Overview
User research is a broader term that includes any type of research that involves users, such as usability testing, user testing, market research, surveys, interviews and focus groups.
Before further progress, there is a need to differentiate between user research and user experience (UX) research. Both are closely related; however, they differ in their quests to understand the needs, preferences, and behaviours of users.
For the sake of this writing, the focus will only be on the discovery stage of user research and will be guided by this outline:
- User research and UX research
- Discovery
- What is PMP?
- Outcomes vs outputs
- Benefits and features
- Cobbler and awl
- User research methods in discovery stage
- Field Studies
- User Interviews
- Stakeholder interviews
- Requirements or constraints
- Competitor audit
- Summary
1. User research and UX research
The main difference between user research and user experience research can be found in the scope and purposes of the research. User research is applicable to any domain or industry where users are involved, such as health, entertainment, education, public and private sectors, or social media.
With user research, you can identify the needs, opportunities, problems, and patterns of user behaviour in a given context, which can help you to validate or negate some assumptions, hypotheses, or preconceptions about users.
On the other hand, UX research is considered a subset of user research, and its focus is on the interaction between users and products, services, or systems like applications, websites, games and other software. User experience is purposed to examine and improve the accessibility, usability, desirability, and user satisfaction with a product, service or system.
Therefore, UX research focuses more on the design and development of products, services, or systems that users interact with; examining how users feel about products, how they use them, and their perceptions.
UX research is the systematic study of target users and their requirements to add measurable contexts and insights to design processes. The goal of UX research is to understand the user’s emotions, pain points, and abilities to create a product that is usable, useful, and enjoyable.
In the bid to identify and solve usability problems, enhance user satisfaction, UX research is mostly carried out during the design and development process, from prototyping to testing.
You can use qualitative research methods (that is understanding user’s motivation and behaviors), quantitative (examining the data about user’s actions and patterns), or both when considering user research.
Susan Farrell (2017) in UX Research Cheat Sheet, argues that user research should be done at any point in the design cycle: at whatever stage you are in right now, at all the stages, and early in the project. She is of the opinion that you can start somewhere and progressively learn as you go along. Thus, UX research methods can happen in various project stages: Discover, Explore, Test, and Listen.
Among many use cases of user research, it can help researchers to confirm or negate some preconceived notions about users. Just like UX research, user research can be conducted at any stage of a project, from the moment of ideas generation, development, and sharing to the point of assessing the worth, benefit or value of them. User research can be used in areas such as:
- Market research – if you want to find out about future customers’ needs, desires, or preferences for a new product or service.
- Focus groups – if you want to sample opinions from a range of selected users about a product or service.
- User testing – if you want to find out how a new product or service performs, functions or its durability.
- Surveys – if you want to measure how satisfied your customers are about a product or service and review their levels of royalty and probably your customer retention capacity.
- Interviews – if you want to gather information about what motivates users about your product or service, or the challenges they may be facing while using your product or service.
2. Discovery
Discovery in user research refers to the initial stage of a project where researchers focus on outcomes rather than outputs of the design. At this stage of the project, researchers seek to understand the problem and the issues that need to be solved and collect evidence to guide their actions. They define the problem or problems the project needs to solve. While considering the discovery stage of the research, it is suggested to disabuse all old ideas or preconceptions. Consider a situation where the user is a focal point. This can be illustrated with what I called ‘the 3-way marriage between a paint, model, and painter’ (PMP), for an acronym.
What is PMP?
PMP is the acronym for paint, model, painter. Imagine Jack painting an image of Rose Dawson in the movie, Titanic. He was captivated by her beauty, and immediately there was a bond between the painter, model and paint. The model is always the first when a painter decides to create an image. The model may exist in his mind but the moment he discovers them, he sets his easel, unfolds his paint bag and begins to paint. The painter now 'thingifies' the model. While his eyes are on the model, he uses his brush to trace every line, contours, dimples, marks, and shades. The bond is like a rapture. The model’s body (lines, contours, dimples, marks and shades) inform the painter with new ideas that replace the old biases and assumptions. The painter creates a paint, whether the paint is a true image of the model or not is only revealed at completion.
