Best Practices for Researching a UX Strategy

Table of Contents

The best practices for conducting user research in order to prepare a UX Strategy are 1) User groups or Focus Groups, 2) Contextual Interviews – which is a structured usage of most of the Field Research techniques and inclusive of the User Interviews 3) Usability Testing 4) Surveys to gather Data, 5) A/B Testing.

Importance of Conducting UX Research to Prepare a UX Strategy

UX Research is a critical discovery step in which the team may uncover and evaluate user behavior, requirements, and motivations, providing context and insights for developing the optimal product strategy and design.
UX Research is done through various techniques, but it’s vital to choose the proper UX Research method that meets the project requirements and constraints.
Applying the appropriate UX Research techniques is of great importance in developing the UX Strategy that meets the project and business requirement.

Stages of UX Research

Initially, the focus is on understanding the target group of users and the problem, so UX research usually uses both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Field investigations, diary studies, survey collection, data mining, conducting interviews, observing prospective or current users, and reviewing existing literature, data, or analytics are just some of the techniques available.
Once the design direction is established, the UX research will focus on evaluating the designs and ensuring that they adequately address the users’ needs, as well as on identifying research methods that can aid in optimizing the designs and improving usabilities—such as card sorting and usability testing, as well as interviewing users about the process and testing assumptions.
Once the design has been turned into a functioning product and the product has been evaluated in the real world, the emphasis will shift to quantitative research techniques such as usability benchmarks, surveys, and A/B testing.

Best Practices – User Research Techniques

Contextual interviews:

Contextual inquiry is a type of interview method that is used to gain existing information about various concepts such as the context of use.
Users are given a series of conventional questions throughout this investigation, during which they are also watched and questioned while they operate in their surroundings.
In this method, it’s observed how the users interact with the product, website, or software.
The end – customers are encouraged to explain their work, and this helps in uncovering unarticulated aspects of work
This also contributes to the development of a common understanding with the client about the critical components of work.
This is a significant benefit for businesses that value input.
Rather than producing a presentation of the contextual inquiry sessions, a practical option is to present the current results in a collaborative team workshop and use the provided information to choose the next steps.
This kind of workshop entails more than just presenting the results of the participant observation to the team. Additionally, it enables you to create questions from the results that are as precise as possible and will aid in the product’s continued development.
Contextual inquiry may be used to establish requirements, enhance processes, ascertain what is important to users and consumers, and gain more knowledge about a new area in order to guide future initiatives.

The related questions would be based on the context of the product usage such as:

Who are the intended users?
What are their responsibilities?
Which tools assist users in accomplishing their objectives?
What physical environment will a product be utilized in?
What is the social and organizational context in which the user operates?
Concerning the technological environment and the technical limitations that accompany it?

Focus groups

In a focused group discussion, a moderator brings a group of participants and asks them various questions on a particular topic.
Typically, these groups are utilized during the early phases of product planning and requirement gathering.
Additionally, these groups are used to get input from consumers regarding goods, ideas, prototypes, activities, tactics, and settings.
The groups give valuable feedback with the use of their opinions, and they can declare whether a service solves problems or can be improved.
Additionally, they may provide light on why the issue occurs.
Lastly, groups are excellent for companies who are looking for information as to how users would respond to a given product or service.
User groups can help create ideas of what users may want in the future.
After the research, to collate and analyze responses, the note taker prepares a report that details various parts of the study such as its purpose, description of the different procedures, summarization of the findings, and various significant themes that could be found within the research.
Additionally, the report serves as a presentation to the sponsor, other stakeholders, and the product development team.

With focused group discussions, the questions would be based on the information the production company would be interested in such as:

How a product is perceived by its users.
What consumers think are the most critical characteristics of a product.
What issues people have with the product.
Where consumers believe the product does not live up to their expectations.

Usability tests

Usability testing is assigning various tasks to different users of a product or service and then monitoring their behavior to ascertain the product’s or service’s efficacy.
This is often accomplished via the use of a live version of a website or mobile application, a prototype or work-in-progress, or even through the use of clickable wireframes or pen and paper.
Moderated, unmoderated, or guerilla testing are all possible.
Additionally, businesses utilize this technique to quickly discover any current usability issues with a design.
After identifying these issues, they may be resolved prior to the design being implemented or mass-produced.
It is suggested to perform usability testing on prototypes rather than completed goods, with varying degrees of realism (i.e., detail and finish) depending on the development phase.
In a typical usability test, test moderators provide different activities to test participants that must be completed while using the design.
The assignments correspond to the activities that a typical end user would do with the completed product.
The recommended practices for usability testing are to test five people to discover the most critical usability issues with a design and to include all key stakeholders, that is, everyone who is engaged in how quickly and effectively issues are handled, to the usability testing sessions.
Additionally, the moderator watches each participant’s activities during the exam, sometimes using a recording module.
The moderator then reports on various areas of interest after evaluating the results of a usability test.
These interests often revolve on issues and the severity of these problems, as well as aspects of the design that people appreciate.

Surveys

Online surveys are used by companies to collect data from abroad for a low price quickly.
They help companies discover their users and their goals.
Additionally, a survey can great research tools for different projects that involve anonymity.
Additionally, they are an excellent method for collecting feedback on a live product, determining a company’s unique selling proposition, conducting contextual inquiries, refining a new feature, and mitigating the danger of a poor solution.
The questions should address user satisfaction, the user’s data, and the user’s understanding of the products.
After the survey completed for the open-ended question, try to group the answers and look for repeating patterns, the closed-ended questions can be quantitatively analyzed and collated to share the insights with the team. [Source 13]

A/B testing

This test examines two distinct variants of a website or comparable service.
Researchers may use this test to determine which option is best for their consumers.
Additionally, the findings may provide light on the benefits and drawbacks of each approach and, in some instances, may even offer a novel solution to a problem.
This test may be performed as part of the original or continuing user experience study.
Occasionally, a fix for a bug is requested to improve the current user experience.
A/B testing is a conversion optimization method that businesses use to compare two versions of a web page to see which version performs better in terms of sales, leads, and other metrics.
A/B Testing allows you to test your designs with real-time traffic.
This sort of test is performed on a live site, where an equal percentage of people/users are directed towards either model, and the number of click-throughs and successful conversions from each design are recorded.
Post-test segmentation of A/B tests by demographic, Attitudinal, Geographical, Preferential, Behavioral, Motivational parameters will help develop further user variations for future testing.
After evaluating your A/B testing, it is critical to record the findings. This aids in not just knowledge transfer throughout the company, but also serves as a reference point for further testing.