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UX Research Guide [For Beginners]

Tools, tips and methods

User empathy is the foundation of a healthy design process. One tried and true way to get more insights, inform and validate design decisions and measure a design solution’s success is through UX research.

Pay attention to what users do, not what they say.

— Jakob Nielsen

While you may not realistically have time or resources to put to use a full range of research methods in your specific project, research is crucial source of data, useful for designers and a product team alike, to inform thoughtful design decisions.

UX research methods exists in two groups, as defined by UX booth:

Quantitative research
Any research that can be measured numerically. It’s valuable in understanding statistical likelihoods and indirectly measures what is happening on a site or in an app using software or analytics tool.
Ex. “how many people clicked here” or “what percentage of users are able to find the call to action?”

Qualitative research
Sometimes called “soft” research. It helps us understand why people do the things they do, and often takes the form of interviews or conversations.
Ex. “why didn’t people see the call to action” and “what else did people notice on the page?”

One general guidance for selecting a research method is to know what you want to end up with out of your study and why — otherwise, you may end up gathering data without having a goal. In addition to knowing when to use UX research and for what purpose, here’s a shortlist of UX research methods to further understand the design problem you are solving.

UX Methods

• Card Sorting
  Participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups, using actual cards, pieces of paper, or an online card-sorting software…