by having a diverse team, working in constant collaboration, preventing them from becoming a problem. In this way, a truly collaborative team can work to develop a more comprehensive market research plan. 

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of this step is the ability to change based on collaboration. As well as looking at the ability to communicate openly, all team members need to be open to adjusting their actions (or the product) based on that communication. 

The agile principles can enhance any business, but you will see more effective results when applied directly to your market research plan, saving time and money on potential mistakes. Not only do these principles serve to make your software company more effective, but they also reduce costs on the development of your product and the cost of troubleshooting any potential issues that arise. By the time of your next launch, you're ready to face it with confidence and with a solid gameplan in mind. Fingers crossed!

The Age of the Customer is well and truly here. In every industry and vertical across the globe, UX professionals now dictate the terms, placing customers at the heart of every design decision. Or at least, this is the new reality that’s unfolding in the organizations and businesses that don’t want to be left behind.

Make no mistake; simply claiming to be the best is no longer enough. To survive and thrive, people need to be placed at the heart. The golden key that will allow organizations to pivot to this new reality lies with that of the user researcher.

But it’s not enough to simply “do user research”. Sure, some customer insight is obviously better than none at all, but to really be useful it needs to be effective research. That’s what this article is all about.

Get comfortable, because this is going to be a long one – for good reason.

Why (effective) user research is so important

You are not your user. As much as you may like to think that you are, you’re not. It can be a tricky proposition to get your head around, especially when we regularly assume that everyone thinks like us. There are 8 billion people out there who have a vastly different set of experiences and perspectives than you. With that in mind, when we start to generalize based on our own personal experiences, this is what’s known as availability bias.

Unfortunately, solving this is issue not as easy as getting into a room with customers and having a chat. People don’t always tell the truth! This isn’t to say that the participant in your last user interview was flat out lying to you, but the things that people say are different from the things that people do. It;’s your job (as a user researcher) to intuit the actual behaviors and actions, and identify their needs based on this data.

When you’re doing your job correctly, you’ve given your organization the best possible chance of success. Everything  – and I mean everything – starts with a solid understanding of your users. Doors will open, paths will reveal themselves – you get the idea.

The qualities of an effective user researcher

Let me preface this section by saying that you don’t have to have all of these qualities in spades, the list below is really just a way for you to better understand some of the traits of an effective user researcher, to get you thinking and on the right path.

• Curious: User research can be quite repetitive, especially when you get to the 6th user interview and need to ask the same questions. A genuine curiosity about people, the challenges they face and their behaviors will go a long way in helping you to push through.
• Pragmatic: Being an idealist has its uses, but it’s also important to be pragmatic. As a researcher, you need to operate on a fine line and balance your capacity to do research with business goals, finances and the desires of your stakeholders. Do the most with what you’ve got.
• Organized: It takes a lot to plan a research project, from scheduling testing sessions to assembling large slide decks for presentations. You’ve got to manage a large number of complex components, so it’s important that you can organize and prioritize.
• Collaborative: User research is most effective when it’s carried out collaboratively. This means working with your team, with the organization and with other disciplines. Think outside the box: Who stands to benefit from your research and how can you involve them?
• Empathetic: Real, natural empathy is a rare trait, but adopting an empathetic mindset is something everyone can (and should) learn. Beyond just uncovering insights from your participants, consider what these insights mean and how they all connect. This will truly enable you to understand your users.
• Sociable: You don’t have to suddenly adopt an extroverted persona, but being actively interested in other people will help you build relationships both inside your organization and with customers.
• Perceptive: User research means listening and observing. During a user interview or usability test, you need to be able to filter all of the data entering your mind and extract the most relevant insights.
• Analytical: In a similar vein to perceptiveness, being analytical is also key if you want to understand all of the data that your research will produce. Filter, examine, extract and move on.

How to run user research effectively (and at a low cost)

There are innumerable methods for user research, but many are resource- and time-intensive. What’s more, certain research methods come attached with significant costs.

But, research doesn’t have to be the time and money sink that it can often first appear to be. Certain actions before you ever step into the room with a participant can make a world of difference.

