The biggest issue when carrying out UX research is that you approach the task at hand with a sense of empathy, need, and integrity. Making sure that you approach the research in the right way is often overlooked, and as a consequence, this is where a lot of people can end up going wrong.
Whether you’re carrying out research to jump start your business’s social media presence or you want to bring a new product to launch, you need to be mindful about the way you do so.
All too often, companies spend thousands of pounds on research so that they can skew it to their own means and their own opinions. This is money wasted at the end of the day. You’re trying to get the data to tell you what you want it to say, rather than truly getting to the bottom of what the data means.
The whole point behind UX design and research is that you really do get genuine, constructive feedback on a certain product or service, including your website.
This links with the qualitative and quantitative elements of your research, and what it is you want to find out. This does not mean you pre-determine the answers to your questions, making user opinions and feedback fit with this. It means being ready to accept what the customer and user are telling you.
To do this, you need to be able to:
- Understand the problem – You have an idea of what you think is the problem but, quite often to the user, the problem is very different. You may perceive that the issue is getting through to your call center for help and support but the user will tell you the problem is finding the number in the first place. They then may comment that an improved, easier-to-find help section in a Q&A, searchable format is needed.
- Asking the right questions – To get the right information, you need to ask the right questions but the problem with this is that sometimes, we don’t want to know the real answers. Be prepared for some pleasant surprises, and also for those answers that are hard to take.
- Explanations or facts? – Choose which format will work better for you. Do you need to know why a user finds the checkout process slow, or will a measurement of this – e.g. 70% of users found the checkout process slow – be more informative.
If you get these three elements right, it can help you to get to where you want to be with your research into the user experience of your website, products, and services.
So there you have it: an insight into UX research and why it is imperative that you have empathy when you are carrying out this research. We hope that this has given you a good insight into how to go about your research so that you can get the information and data that you really need.