Though the model is the focal point, they do not see the paint until the painter finishes his creation. At first, the user (model) was the focal point. Soon, the model became an object or a thing used by the painter to create his paint. One could get the impression that the painter 'uses' the model to achieve his goal. In essence, the model adds value to the creation by offering their body.
The discovery stage is not just knowing who the potential users are, but engaging them to find out their needs, pain points, desires, and behaviours. At this initial stage, you must view the user as a truly subject of your research and not object.
What are other things to consider at this stage?
Outcomes vs Outputs
In ITIL, understanding the meaning of a service includes understanding what is an outcome and output.
“An outcome is a result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs” while “an output is a tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity.”
Hoa Loranger (2016) puts it succinctly: “An output is a product or service that you create; an outcome is the problem that you solve with that product.”
User researchers seek to gain insights into user needs, emotions, desires, and values arising from the problem, its impact on the users and organizations. Outputs are necessary but they should not be the center of the entire project process. But what need is a product or service if it does not solve the user’s immediate needs?
Benefits and Features
Loranger emphasizes the importance of benefits over features of a product or service. She argues that “a feature is something that a product or service offers, whereas a benefit is what customers want.” She creatively used two metaphors to distinguish the effects of benefits over features of a product or service:
- Long features list? Yawn.
- Benefits that solve users’ current pain points? They will give you their credit card number right now.
Though features are essential, and there cannot be benefits without good features, understanding the good, essential, and necessary features is important to solving the users’ immediate pain points.
Cobbler and Awl
Cobbler and awl analogy is another way of examining the discovery stage. A cobbler is a skilled craftsperson whose profession is to repair and make shoes, using leather, and various tools to mend and make footwear. A cobbler is not without their tool, especially an awl which is a sharp tool for making holes in leather, wood, or fabric materials. A cobbler can use an awl to make holes in a shoe leather before stitching them back.
As part of the discovery, you must identify the cobbler and their awl. Provide the right, usable, and useful equipment to the appropriate user. Discovery stage allows you to pair or match a user, regardless of their abilities with a product, service or tool appropriate to their needs.
The discovery begins with a broad objective, such as understanding how big the problem is, who your potential users are, and identifying opportunities; and this can be achieved through various research methods at the initial phase of the project.
3. User research methods in discovery stage
Field Studies
Field Studies, field research, or fieldwork takes place in the user’s natural environment. It is bringing the research to the user’s life situations, experiences, and behaviors. It occurs in the real world where the user normally uses the product, service, or system. The researcher observes the user’s behaviors, interactions, and challenges.
They observe how the user carries out the tasks, makes decisions, and gains deep insights into the user’s experiences. This type of research method helps researchers uncover some hidden issues about the design. However, this type of research demands time and effort.
User Interviews
In this type of research method, researchers engage with participants in a one-on-one dialogue to understand their needs, motivations, pain points, and emotions as well as observe their behaviors, facial expressions, or bodily movements. Such an interview lasts between 30 to 60 minutes during which the researcher asks specific questions on identified issues to gain deeper insights into the participants' experiences, wants, beliefs, and worldviews.
User interviews can help researchers discover new opportunities, generate ideas about their design, and confirm both qualitative and quantitative assessments. It can also help researchers to continually evaluate the changing needs and proposals of the customer.
User interviews are often moderated, whereby the researcher consciously and directly interacts with the participant. This process offers the moderators the opportunity to:
- Listen attentively: observe all verbal and non-verbal cues
- Ask open-ended questions: ask follow-up questions and seek more to understand the customer
- Documentation: Pick up and record important insights during the interview
Two types of user interviews are necessary during the discovery phase: Generative and Contextual.
Generative Interviews – These are commonplace among researchers because they provide structured opportunities to gather information required for direct, and actionable research questions. It can help researchers in the early design stage and development process to answer questions, such as “What do I not know?”
Contextual Interviews – It is also known as contextual inquiry. It is contextual because these types of interviews occur in the user’s environment. It could be the user’s home, office, or workplace, where the product or service is naturally used.
Stakeholder Interviews
Stakeholder Interviews are among the top on the list of the discovery phase when starting on a project because they provide valuable insights and context from people with a vested interest in the project.