Conduct research at the start

User research is obviously valuable whenever you do it, but you’ll see the biggest impact when you carry it out right the start of a project. Conduct research to get the lay of the land; to learn how and why customers make certain decisions, and where the biggest opportunities lie.

Note: Don’t research in a silo, involve your team, stakeholders and other interested parties.

Have clear goals – and a plan

Every research project needs a clear objective, and that comes from a detailed UX research plan, which includes well-formulated research questions. Every project will have a different question, but they’re the best starting point to ensure research success.

Choose the right methods

There’s no shortage of research methods to choose from, but being an effective user researcher is all about being able to pick the right methods for each project, and use them correctly. Nearly every research project will benefit from using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in order to generate the most useful insights.

To understand which method to use, it’s a good idea to view them using the following framework:

Involve stakeholders

Bring stakeholders into your research project as early as possible. These are the people that will end up utilizing the results of your work, and chances are they’re the ones who’ll have the most questions at the end. Involve them through consultation, regular updates, the all-too-important presentation at the end of the project and by letting them take notes for you during research sessions.

Wrap up

It’s not enough to simply run a card sort now (although that’s still a very useful exercise). You need to think cohesively about the role of your research in your organization and make sure that you’re as aware of your bias as you are of the various methods and tools available to you. Happy researching!

Getting stakeholders aligned and engaged with your research is rarely easy. In fact, it’s typically one of the hardest parts of being a user researcher.

I’ve seen it time and again: researchers pouring their hearts and souls into discovery and analysis projects, only to have leadership teams and different subject matter experts pay little or no attention to the outputs. There is one useful tool for stakeholder alignment, however, and when used correctly it can change how those aforementioned leadership teams and subject matter experts see your research.

Note-taking: A brief recap

The process of note-taking isn’t rocket science – and it’s exactly what it sounds like: Writing observations down during a user interview or other user test in order to identify any useful insights.

In more qualitative forms of research, the note-taking process is essential. It’s how you capture qualitative data. In a card sort, it’s more of an auxiliary exercise that can add another layer of insight.

The core skill with note-taking isn’t necessarily typing, it’s about the note-takers ability to transform observations that they’re making into readable and digestible text. Being a fast typer doesn’t always make for a good note-taker!

This is what makes note-taking an ideal tool for stakeholder engagement. It’s low effort and is an easy way to bring other people into the research process. This is time well spent, as the people who consume the outputs of your research should have an interest in the problems that you’re researching.

3 ways note-taking drives stakeholder engagement

Beyond being a tool to improve stakeholder engagement with your research, the added bonus of getting these people in the room with you as note-takers is that you’re free from the responsibility.

Whether it’s a card sort, user interview or usability test, you can focus on guiding your participants through the various tasks while your stakeholder jots down observations.

Here are 3 ways note-taking can help to drive stakeholder engagement in your research.

1. They get the chance to contribute to your research

Picture this. You’re at the end of your next research project, and you’re standing up at the front of a meeting room alongside a slide deck. It’s time to present your findings back to the original stakeholders of the project. Now consider how much more engaged they’ll be if they also had the opportunity to take part in the note-taking process.

Instead of simply reading your figures and findings, they’ll know exactly where they’ve come from and have a real connection to the data.

2. They can listen to real customers

It’s not often that stakeholders – typically those in leadership positions – get the chance to interact with customers. Usually, they hear about customer experiences second-hand from sales, marketing and customer service teams.

When you bring a stakeholder in as a note-taker, they’re able to hear from customers directly. Being in the room with customers as they try out new features or products is always interesting for those in the higher rungs of an organization.

3. You can generate insights together

Bringing stakeholders into your research sessions as note-takers means you can then collaborate with them to generate findings, thus helping you to reach a consensus quicker. Why does this work? Instead of simply taking a finalized set of findings to your stakeholders, they are with you in the room taking the notes and identifying insights together in the debrief session afterward.

The best tools for note-taking

Forget typing up notes in a document on a laptop – there are a significant number of qualitative note-taking tools available that make the process of note-taking and analysis much easier.

