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Research Methods Articles & Videos

  • Can Market Research Teams and UX Research Teams Collaborate and Avoid Miscommunication?

    The total customer journey and user experience quality will benefit from considering market research and user research to be highly related, and to integrate the two, instead of keeping different kinds of research teams from collaborating.

  • 3 Persona Types: Lightweight, Qualitative, and Statistical

    For most teams, approaching persona creation qualitatively is the right balance of effort vs. value, but very large or very small organizations might benefit from statistical or lightweight approaches, respectively.

  • Rating Scales in UX Research: Likert or Semantic Differential?

    Likert and semantic differential are instruments used to determine attitudes to products, services, and experiences, but depending on your situation, one may work better than the other.

  • How Well Discovery Phases Are Performed in UX Projects

    Our survey results reveal that many UX practitioners perform discoveries in some shape and form, although many are on the short side, lack user research and don’t involve the right people.

  • Benchmarking UX: Tracking Metrics

    Quantitatively evaluate a product or service’s user experience by using metrics to gauge its relative performance against a meaningful standard.

  • Remote Moderated Usability Tests: How to Do Them

    The key to good remote moderated testing is to be thoroughly prepared and organized. Follow these 7 steps to ensure your study’s success.

  • Are You Doing Real Discoveries?

    Discoveries are a powerful part of the UX design process, but unfortunately many teams are not doing true discovery. Here are 5 main ways to go wrong.

  • What a UX Career Looks Like Today

    Our latest research on UX careers looks into specialization, explores unique backgrounds of practitioners entering the field, and details the skills and responsibilities needed to work in UX today.

  • Remote Moderated Usability Tests: Why to Do Them

    Remote unmoderated usability testing is so fast and easy that some teams make it their only evaluation method. But don’t shy away from its more robust alternative, the remote moderated usability test, which can give you more information and is also inexpensive.

  • 5 Qualitative Research Methods

    Qualitative user research is invaluable for UX design. Here's an overview of 5 key methods beyond standard usability testing that are especially useful for early discovery studies.

  • The Discovery Phase in UX Projects

    Although there can be many different instigators, roles, and activities involved in a discovery, all discoveries strive to achieve consensus on the problem to be solved and desired outcomes.

  • Intentional Silence as a Moderation Technique

    When conducting user interviews or running usability studies, don't rush to talk as soon as the user stops speaking. Deliberately staying silent for longer than it feels comfortable will often prod users into saying more.

  • How to Maximize Insights in User Testing: Stepped User Tasks

    You can learn the right kind of things and much more in user tests if you start with broad tasks instead of immediately leading to areas of interest. Prepare additional, focused tasks that can be used to direct users.

  • Qualitative vs. Quantitative UX Research

    Qualitative and quantitative methods both have their place in user research, but they address different issues in the UX design process. Understand the differences to pick the right method to learn what you need.

  • Don't Report Numbers from Small UX Studies

    Testing a small number of participants gives qualitative insights, which are great. But if 4 out of 5 test users do something, don't conclude that 80% of all users will do the same.

  • Survey Response Biases in User Research

    Users' answers to survey questions are often biased and not the literal truth. Examples include acquiescence bias, social desirability bias, and recency bias. Knowing about response biases will help you interpret survey data with more validity for any design decisions based on the findings.

  • The Critical Incident Technique in UX

    The CIT is a research method for systematically obtaining recalled observations of significant events or behaviors from people who have first-hand experience.

  • Don't Listen to the Customers

    The first rule of user experience design is: don't base the product on what customers *say* they want. You must watch what people actually *do* when using your design.

  • UX Research Cheat Sheet

    Different user research methods are suited for different stages of the UX design process. Here's an overview of the best methods to discover, explore, test, and listen.

  • Open vs. Closed Questions in User Research

    When doing user research for a UX design project, we can ask questions in two ways: open-ended (no fixed set of response options) and close-ended (users are restricted to picking from a few answers). Both work well, but only for those research questions they are suited to answer.

  • Contextual Inquiry Pitfalls

    Contextual inquiry is a UX research method where you shadow people as they do their job (or leisure tasks), allowing you to ask questions in context. This video provides advice on overcoming the main challenges with this method.

  • Sympathy vs. Empathy in UX

    Sympathy acknowledges that users are having difficulties, but empathy goes further by understanding the users' needs and motivations.

  • UX Research Made Agile

    Test early and often is a key recommendation for UX research. Dora Brune shares her approach, including regular Open Test Labs to engage more product teams and make user research more agile. Kinder Eggs make for a nice warmup task, even in remote tests. (Recorded at a participant panel at the UX Conference.)

  • Ethnography in UX

    Good UX design requires understanding the context and patterns of human behavior, especially in new products or features that solve real needs. The 5 steps to rapid corporate ethnography lead you to these discoveries.

  • Better UX Deliverables

    Communicating UX work and findings to the full team, stakeholders, and leadership requires engaging deliverables. Amanda Gulley shared her experience improving the design and usability of UX deliverables at a UX Conference participant panel.

  • Advanced User Testing Methods for Accelerating Innovation

    Two user research methods allow you to quickly test a large number of design alternatives, thus accelerating UX innovation. Rapid iterative design and within-subjects testing of multiple alternate designs aren't for every project, but are great when they do apply.

  • Triangulation: Combine Findings from Multiple User Research Methods

    Improve design decisions by looking at the problem from multiple points of view: combine multiple types of data or data from several UX research methods.

  • Identify and Document Your UX Methods

    For each research or design method you employ, create a document that defines this method and can be used to educate other team members on UX activities.

  • Partner with Other Research Teams in Your Organization

    To gain a holistic picture of your users, exchange data with the non-UX teams in your company who are collecting other forms of customer data, besides the user research you do yourself. You gain; they gain.

