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Research Methods and Techniques

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Influencing UX Stakeholder Values: 6 Ways to Convey the Significance of User Research

  • Contextual User Studies, Customer Experience, Design, Design Theory, Interviews, Product design, Project Management, Research Methods and Techniques

Has UX research ever been the priority for your stakeholders? If not, here are some ways to convey its significance.

IDEAS IN BRIEF
Influencing UX Stakeholder Values: 6 Ways to Convey the Significance of User Research
  • When stakeholders have insights around user needs, goals and behaviors, the team can make evidence-based decisions.
  • One of the most common pain points are having to communicate and prove the value of UX and user research to leadership.
  • One author shares some ideas to overcome this:
    1. Understand the “why” behind the push-back
    2. Speak your stakeholders’ language
    3. Don’t fight the battle alone
    4. Find and use tools made by the government, for the government
    5. Identify quick wins to show the value of UX faster
    6. Get better value for stakeholders out of the user research
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4 Ways to expand the impact of UX research across an organization

  • Research Methods and Techniques

How can we make research insights reach everyone who would actually benefit from them?

IDEAS IN BRIEF
4 Ways to expand the impact of UX research across an organization

UX research is successful when results are promptly made available and actionable within the organization. Some common obstacles include tight deadlines and information fatigue. Here are four measures that might help to use UX research insights more effectively:

  1. Reflecting on which team will benefit most from the insights
  2. Delivering them in digestible formats
  3. Actively involving customer-facing departments
  4. Organizing customer feedback

Read the full article to learn about how to use these tips in your next research project.

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6 Reasons Why Remote Interview Session is Hard to Execute: a reflection by a frustrated, screen-fatigue user researcher

  • Design, Empathy, Human factors, Personas, Product design, Remote Research, Research Methods and Techniques

A few tips by a UX researcher on how to make the utmost of remote interviews

IDEAS IN BRIEF
6 Reasons Why Remote Interview Session is Hard to Execute: a reflection by a frustrated, screen-fatigue user researcher
  • In the past year, UX researchers encountered numerous challenges because of the new shift to remote work.
  • Some of the major issues consisted in recruiting respondents, online ghosting, unstable internet connection, and misunderstandings, among others.
  • Gaining some additional data beyond the interview, or repetitively communicating your question might prevent some of the problems and allow to run the interview efficiently for both sides.

Read the full article for perspective from a UX researcher on six relatable struggles of remote interview sessions and ideas on how to solve them.

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Prioritizing Problems to Inform Product Design

  • Product design, Psychology and Human Behavior, Research Methods and Techniques, Team Dynamics

What if we shift the focus from solutions to problems? A view on UX research and why prioritizing problems pays off in the long run

IDEAS IN BRIEF
Prioritizing Problems to Inform Product Design
  • Focusing on solutions as you start UX research might lead to misunderstanding or overlooking user problems, which in turn, damages the whole design and development process.
  • To decrease the risk of poorly developed solutions and costly adjustments, it’s necessary to invest time and effort in discovering user problems and pain points, clearly distinguish them from users’ goals, and use diverse research methods.
  • Although focusing on pain points might seem more time-consuming initially, problems are more concrete, easier to uncover, and ultimately are the source for meaningful solutions.

Read the full article for perspective on how this shift from focusing on solutions to focusing on problems can be a powerful tool as you begin UX research.

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UX Personas are useless. Unless created properly.

  • Design, Personas, Research Methods and Techniques, Usability

Discover the common mistakes in creating UX personas and how to avoid them to artifact products that meet users’ needs.

IDEAS IN BRIEF
UX Personas are useless. Unless created properly.
  • UX personas are meaningful for product management and UX design only if they are based on real data and not on assumptions.
  • Leveraging UX personas is key to empathizing with users, making informed decisions, and designing valuable products.
  • A common mistake is overlooking the research stage or not putting enough effort and time into refining UX personas.
  • It is vital to get as deep as possible and collect relevant information by communicating with stakeholders, conducting prior research and interviews, identifying differences between users, and creating baselines.
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Law of diminishing returns, design and decision making

  • Behavioral Science, Business Value and ROI, Contextual User Studies, Design Theory, Research Methods and Techniques

How do you know if there’s still room for improvement?

IDEAS IN BRIEF
Law of diminishing returns, design and decision making
How do you know if there is still room for improvement in the experiences you design?
  • The law of diminishing returns, a widely used concept in Economics that shows the relationship between investment (time, money, resources) and benefits can help Designers, UXers and Product Owners/Managers make better design, product and business decisions.
  • The Law of Diminishing returns is a bell curve:
    • Section 1 – curving upwards: is the fastest growing part of the curve, which means that efforts invested provide a more than proportional return.
    • Section 2 – leveling off: along this part of the curve we still see returns on our investment, and will keep decreasing as we approach section 3, as the curve becomes less and less steep.
    • Section 3 – curving downwards: here the slope starts to go down, meaning that our efforts stop having positive returns. This means it doesn’t make sense to keep investing (effort, resources, etc.).
  • Knowing how this curve works and where in the curve your problem lies is key so you don’t invest effort into something that doesn’t make sense to optimize. 

Read the full article to learn more about the different ways that the law of diminishing returns can be applied to design problems.

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