What is UX Research and its Process?
Ideally, brands do not interact directly with the users to collect feedback. Instead, they use different methods to understand the customer’s psychology about a product or service. That’s where user experience (UX) research comes into action. It is a method that helps a brand understand the factors contributing to providing better value and use of a product or service to a user. Many brands do UX research to understand the needs and want of their target customer.
The boom in technology has thrown light on new processes that help collect customer feedback about a product or service. Below is a comprehensive guide that throws light on what is the meaning of UX research, its importance, and different UX research methods.
What is UX Research?
Though product management meaning might not include the term UX research, only a few companies are ignorant of the popular process. UX research’s peculiar method of collecting customer feedback has helped product managers, engineers, and designers to understand the needs of the users without peril. That is why it is widely used in companies across different industries.
Coming back to our question – what is UX research? It is a set of methods and techniques that helps brands understand the user’s behaviour, needs, and wants. Various UX research methods are used to collect customer feedback.
Ahead, we will discuss UX research methods, their importance in business, and more in detail.
What Are the Different Types of UX Research Methods?
UX research has proved beneficial for businesses. It helps them target their potential group of customers, know about their needs, and wants, and incorporate the same into a product. Primarily, UX research is conducted by product engineers and designers to develop a specialized product that caters to their user base. There are different types of UX research methods such as:
User interview
Product managers often conduct user interviews to understand the needs and requirements of the customers. First, they invite a set of customers and ask them questions about the product. Then, product managers and their teams draw insights from the user interview.
Field studies
When product managers conduct research in a user’s social environment, it is summarized as field studies. In this UX research method, closed-door research is disregarded, and open and field-induced research techniques are encouraged. Field studies try to understand the target customer’s demographics, geographical, and psychological aspects.
Focus group
A focus group is a type of UX research method that analyses customers’ motivations, needs, and wants. In this method, the product manager makes a small group of customers and analyses their behavioural patterns. The focus group research method tries to find answers to some of the following questions:
- What audience perceives your product?
- What are some of the features of the product that the customers adore?
- What are the difficulties customers face while using the product?
Diary studies
Brands use dairy studies to understand the behavioural and buying pattern of the customers. It helps the brands understand how customers interact with the products in a real-life scenario. This UX research method uses photos and notes to understand customers’ activities and highlight instances of how products can fit into the audience’s lives without much effort.
Survey
It is a research method that helps collect data from a group of participants and gather meaningful insights. It asks people for feedback and comments about a product or service. Moreover, this research method uses open-ended and closed-ended questions to collect customer feedback. Ideally, it is a long process because it takes time to plan and formulate questions correctly.
Some other UX research methods are frequently used across companies. We’ve put together a few of them:
- Card sorting
- A/B testing
- First click testing
- Contextual observation
- Usability testing
Customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of any business. Companies find and employ the best talents to ensure that their customers get the best products. UX research is a vital business activity that helps companies meet the needs and wants of their customer. UX researchers or product managers deploy different techniques to understand what users want. They start by using different qualitative and quantitative methods to gauge the needs and wants of the audiences.
In the succeeding part of the article, we’ll delve deep into understanding qualitative and quantitative UX research methods.
What is the Qualitative UX Research Method?
It is a method to analyze the behavioural and buying pattern of customers. This method of UX research aims to answer why customers do what they do. Interviews, field study, etc., are some of the qualitative UX research methods that give a deep insight into customers’ minds and help track their buying patterns and psychological factors that incite them to purchase a product.
What is the Quantitative UX Research Method?
This UX research method uses surveys, analytics, and other techniques to measure the gathered customer data to test their responses and understand what users do with the product. It is also used to track a large group’s patterns, among other things.
Whether it’s qualitative or quantitative research, specific skills are required to make it a worthwhile process. In the next section of the article, we will take you through different skills required to conduct UX research efficiently.
What Are the Skills Required to Conduct UX Research?
Here are some of the skills UX researcher requires:
- Prolific communication skills
- Empathy towards their subjects
- Knowledge about design thinking tools and techniques
- Problem-solving skills
- Curiosity to learn new things
The increasing use of the UX research process across different product manufacturing stages has helped brands understand their customer better. In addition, UX research helps increase the company’s financial position. If you plan to make a career in product management, learning UX research is a must-have skill that will help you get better job opportunities.
Now, let’s move to the reasons why UX research is important.
Why is UX Research Important, And Why Pursue a Career in It?
There are many reasons why UX research is an inevitable part of the business. From increasing brand loyalty to offering a well-designed product, here are some popular reasons that highlight the importance of UX research.
- It helps companies make an informed decision regarding product design, marketing, and other factors based on data collected through different UX research methods.
- It allows brands to test different concepts and strategies before sending the product for production.
- It helps understand customers’ needs and work on solutions that add real value to the customer experience.
- Interact with the audience and understand their desire, leading to the product’s successful launch in the market.
- It helps in removing preconceived notions regarding products and customer needs by offering a clear picture of what and how to satisfy the user.
If curiosity drives you, then product management is best suited for you, especially UX research. To develop a career in UX research or product management, it is highly recommended to take up different certification courses.
Emeritus India offers some of the best UX research and design thinking certification courses that you can choose from to accentuate your career with the best opportunities and competitive pay packages.
