User Research Methods

Estimated Time: 1 hour

In the previous lesson, we learned about broad approaches to UX research. In this lesson, we'll focus on techniques for UX research. The aim of this lesson is to provide an overview of different user research tactics. In future lessons and your final project, you'll have the opportunity to put some of these techniques into practice.

The video included a lot of information, and may have mentioned many research techniques you're unfamliar with -- do not worry! The aim of this lesson is not to learn every single research technique but to help you understand the wide array research techniques available. A professional UX researcher learns them over time to build his or her toolkit.

An important insight from the video is that different techniques work for different parts of product development. The video breaks up product development into four stages below

Discovery
Explore
Test
Listen

The stages above map well to the design thinking methodology. Roughly:

Discovery 🤝🏽 Empthasize
Explore 🤝🏽 Define / Idea
Test 🤝🏽 Prototype / Test
Listen: this can be linked to multiple part of the design thinking process

Common UX Research Techniques

As stated above, numerous UX research techniques exists. Below are some common types of which you should be aware.

User interviews: user interviews are one-on-one conversation with a user to understand the user's experience and opinions. User interviews may be highly structured where the researcher asks specific set of questions, or a more unstructured conversation. They can be conducted in-person or via phone or video.

Field studies: field studies take place in the user's context. In field studies, the researcher directly observes user behavior. In Ope's work at Google Classroom, she often conducted field studies by standing in the back of classrooms for hours, and watching how teachers and students interacted.

Diary study: diary studies are used to collect qualitiative data about a user over a long period of time. Users typically self-report their data, and they are called diaary studies because participants are keeping a "diary" or log over time. For Google Classroom, we conducted a 1-week diary study with university students where we asked them to record short video reflections throughout the day for a week to better understand their lives day-to-day.

Focus groups: focus groups a discussion of typically 5-9 users moderated by a researcher. Focus groups may be useful to encourage users to feel more comfortable and willing to share. Plus, the interaction among group members may bring out different ideas than a one-on-interview.

Surveys: surveys are a series of questions posted to many users. In Google Classroom, we used a survey method called "HaTs" (Happiness Tracking Surveys) which asked about 2,000 users each week in the product to answer the same 10 questions. Over the years, we built a robust, statisically meaningful understanding of the product

Card sorting: in a card sorting activity, participants are given a set of cards, each with a piece of content (such as a label) written on it. They are then asked to organize the cards into categories. Card sorting helps researchers understand how users categorize information, which can be used to improve the navigation, labeling and organization of applications.

Concept testing: a product discovery test where participants react to early ideas for a product or features. Concept tests are covered in more detail in lesson 2.4

Usability testing: a product test where participants interact with a product prototype. During this test, a moderator usually asks partcipants to perform certain tasks, then observes the participants' behavior and feedback

A/B testing: sometimes referred to as split testing, A/B testing is a randomized testing process where two or more versions of a product are shown to users to determine which performs better

Again, the above is not a comprehensive list of UX research techniques, but a list of some of the more common ones.

UX Research and User-Centered Design

Recall that the product development life-cycle typically covers numerous phases. UX Research has a role to play in all of them. Depending on the stage of product development, you can employ different UX research techniques.

Emphathize

This stage is almost entirely research dependent. Qualitative research methods can be helpful as you better understand your users. Good techniques to use in this stage include user interviews, field studies or other methods that foster nuanced understanding.

Define

In this phase, you are defining or stating the problem. Good research techniques at this stage include user studies or focus groups.

Ideate

In this phase, you are generating many potential ideas that might solve the problem, and looking for altenrative or idiosyncratic solutions. Research techniques that help here might include:

Focus groups with groups of users to co-create and ideate
Concept testing to get user feedback on high-level direction

Test

In this stage, you rigorously test prototypes and use the results to refine your problem statement and/or solutions. Research techniques that may be particularly useful here include:

Usability testing
A/B testing

Product Management and Design