Intro to user research & understanding

What user research is and why it's important

Usability.gov defines the user research process as “the focus on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analyses, and other feedback methodologies.”

In order to provide your users with an impactful solution, you need to keep the user at the center of your process.

User research is the process of asking who, what, where, when, why, and how.

You need to first understand who your users are, what problem they are facing, where they are facing this problem, when they face it, why they are facing the problem, and how they are currently facing the problem.

“Why” is the most important of all of these because “why” tells you the root cause of why something happened.

At the very heart of user research is this fundamental statement: You are not your user.

‍This is what makes user research important. Because you are not your user, you don’t know their problems, and how they are trying to solve them.

User research allows you to be mostly objective about your designs.

You come at the problem from the user’s perspective, not your own.

UX is the process of making a product or service useful, relevant, and meaningful.

To truly do this you need user research. With user research, you can understand the impact of your design on users. Without working with users, you are just designing based on subjectivity and your own bias.

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What the research & understanding process generally looks like

In the beginning of this phase, and before designing anything, we first need to figure out the problem we are going to solve.

We use methods such as looking at industry trends, SWOT analysis, competitive analysis, researching user pains, and heuristic evaluations.

Using these data points, we frame the problem by stating what the problem is, what we know about it, and how we plan on fixing it.

From there, we’ll start getting feedback from users either through interviews, usability tests, or more indirectly through surveys.

Finally, you synthesize all of the research using affinity diagrams, personas, and research reports which prepare you for the next phase in the UX process.

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Types of research

On the most basic level, we can divide UX research methods into two buckets: quantitative and qualitative.

Bucket #1: Quantitative research

Quantitative research is measured numerically.

It gives you a level of understanding of what is happening or what is preferred. However, quantitative data alone doesn't address why someone takes a specific action.
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Here are a few examples of quantitative questions:

• “How many people visited this page?"
• “How many people clicked this button?”
• “What percentage of people prefer this name for the product?”
• “How many people are using this feature?”

Surveys an excellent quantitative method of gathering information because you get responses to your questions in a numerical format.

Bucket #2: Qualitative research

Qualitative research gathers non-numerical data and focuses on deriving meaning from the data.

It helps you understand the deeper motivators behind behaviors and attitudes.

Qualitative questions are open-ended like:

• “What would you expect when you click this button?”
• “Why do you think that?”

Usability tests are all about watching people’s behavior when using your product. Researchers can dig into behaviors while they observe them and ask why people do what they are doing.

Another way you can divide up research methods is attitudinal vs behavioral:

• Attitudinal (what people say)
• Behavioral (what people do)

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Research biases

Research bias is when the researcher influences the data so that it portrays a predetermined outcome.

While it’s almost impossible to remove research bias completely, it’s important to acknowledge, accept, understand, and account for it.

Trying to create a product without doing the proper research is the equivalent of using a bow and arrow to shoot a target while blindfolded in the dark, while riding a horse, that's also blindfolded.

You might hit the target, but the chances are much higher that both you and the horse will get seriously hurt. 

That's why this video is all about the first phase of the UX process, research and understanding.

Get stoked because this phase provides you with the information necessary to create a kick ass solution.

In this lesson, we are gonna cover what user research is and why it's important, what the research and understanding process generally looks like, types of research, and research biases. 

Let's get after it. 

Have you ever been in a situation where you didn't know what to get someone for their birthday?

While you know this person fairly well, you just have no idea what they might want. 

 Since you're trying to keep it a surprise, you don't come right out and ask what they want, which means you've got to take your best guess.

You can't be sure they'll even like your gift. 

They may love it, or they may give you one of those fake smiles, say they love it, and then figure out how to return. 

Think about user research as the process of finding out what your friend wants for their birthday.

You cut out the uncertainty by talking to your friend, AKA the user, about what really matters to them.

So let's get started on what user research is and why it's important. 

Usability.gov defines the user research process as "the focus on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analyses, and other feedback methodologies." 

Think about it this way, in order to provide users with an impactful solution, you need to keep users at the center of your process.

How could you give someone something meaningful that solves their problem if you don't fully understand them or the problem that they're facing? 

Here's another way to think about it, conducting user research makes you a detective trying to solve a mystery. 

You're trying to uncover the user's problem.

It's your job to use whichever detective methods necessary to solve the mystery. 

And with that in mind, user research is the process of asking who, what, where, when, why, and how. 

You first need to understand who your users are, what problem they're facing, where they're facing this problem, when they're facing it, why they're facing the problem, and how they're currently facing the problem. 

That was a lot of saying facing the problem, but let's keep moving on.

Why is the most important of all these because why tells you the root cause of why something happened. 

This is the reason we recommend you use a method called the five why's. Basically, you ask why someone does something five times.

The idea is that you keep asking until you understand the true reason behind the event. 

For example, let's say that you're trying to analyze why someone was late to work. 

That could go something like this. 

"Why were you late to work?"

"Because I got up late."

"Why?"

"Because I worked late last night."

"Why?"

