What Is UX Research and What Is Its Relevance In Web Design?

Learn about user experience research and how it helps you understand how to design the products that you need to build

User experience, commonly abbreviated as UX, is the design process behind every relevant experience we encounter. From shopping online to driving a car, a carefully considered experience can be the difference between a happy user or one that will never use the product in question again.

But, how do UX designers come up with the experiences that feel right and connect with their audience? That's where UX research comes into play. UX research helps identify problems early and allows designers to create experiences that let users easily navigate even the most innovative digital technologies.

Below, UX and UI designer Patricia Reiners (@ux_patricia) shares with us an overview of the main concepts involved in UX research.

Usability Heuristics

UX research is a step worth taking. Studies have shown that if you invest 10% of your product budget on research, the result will be a product twice as desirable to use.

It can be applied during the creation of a new product—known as generative research—or after a product is already out, to refine or improve its UX—known as evaluative research.

10 UX and UI usability principles to follow

In both cases, it's useful to start evaluating the product with what usability expert Jakob Nielsen considers the 10 usability heuristics for user interface design:

1. Keep users informed about what is going on.

2. Use words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user.

3. Provide users with ways to undo and redo steps.

4. Follow platform and industry conventions.

5. Prevent problems from occurring in the first place.

6. Make elements, actions, and options visible.

7. Provide shortcuts for the expert user.

8. Keep the content and visual design of UI focus on the essentials.

9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors.

10. Provide documentation to help users understand how to complete their tasks.

Once you have analyzed the product from this perspective, it's time to consider the methodologies you'll use during the research phase.

Types of UX research

There are two fundamental types of UX research: quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research answers the "what". It's about data and analytics. For example, it shows what type of devices are used to access a website or what times of the days users launch a specific app, but not why.

These are some of the tools you can use to perform quantitative research:

- Market Analysis: an overview of the competitive landscape and alternatives already in the market.

- Analytics: tools like Google Analytics will tell you the navigation flow and other essential metrics.

- Usability testing: provide tasks to a group of users and analyze how they complete them.

- A/B testing: a handy tool that provides two sets of users with different designs to see which one is more engaging or easy to navigate.

- Surveys.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research answers the "why". It's about emotion and behavior. It shows why users react in a specific way.

These are some of the tools you can use to perform quantitative research:

- 1:1 Interviews.

- Contextual Inquiries: an interview where you ask a user to do specific tasks while observing.

- Focus groups: Ideally, with no more than 5 users involved per session.

- Diary studies: a perfect tool for collecting data about user behaviors, activities, and experiences over time.

If you want to learn more about UX research and how to use it to improve your products, follow Patricia Reiners' (@ux_patricia) Domestika course, UX Research 101. She will teach you how to design your own research plan for creating a seamless digital experience and help your team solve real problems for just about any digital product.

You might also like:

- 5 Online Courses to Become a UX Designer.
- Copywriting vs. Content Writing.
- 20 UX Design Books for Beginners.