UX research is the study of user experience. With its help, designers discover user problems and needs, analyze and propose solutions. There are even separate professions: UX designer and UX researcher. Usually, UX research is one of the stages of work on a project.
The research is usually done by a designer or business analyst. A UX research approach should be used both before starting a new business and analyzing and improving an existing one. In the first case, it will help test hypotheses and refine them in accordance with the needs of the potential audience. In the second – to find out users’ problems and solve them by adjusting or adding new functions.
To conduct research, it is enough to know the client’s business idea. The technique can be mastered in courses or independently in practice and can be applied both in digital and in the physical environment.
UX Research Stages
Ideal UX research can be roughly divided into the following stages:
- collection of business requirements;
- market analysis;
- target audience analysis;
- generation of solutions;
- the summary as a list of functionality.
Research usually consists of a set of exercises that are appropriate for the design matter. The client may well know their market and competitors but poorly understand the target audience and vice versa. They may also have no knowledge at all.
Collecting Business Requirements
This is the starting point that each project goes through. First, the designer must find out what goals the client wants to achieve. Basically, it’s about figuring out and evaluating how the design will help bring the business money.
This phase consists of briefing the client and building a UX research strategy. The latter will help determine how best to achieve your business goal. Often, at the stage of collecting business requirements, the client already puts forward some hypotheses, which ultimately need to be confirmed or refuted.
Market Analysis
A UX audit is done for existing products. This is a detailed breakdown of usability and visual bugs. The product is evaluated for compliance with the laws of UX, composition, color, generally accepted standards, for example, online stores. But this is not enough. Such analysis will not reveal the real problem and will not help delve deeper into it. This is the risk that the business will continue to exist, but no one will use it.
What is usually easiest to do without talking to users? Find a similar business and analyze it. For a clear analysis, do an analysis of competitors – not only direct but also indirect.
For digital products, the Feature Matrix is usually sufficient. This is a comparison table for the absence or presence of any function between the company and its competitors. Sometimes additional information is included in the matrix – for example, the slogan, year of foundation, site visit statistics, the number of users in the App Store.
Target Audience Analysis
You can analyze the target audience through questionnaires or interviews. At this stage of UX research, it is important to know what tasks the user needs to accomplish (jobs), the benefits (gains), and the problems (pains) of the users. A checklist of questions for each activity helps you test hypotheses and understand the online and offline user experience.
For example, we ask about a person’s experience in an application, how they interact with such systems, their impressions, emotions, and failures. And what is very important – we find out the context. This is especially important for products that automate physical processes.
In addition to questionnaires and interviews, the Value Proposition Canvas and Customer Journey Map are made:
- Value Proposition Canvas is the consolidation of jobs, pains, and gains and the choice of a solution from the business side for each job, pain, and gain.
- Customer Journey Map is an analysis of the user’s journey through the service with an analysis of their feelings and thoughts at every stage. It allows you to understand at what stage the problem appears and how to solve it.
Generating Solutions
The design team can generate solutions both independently and jointly with the client. In the latter case, workshops are often held.
Consider generating solutions on the design side. In essence, designers are comparing all the data obtained earlier. For example, they are looking for an answer to user pain in the Feature Matrix. For those problems that cannot be solved by the analysis of competitors, they come up with and offer a solution themselves.
Based on the results of UX research, they compile a list of functionalities. This concludes the UX research. This is followed by the design phase. And most importantly, UX research can only be considered successful if you manage to find the user’s pain and come up with a solution.