At Optimal Workshop, our tool for this job is Reframer, and it’s a powerful way to improve the qualitative note-taking process. With Reframer, you can log all your notes and observations in one place. After the research session is over, you can make sense of your findings quickly with easy-to-use analysis tools.

Wrap up

You don’t need to bring stakeholders in solely as note-takers. If they’d rather act as passive observers, there’s still immense value in having them in the room with you. Remember: It’s all about getting these people in sync with your research so that they’re better able to see the value of what you do, day to day!

There comes a time in every research project when the actual ‘research’ comes to an end. At this stage, you’ve collated your data and extracted useful insights, and it’s time to take the critical next step: presenting your findings back to your stakeholders.

I remember the first time that I had to present data to stakeholders. My team and I had just run a series of user interviews to learn more about how user researchers seek out and use new learning resources. We’d identified the high-level takeaways and pulled them into a slide deck to take to the leadership team.

Now came the scary part. With the lead researcher on my team, I stood up in front of the group of stakeholders and bumbled my way through the findings. Thankfully, I was with a very capable researcher and we managed to get across all of the important points – but the experience taught me a lot about how to present to stakeholders effectively.

Use stories

One of the most effective techniques that you can use as a presenter is that of the storyteller. Start off by reminding your audience of the status quo, and then reveal the path to a better way of doing things. This sets up a conflict that needs to be resolved.

By establishing this tension, you’re in a better position to persuade your audience to adopt a new viewpoint. Harvard Business Review has a great article from Nancy Duarte that makes for an excellent starting point.

Make it visual

Your findings need to be understandable, not pretty. It’s your job to take everything that you’ve learned, distill it down into the most relevant points for your stakeholders, and then present it in such a way that they’ll be able to take the information on board. A key aspect of success here depends on the visuals.

Here are some key things to keep in mind when it comes to the visual aspects of your presentation:

• Don’t overwhelm your audience with numbers: Use simple formatting, commas and skip unnecessary decimals. Also, right-align columns of numbers so that they form a kind-of bar chart automatically, and your stakeholders can quickly locate the largest numbers.
• Avoid 3D charts (unless they’re the best option): 3D presentation charts are tempting, but they introduce more cognitive load by making people process another element. Of course, there are exceptions.
• Consider something other than the pie chart: Sure, it’s rare that you’ll see a presentation without a pie chart, but they are far from the best option. Why? Because humans aren’t as good at judging the relative differences in circles as opposed to lines. We can much more easily process a bar graph than a pie chart. 

Encourage feedback and questions

You’re not just presenting the findings of your research to inform your stakeholders, you also want agreement. Add to that, this is also a great opportunity to gather more information as well as any feedback.

Don’t be afraid of the Q&A. Ask your stakeholders if they have any questions or feedback on what you’ve just shown them. There are a few ways to do this. You can ask for questions throughout the presentation, at the end, or even send a recap email after the fact to gather written responses. 

Know who you’re talking to

You need to know exactly who you’re presenting to as well as what their priorities and interests are. For example, if you’re speaking to a marketing manager or the leadership team, drill into how your research could impact areas like your free to paid conversion rate, revenue in general or customer churn.

Keep it short, but have more detail available

No one really wants to be sitting in a room listening to a presentation for 2 hours. Try and get all of your key points across within 30 minutes and allot extra time at the end for questions and discussion.

In short, focus on the high-level findings of your research, but have more data available and ready to send out.

Have a TL;DR

It’s a well-known fact that people in upper management positions are often time-poor. That’s why it’s not uncommon to see smartphones and laptops come out in particularly long meetings. If you’re presenting to a group of these people, one of the best ways to give your findings the highest chance of sinking in is through a high-level overview slide, also known as a too long, didn’t read (TL;DR) slide.

The objective of this slide is to give your audience the key takeaways and most important findings. You may also want to insert links to more detailed explanations as well as your suggested next steps.

This is also a great tool for anyone who’s unable to attend your presentation – they’ll know exactly what they’re looking at without having to come to their own conclusions.

