How to design a good UX Research strategy
Even if designing a good UX Research strategy may seem an overwhelming task, there are different approaches that may help you sort out your ideas as a UX Researcher and articulate a strategy that is effective and allows you to meet stakeholder objectives and expectations.
Define the main objective of your investigation
The first thing you have to ask yourself, even before you decide which UX Researcher methods you will use, is: What do I want to know?
How can we answer this question? You can start by asking yourself why you want to know about it. Identify those things that you already know about your users and those things that you still do not know about them.
Where are your knowledge loopholes? Here are some examples of useful questions to which you may or may not know the answer:
- Who are your users (demographic and psychographic data)?
- Which are their behaviours, objectives, motivations and needs?
- What guesses have you made about them?
- How do they currently use the product/service?
- What other products/services do they use?
- Where do they have problems during their workflow?
- Do they enjoy using your product/service?
Once you discover what you are trying to learn, you may start thinking about how you can learn about it.
The 5 steps to UX Research
Developed by Erin Sanders, Senior Interaction Designer in Frog, the Research Learning Spiral is a model that introduces five main steps for developing a UX Research strategy.
“Research Learning Spiral” model, created by Erin Sanders (Frog Design)
In the first step this model tries to formulate key questions and research hypotheses, and in the last three steps it attempts to compile all the knowledge, by choosing between different UX Research methods.
- Objectives: Which knowledge loopholes are you trying to solve?
- Hypothesis: What do you think you know or understand about your users?
- Methods: Regarding time and human resources (Researchers) you have access to, which UX Research methods should you choose?
- Execution: Compiling data through different UX Research methods you have chosen to use.
- Synthesis: Fill up the empty loopholes, test or refute your hypothesis and discover new opportunities for your design efforts.
Involve your team and stakeholders
It is key to include, and above all, actively include your UX Research team. If not, it may be really difficult to achieve that stakeholders accept your decisions.
You can be working alongside with Product Managers, Data Scientists, Engineers or other stakeholders, undoubtedly there will be several different roles and points of view, so it is crucial that your team understands why they are building the product and which problem they are solving, before they start developing it.
You can make your teammates take notes while you do user interviews. You can organise a team workshop with their team to analyse and classify unprocessed research data. If that is not possible, you can involve their team by sharing your research results with them.
Once you have actively involved your teammates and stakeholders in the UX Research, you will see that the development process of a product or service is much more fluent, since there will be less conflicts and misunderstanding within the team.
UX Research methods depending on design phases
Nielsen/Norman group establishes the next chart, a series of UX Research methods and activities depending on the different phases of the design process.
The chart lists the possible UX Research methods and activities we can carry out as projects advance along the different design phases.
This chart states the next design phases for products and services:
- Discover
- Explore
- Test
- Listen
This implies that we know each one of these phases deeply, along with their respective UX Research methods, on their theoretical aspects. Furthermore, we need when and how to develop these methods and be able to draw needed conclusions so we can replicate them in future research projects.
Since the UX Research methods listed in this chart are rather large, we must understand that is just an option menu, and that choosing and applying the different methods will directly depend on the reach and objectives of each UX Research project.
You can learn all this in more depth in our Specialisation Programme (classes are in Spanish): Programa de Especialización en Research Avanzado.
This is a translation of the following article in our corporate website:
