Choosing a User Research Method

As ever, you’ll want to start with well-defined goals and clear research questions. Identify your research goals, which should be statements about what you’re trying to learn from your research.

To define your research goals, ask yourself:

• What do I want to know?
• What don’t I know?
• How will I know when I’ve learned it?
• What company goals will this work support?
• Where am I in the product development process?
• What decision will this research enable? 
• What are the anticipated outcomes of this research?

Refine the answers to these questions through stakeholder research. Good research questions are specific, actionable, and practical. They also contain clues about who you need to recruit and which methods you’ll need to use.

Example questions 

• Are our customers able to successfully navigate to the support page on our site?
• What are the primary motivating factors behind the decision to purchase pet insurance?
• What tools do college students use to keep track of their schedules?

Pick the right method for your research question.

Key discovery methods 

Stakeholder Interviews: Understanding what your stakeholders ultimately value and need to know is a necessary component of effective user research. 

Ethnography: Ethnography is all about observing people and their natural habits in context. 

Diary studies—When you need to understand long-term user behavioral patterns, diary studies are a great option. They provide insights into habits, changes over time, motivations, and long-term customer journeys.

Focus groups:

Generative user interviews: In-depth user interviews typically involve talking to participants one-on-one, asking them a set of non-leading questions, with an emphasis on past behaviors and perceptions. 

Task analysis: Task analysis helps you better understand your user’s goals, and how they go about achieving them. ‍

Key validation and testing methods 

Qualitative usability testing: This method involves having participants think aloud as they interact with a prototype or product, allowing researchers to evaluate implicit and explicit cues and find patterns quickly. 

A/B testing and multivariate testing: Whether you use A/B test, A/B/C test, single variant test, or multivariate test, the goal is to collect quantitative data on which version of your product best achieves the goal of the test

First click testing: This is just what it sounds like. First click testing—in which you record the first click someone makes to accomplish their goal and analyze the results

Card sorting and tree testing: Card sorting and tree testing are methods for testing your information architecture (IA), i.e. how you categorize and label content. 

Accessibility testing: 

On-going listening (post-launch) 

You’ve launched a product… congratulations! 

Now, keep researching it!

Key ongoing listening methods 

Feedback surveys: There’s a variety of survey types and tools that can help you meet your goals, from user intercept (in-app) surveys, to NPS surveys, to longer surveys that dig into specific aspects of the user experience. 

Analytics: Analytics can be a treasure trove of great quantitative data if you know how to analyze them and connect insight to action.

Bug reports and support tickets: Bugs come up and need to be fixed. That’s just the reality. Make sure you have good bug reporting and systems to address them rapidly.