Give concrete recommendations

Last, but certainly not least, make sure that no matter what you’re presenting, you have concrete next steps outlined clearly for your audience. For every issue or challenge that you identify, ensure that you have a clear recommendation for how to address that problem. Yes, even if it seems trivial, it’s your job to outline the recommended next steps.

Your stakeholders obviously don’t have to take any of the actions that you propose, but you’re already deep in the problem space and so in the best position to propose further actions. 

Wrap up

Presenting the findings of a research project is an understandably scary undertaking for many researchers – but it shouldn’t be. Remember that you’re there to surface insights to the people that need to hear them, and that this is the best possible way to do so. The last thing you want is for your findings to never see the light of day outside of a shared drive folder.

So remember, focus on creating a useful, interesting presentation that speaks to the people in the room – and don’t be afraid to take questions! Good luck!

Discovery research prior to the design and development of products, services and features nearly always leads to better results, whether that means a better reception from your target audience or product/market fit.

But you already knew that.

You’re likely well aware that this all-too-important research phase helps you to gather a broad range of insights about the opportunities in front of you, better define exactly what problems you need to solve and get stakeholders and other parties involved early on.

With this in mind, which methods should you use to generate the best discovery outcomes? Let’s find out.

Interview your stakeholders

You’ll no doubt be familiar with the process of interviewing your users, but it’s now time to apply that same skillset to the stakeholders of your project. This is a fairly common user research practice, and can give you a good idea of the following:

• Organization goals: What problems is the business trying to solve?
• Constraints: What factors could stand in the way (whether technical or otherwise)?
• Current insights: What do your subject matter experts already know about the problem you’re trying to solve, and what do they know about your users?

Stakeholder interviews are an excellent place to start if you’re planning to build an entirely new product or build a substantial new feature for a product that’s already being used.

Analyze business data

You don’t always need to go outside of your organization to gather information about the problem space. Chances are (especially if you’re in an established company) that there are already reams of useful data just waiting for the right analytical eye.

When we talk about business data, we basically mean any data that the organization already has about the product or feature that you’re working on. This could come in many forms, for example, qualitative anecdotes from customer service teams, or quantitative data about usage from development teams. Analyzing this sort of quantitative and qualitative data will give you useful context about key stakeholders, user pain points, opportunities and even broader issues such as alignment.

Depending on when you start this process, you may find that digging into business data is also a good opportunity to introduce yourself to the stakeholders most closely aligned with the data.

Carry out competitor analysis

Competitive analysis is the process of comparing the products and services of one company (typically yours) with those of another company. You carry out competitive analysis by comparing different types of data. For example, when we here at Optimal Workshop redesigned our blog, we carried out a significant amount of discovery research, which included a large amount of competitive analysis of other blogs. We focused on things like functionality, types of content, target audience and design.

Competitor analysis is a great way to work out where you stand alongside your competitors. You can get an idea of opportunities that they’ve missed, things they do well and potential areas of innovation for your own organization.

Run user interviews

User interviews are a research method designed to get qualitative information directly from your users. Typically, user interviews involve asking people questions related to how they use a particular system, their behaviors and their usage habits.

This research method is useful across the lifecycle of a product, but it’s particularly relevant in the discovery phase. At this point in time, you can use the results of user interviews to build your customer journey maps and personas and segments.

Host a diary study

In a diary study, users log activities of daily activities as and when they occur to generate contextual information about their behaviors, wants and needs. You can then use this data to better understand feature and product requirements.

This method has obvious advantages when used in the discovery phase of a research project. By casting a wide net and having at least 10 participants involved, you can get a broad range of insights over a long period of time. Once you’re finished, you’ll have access to useful self-reported information about usage behavior, usage scenarios, habits and more.

Wrap up

Hopefully, this guide has given you a good introduction to some of the methods that you’ll want to use during your next discovery project. Once you’ve wrapped up your discovery work, you (and your team) should have a clear understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve as well as the opportunities and potential areas of innovation. Oh, and stakeholder alignment of course!

Keep in mind that it’s OK if the outcome of a discovery project is a dead-end – or a completely new direction. Discovery now helps you to avoid running into those issues after you’ve built a new product or feature. 

Happy discovery!