User Experience (UX) designers study how humans interact with products and services such as websites, apps, even teapots. Combining psychology, market research, business strategy, design, and technology, UX designers make these products and services more usable, enjoyable, and accessible for end users, while still making sure the business’ goals are being met.
If we’re designing an app for example, we want to reduce the number of obstacles preventing people from achieving what they want with the app. However, time and resources are always limited and so are the number of different designs we can create, test, and optimize. Our goal is to optimize the process of producing the app in order to optimize the app itself as much as possible.
We conduct User Experience Research to try to understand how people interact with everyday products and services so we can design solutions that respond to their needs. And in order for the design process to be efficient, we need to choose research methods that are appropriate for the stage of development you’re in.
So what are our options?
1. Focus Groups
Focus groups are structured interviews with 3-6 people that help us gather a lot of user feedback in a short period of time. While the data collected is sometimes inaccurate due to participants understandably not being able to correctly predict their own behaviour or being influenced by each other’s answers, these discussions tend to help us better understand how people perceive a product, what people expect from the product, and where the product is failing to meet those expectations.
While they can be helpful at any stage, conducting Focus Groups early in the design process reduces the number of problems that will come up later in the development process, reducing the chance of production delays or going over budget.
2. User Interviews
User interviews include a series of questions that participants are asked to help researchers better understand the users of a product or service. Similar to focus groups, user interviews help us gain insight into user perceptions and expectations, however the one-on-one environment of user interviews allows for deeper discussions with each individual and therefore higher quality insights.
3. Surveys
Surveys are a list of questions that researchers ask to learn more about user preferences, attitudes, and opinions. These days surveys are a very economical research tool as they are usually conducted online, allowing us to collect a large amount of data from a broad range of participants very quickly. While they can be a useful tool at any stage, conducting surveys early in the design process reduces the number of problems that will come up later in the development process, reducing the chance of production delays or going over budget.
4. Usability Testing
Usability tests evaluate a product or service by testing it on individuals representative of it’s real life end users. Usually these tests are conducted with a prototype of the product to optimize it as much as possible before moving into production.
During a test participants are asked to complete specific tasks while the person conducting the test observes their behaviour and notes anything unexpected. While it takes more time to gather data compared to focus groups, usability tests tend to result in a more accurate model of how people will actually interact with the product.
Conducting usability tests with at least 5 different people should identify your most important usability problems, which are typically more challenging and expensive to fix after the development phase begins.
5. The 5 Second Test
Did you know when a visitor arrives on your website you have at most five seconds to captivate their attention? Studies show that website visitors judge the quality of a website in 5 seconds or less – which is a very short window of time to convince your visitors to stay or risk them leaving and not coming back.
There are probably a lot of things you want to communicate to your visitors, but the three most critical things to convey in those first 5 seconds are:
- Who is the company?
- What product or service is provided?
- What’s the benefit to your visitor?
If you ask people within your target audience profile to look at your design for 5 seconds can they answer these three questions correctly? If so real world users will be generally more likely to invest their time and money in what you’re offering.
6. User Personas
User personas are key user profiles developed to help us empathize with and define the most common obstacles end users might encounter using a specific product or service. If someone has poor eyesight will they be able to see that tiny cart icon on your ecommerce website? Or will they get frustrated and leave the site without completing their order? If someone has a slow internet connection will they wait for that heavy webpage to load? Or will they get impatient and leave? If you create user personas informed by user research and share them with your design team, it will be easier for everyone to understand the problems you are trying to solve together.
7. Persona Spectrums
Persona spectrums expand user personas, identifying a greater range of user needs and expanding the list of potential obstacles to design solutions for. It’s helpful to focus on the “typical” users as they will be using the app the most, but considering a wider range of abilities, identities, backgrounds, and experiences will lead to a more inclusive end result.
Which of these methods have you tried? Which would you like to try? Get in touch with me – I’m happy to hear from you.