"Because I have three critically important projects that I need to get done in the next week."

"You're probably getting tired of this, but why?"

"Because someone was let go from our team last month and I'm now doing the work of two people."

"Why?"

"Because there's no one else to do the work and we haven't found a replacement."

By the end of this example, you learned the deeper reasons behind why this person was late to work. 

You gained insight into the problem, which is what research and understanding is all about.

At the very heart of user research is the fundamental statement you are not the user. 

This is what makes user research important. Because you are not the user, you don't know their problems and how they're trying to solve them.

By extension, your team members are not the user. They don't always know your user's problems or how the user will behave, which is another important reason to do user research.

It helps the whole team to understand who, what, where, when, why, and how. 

We can't even begin to tell you just how this one thing makes user research so valuable. 

Many times you'll find that people on your team have already made up their minds about how things need to be solved.

If there isn't research to back it up, they'll contaminate the design with their own assumptions and the user will be left wanting.

Now let's discuss what the research and understanding process typically looks like.

the beginning of this phase and before designing everything, we first need to figure out the problem we are going to solve. 

To do this, we use methods such as looking at industry trends, SWOT analysis, competitive analysis, researching user pains, and heuristic evaluations.

Using these data points, we frame the problem by stating what the problem is, what we know about it, and how we plan on fixing it. 

From there, we'll start getting feedback from users, either through interviews, usability tests, or more indirectly through surveys.

Finally you synthesize all of the research using affinity diagrams, personas, archetypes, or user segments, and research reports, which prepare you for the next phase in the UX process. 

Now let's look at different types of research.

On the most basic level, we can divide UX research methods into two buckets: quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative research is measured numerically. 

Here are a few examples of quantitative questions. 

"How many people visited this page?" 

"How many people clicked this button?" 

"What percentage of people prefer this name for the product?"

"How many people are using this feature?"

This makes surveys an excellent quantitative method of gathering information, because you get responses to your questions in a numerical format.

It gives you a level of understanding of what is happening or what is preferred. 

However, quantitative data alone doesn't address why someone takes a specific. 

That's where qualitative research comes in. 

Qualitative research gathers non-numerical data and focuses on deriving meaning from that data. 

It helps you understand the deeper motivations behind behaviors and attitudes. 

Qualitative questions are open-ended like, " what would you expect when you click that button?" 

"Why do you think that?" And of course, "why?" 

Usability tests are all about watching people's behaviors when using your product.

Researchers can dig into behaviors while they observe them and ask why people do what they're doing. 

For example, let's say that you're testing the discoverability of a new feature in your app. 

Quantitative data might look like "four of five users found the feature." 

Qualitative data would be something like, "users who found the feature expected to see X instead of Y because Z wasn't clear. 

Another way you can divide up research methods is attitudinal versus behavioral. 

Think of it like what people say (attitudinal) versus what people actually do (behavioral). 

We see this all the time with new year's resolutions, don't we?

The attitudinal side of someone would say, "I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna get ripped." When in actuality they don't ever go. 

That comes back to the reason we ask why so many times.

When asking why enough times you'll learn the underlying reason behind someone's behavior.

While most usability studies are focused on watching users' behavior, they're also aimed at learning about how users feel (attitudinal data). 

Now that you have a general understanding of quantitative versus qualitative and attitudinal versus behavioral, let's look at a chart showing how different research methods are related to each of those categories. 

The vertical access has attitudinal at the bottom and behavioral at the very top.

The horizontal access has qualitative on the left and quantitative on the right.

This shows you that the methods located in the bottom left help you understand why someone takes a certain action (qualitative) and how they feel about it (attitudinal). 

The methods in the top right corner show you what people actually do (behavioral) and the numbers to back it up (quantitative). 

In the future, use this chart from Nielsen and Norman to pick the right research method for what you're trying to learn. 

Now, let's talk about research biases. 

Have you ever heard of the phrase leading the witness? 

This is something in law where the prosecutor asks questions and makes statements that push the witness to say something that they normally wouldn't.

That's basically the same thing as research bias and it's something you should try to avoid. 

Research bias is when the researcher influences the data so that it portrays a predetermined outcome.

For example, imagine that we worked at Dropbox and we wanted to test the new location for signup. 

We wouldn't wanna use the term sign up in the task we gave participants. 

That would give them something defined on the screen and would skew our results.

Instead we might say something like, "how would you go about getting a new Dropbox account?" 

While it's almost impossible to remove research bias completely, it's important to acknowledge, accept, understand, and account for it.

With all the information about user research that we just went through, we just wanted to call out one thing. 

Most projects don't require using the full set of methods. 

In fact, there are some projects that hardly use any. 

Instead, you always wanna focus on using the methods that make the most sense for any given project. 

Getting back to the definition of UX we talked about in an earlier video, UX is the process of making a product or service useful, relevant, and meaningful for people. 

To truly do this, you need user research. 

With user research, you can understand the impact of your design on users.

Without working with users, you are just designing based on your own subjectivity and your own bias.

User research is the U in UX.