Learning Session 05: UX Research
Topic
In today’s learning session I’m trying to get more knowledge about what is user research, why is it so important, and how do we do it.
What I learned
Today for the most part of the day I focused on learning about user research in general, and for user personas as one of the main parts of user research.
User research
User research is a method study that targets users, including their needs and pain points, so that designers can produce a better and well though-out product.
The purpose of using this method is to study the product and to understand users’ needs and thought processes, by studying how they perform a task while observing how they interact with a product.
The main goal is to expose users’ problems, and help creators make the product an enjoyable user experience.
User Research methods are based on psychology, marketing, ethnography, and other related disciplines.
There are three user research methods:
- Task analysis
- User surveys,
- Contextual interviews. And I’m going to talk about each one of them.
Task Analysis
After getting some thoughts on internet I found this cool Google analysis that just tells us how important research is.
So, they conducted a user research method by using a task-analysis model. A researcher would sit down beside a user in front of a computer. The researcher would then open a browser, navigate to google.com, and pass the keyboard to the user.
The goal was to see what people did when they encountered Google’s homepage. This was a classic task-analysis method of user research. The main message of this method is to give your users a chance to interact with some aspect of your product, and just observe them in action.
The results of research?
Researchers repeatedly found out that the first thing users did on google was… nothing. They just stared at the screen.
When the researchers asked what they were doing, users said they were waiting for the page to finish loading.
Google’s original homepage was so bare that people assumed there was still more of it that hadn’t appeared yet onscreen. It was this user research that led Google to add links, such as Privacy Terms and Settings, across the bottom of its homepage, as a signal to visitors that the page was finished loading.
User Surveys
A survey is a form of a list with questions sent to target users. This method doesn’t allow researchers to talk directly to users.
The survey needs to include as many detailed questions to give the company as many insights as possible. This will help designers to understand the users’ concerns and need and to be able to solve their problems.
Contextual Interviews
These interviews are conducted in the users’ environment. The main goal of using this method is to observe users in a setting that is natural to them, to learn how they work and how they interact with your solution of the problem or what issues they’re having with it.
However, this method will not yield the type of measurable, statistical data that you might receive from more quantitative user research, such as a review of your product’s actual usage data.
User Personas
User personas are a commonly used tool when performing user research. They usually include users whose goal is to represent the needs of a larger group of users.
The main goal of user personas is to create reliable and realistic representations for users and also to help designers get the answers to the famous question: “Who are we designing for?”
Understanding users’ expectations, needs, and concerns will lead to a product that will satisfy all consumers and will be an enjoyable user experience that leads to a successful product.
User personas will be clarified who is in your target audience by answering the following questions:
- Who is my ideal customer?
- What are the current behavior patterns of my users?
- What are the needs and goals of my users?
- What issues and pain points do they currently face within the given context?
UX design is all about solving real user problems. Keep this important note while creating user personas. Make sure for every single action or feature that you do is done so with the user in mind.
What challenged me
Well, user research challenged me the most in this learning session, how to do user research, what rule you need to imply to do one, and learning about three methods of user research.
I was familiar with the term but I didn’t know how to do proper user research for UX Design.
Every day I am learning new things and overstepping my challenges on this path.
I sincerely appreciate your time for coming this far. Any feedback or critique is always welcomed and appreciated by me.