Among many things, it helps you gather essential information, understand the project’s context, scope, objectives, and potential problems, and develop a plan of action.
Knowing who the stakeholders are is equally relevant at this stage of the project. Stakeholders could be internal or external or both.
Internal Stakeholders – These are people who work in the organization or within the project team. They include:
- Senior Management Team – throw insights into the business strategy
- Development Team – like the developers, business analysts, project managers, product managers, product designers, user researchers, accessibility specialists, and more, who engage in the software development as well as quality assurance and control
- Sales and Marketing Team – concern themselves about the target audience and provide helpful insights
- Customer Support Team – directly interact with the customers and can imagine and understand their problems, pain points, desires, and attitudes
External Stakeholders – These are individuals outside the organization, such as suppliers or vendors, clients, or agencies (these could also include user researchers, accessibility specialists, product designers, and more if the organization depends on experts outside their organization).
Requirements or constraints
Requirements and constraints also play an important role during the discovery process.
Requirements
During this phase under requirements, it defines the specific conditions, features, or functionalities that a product, service, or system must meet to validate the intended purpose.
Contextually, the requirements refer to the criteria that guide the study, as it examines the design, collect data, and make analysis. For example, in the imaginary Hospital Service Review App, the following requirements were implemented as a methodology to observe specific tasks that participants performed as well as evaluate the usability metrics.
- Time on task - how long does it take different participants to complete tasks?
- Use of navigation vs. search - does an assistive tech user prefer navigating through the links or do they prefer finding information using the search field?
- User error rates - what are the types of errors users encounter while completing reviews?
- Drop-off rates - do users meet blockers?
- System usability scale (SUS) - determine how easy or complicated the app is to users’ tasks.
Constraints
These are boundaries or scopes that the research process must abide by because they define what should and should not be done during the research process. Constraints also determine the type of study design, interpretation, and the way it is implemented. They determine how a project can be executed and could be any of these:
- Budget – How much money allocated for the research could affect your research choices
- Time – The study scope might be affected by the short time allocated for data collection
- Sample Size – How many participants to be involved in the research is another factor. This can affect the statistical turnout
- Ethical – Observing and complying with the ethical guidelines is another blocker to certain research methods
Therefore, it is a clever project management to balance requirements and constraints. In fact, at times, there may be a need for compromises due to resource limitations.
Competitive Audit
This is a structured research method used to identify and research competitors in the target business and audience. It provides great insights into your competitors’ performance, the threats they may pose to your brand, and the opportunities that may be learnt from the audit.
Competitive audit opens the whole horizon of the competitive landscape and allows you to examine your competitors’ actions and strategies, help inform your business decisions, and establish benchmarks for performance indicators.
With a competitive audit, you can see the gap in the market and an opportunity to sweep in with your product or service and explore areas where you can outperform your business rivalries.
Table 1: shows a practical example of a competitive audit. Here, you compare the intended app’s audience with your competitors’ and review the different platforms’ preferences.
This competitive audit is a sample review of 4 healthcare websites comparing them to the proposed imaginary hospital service review app.
The table above examines each of the competitor’s value propositions, product offerings, target audiences, your type of competitor (direct or indirect), the proximity of your competitors (or solely online), and business sizes.
During this exercise, you are examining your competitors’ goals, who they are, what makes them stand out, what is the quality of their product or service? Can you figure out their position in the market? Most importantly, how do they project their image in the industry?
Getting to know the above will help you identify their strengths, weaknesses, as well as the gaps in the industry. You can seize any opportunities you identified from the audit to plug in the gaps and outperform your competitors.
4. Summary
Here’s a summary of the discovery stage’s main ideas:
The discovery stage is the first stage of the user research process, where you research and understand the problems, the users and the market.
It helps you define scope, goals, and requirements, as well as identify the main challenges and opportunities through some methods or tools, such as field studies, user interviews, stakeholder interviews, examining requirements and constraints, and performing competitor audits.
Finally, this initial stage of user research enables you to create a solid foundation for the rest of the design process and deliver a solution that meets the needs and expectations of your users and business.
Sources
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- Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2024, February 6). The 7 Factors that Influence User Experience. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/the-7-factors-that-influence-user-experience
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