Research is a crucial aspect in any industry that offers products, services and/or applications. As user experience (UX) designers, we should ask questions, take notes, learn everything about our target audience and then repeatedly test our work during the design process to ensure we create something that is fit for purpose.
UX research helps us to accept or reject our hypotheses and find similarities across our target audience members. Moreover, recognising their needs, goals and mental models, research helps the designer to understand and endorses their decisions.
A Deeper Insight
UX research or design research includes a variety of analytical methods used to add context and vision to the design process. Research in UX is not exclusive to its field, however, it usually transforms from other forms of research. Thus, UX designers and practitioners use many techniques from market researchers, academics and others, while there is research unique to the UX world as well.
We can divide UX research methods into two different categories of quantitative and qualitative:
Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is the form of research that we use to measure aspects numerically. For example, you should ask questions such as: “How many people clicked on this element?” or “What percentage of users are able to find call to action?” This helps us to understand what is happening on a website or app.
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research, on the other hand, is also known as “soft research”. It quite simply helps us to understand why people do the things they do. The common question here is; why did users not see or interact with the call to action and what else did people notice on the page instead?
Useful Methodologies
There are different types of UX research ranging from in-person interviews to unmoderated A/B tests which originate from observation, understanding and analysis.
Observation
Observing the world is the first step in the research process. Inexperienced researchers need to learn how to see the world around them.
You may think that observation is a simple task but in reality, it can be very subjective. Hence why the good designer always takes notes so that they can find interesting trends across diverse groups.
Understanding
Understanding is very similar to observation, it is something that we do all of the time in our daily lives. We try to understand our families, friends and colleagues, and sometimes we even try to find the point of debate or unfamiliar concepts. However, for UX designers, understanding is more related to mental models rather than disagreements.
Analysis
Finally, we must look at the analysis, this is where we must delve deeper into our research as it can be very informative and valuable for the design. However, in order to derive an insight from the research in the design, it should be analysed and presented to a larger team. Analysis helps UX researchers to discover trends and find solutions while making recommendations on how to improve.
How Can We Help?
Ballyhoo have all the skills needed to help identify and improve UX issues and can work with you to improve your user interaction and experience. We are passionate about web design and have been working with companies big and small for nearly a decade to produce high-quality websites with a focus on design, function and accessibility.
If you’d like to discuss things further or find out more information, then please feel free to contact us on 0121 295 5352, email to [email protected] or fill out the contact form on our contact page.