  • Remote Usability Testing Costs

    We compare the budgets needed for different kinds of qualitative user research: in-person usability testing vs. remote studies run by software (unmoderated) or run by a human moderator.

  • How Useful Is the System Usability Scale (SUS) in UX Projects?

    SUS is a 35-years old and thus well-established way to measure user satisfaction, but it is not the most recommended way of doing so in user research.

  • Usability Testing for Content

    Usability testing can yield valuable insights about your content. Make sure you test with the correct users, carefully craft the tasks, and ask the right follow-up questions.

  • Comparing Qualitative and Quantitative UX Research

    Qualitative and quantitative are both useful types of user research, but involve different methods and answer different questions for your UX design process. Use both!

  • Is A/B Testing Faster than Usability Testing at Getting Results?

    If A/B testing can quickly show which design is best, why should a UX team bother doing usability studies and other user research?

  • Diary Studies

    Ask users to keep a diary throughout a fairly long period is great for researching customer journeys or other bigger-scope issues in user experience that go beyond a single interaction.

  • Field Studies vs. Ethnographic Studies vs. Contextual Inquiry

    What is the difference between a field study, an ethnographic study, and a contextual inquiry in a user experience design project? Not much. The main difference is that between field methods and lab-based user research.

  • Findability vs. Discoverability

    Locating features or content on a website or in an app happen in two different ways: finding (users look for the item) and discovering (users come across the item). Both are important, but require different user research techniques to evaluate.

  • Running a Remote Usability Test, Part 2

    Learn how to run a remote moderated usability test. This second video covers how to actually facilitate the session with the participant and how to end with debrief, incentive, and initial analysis with your team.

  • Running a Remote Usability Test, Part 1

    Learn how to run a remote moderated usability test. Part 1 covers starting the session with your participant and observers.

  • Catching Cheaters and Outliers in Remote Unmoderated Studies

    In remote usability studies, it's hard to identify test participants who should not be in the study because they don't fit the profile or don't attempt the task seriously. This is even harder in unmoderated studies, but it can (and should) be done.

  • Recruiting and Screening Candidates for User Research Projects

    Know the inherent biases in your recruiting process and avoid them in order to recruit study participants that are representative for your target audience.

  • How Many Participants for a UX Interview?

    In the early stages of a UX-design project, recruit enough people to gain an in-depth understanding of users’ experiences and needs. The number of people needed for an interview study is often smaller than you think.

  • Context Methods: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about ethnographic methods like field studies and diary studies — methods that help you learn about your user’s context.

  • Quantitative Research: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about quant research, quant usability testing, analytics, and analyzing data.

  • Data Is More than Numbers: Why Qualitative Data Isn’t Just Opinions

    Systematically gathered qualitative data is a dependable method of understanding what users need, why problems occur, and how to solve them.

  • Four Factors in UX Maturity

    Improving UX maturity requires growth and evolution across 4 high-level factors: strategy, culture, process, and outcomes.

  • How Many Participants for Quantitative Usability Studies: A Summary of Sample-Size Recommendations

    40 participants is an appropriate number for most quantitative studies, but there are cases where you can recruit fewer users.

  • Why 5 Participants Are Okay in a Qualitative Study, but Not in a Quantitative One

    Qualitative usability testing aims to identify issues in an interface, while quantitative usability testing is meant to provide metrics that capture the behavior of your whole user population.

  • 5 Facilitation Mistakes to Avoid During User Interviews

    Some common mistakes to avoid in UX interviews include poor rapport, multitasking, leading, insufficient probing, and poorly managed observers.

  • International Usability Testing: Why You Need It

    User testing in different countries helps identify culturally specific usability issues. Testing correctly and at the right time will help you thrive in a new market.

  • Writing an Effective Guide for a UX Interview

    Preparing a guide for a user interview ensures that topics relevant to your research questions are covered, and that the interview captures in-depth information about people’s lives and needs.

  • Triangulation: Get Better Research Results by Using Multiple UX Methods

    Diversifying user research methods ensures more reliable, valid results by considering multiple ways of collecting and interpreting data.

  • Internal vs. External Validity of UX Studies

    Poorly designed qualitative or quantitative research may produce invalid results. Avoid encouraging certain responses or behaviors and make sure that your study conditions and participants are representative.

  • Contextual Inquiry: Inspire Design by Observing and Interviewing Users in Their Context

    Through observation and collaborative interpretation, contextual inquiry uncovers insight about user’s that may not be available via other research methods.

  • How and Why to Recruit Backup Participants (aka “Floaters”) in User Research

    Sometimes you should intentionally overrecruit test participants for one-on-one user-research studies. Backup participants must be recruited according to the same screening criteria and paid at least as much as regular participants.

  • Task Analysis: Support Users in Achieving Their Goals

    Task analysis is the systematic study of how users complete tasks to achieve their goals. This knowledge ensures products and services are designed to efficiently and appropriately support those goals.

  • 7 Steps to Benchmark Your Product’s UX

    Benchmark your UX by first determining appropriate metrics and a study methodology. Then track these metrics across different releases of your product by running studies that follow the same established methodology.

  • Remote Usability-Testing Costs: Moderated vs. Unmoderated

    Exact costs will vary, but an unmoderated 5-participant study may be 20–40% cheaper than a moderated study, and may save around 20 hours of researcher time.

  • Turning Complex Data into Compelling Stories: A 5-Step Process

    Uncover the story within extensive UX-research data by following a process of revisiting original research objectives and organizing findings into themes.

  • 3 Persona Types: Lightweight, Qualitative, and Statistical

    For most teams, approaching persona creation qualitatively is the right balance of effort vs. value, but very large or very small organizations might benefit from statistical or lightweight approaches, respectively.