Course 4 – Module 1: Planning UX research studies.

- Research study: a step-by-step examination of a group of users and their needs, which
adds realistic context to the design process.
o Plan
 Start by outlining the background, set goals for your research, establish the
steps you’ll take, select the people who will participate.
o Research
 Gather data (many ways to do this, but more often it’s a usability study),
discover pain points, and interview users.
 Usability study: a research method that assesses how easy it is for
users to complete core tasks in a design.
o Synthesize
 Analyze and synthesize the data.
 Trying to find the meaning in the data (look for patterns in quantitative
data & explore trends in the qualitative data)
o Share
 Share and promote the insights with project stakeholders & create a
research presentation.
 Project stakeholders: people who are involved in the project or who will
be impacted by its results.
 Research Presentation should include:
 Method(s) you use to conduct the research.
 Data you collected.
 Conclusions you reached based on the data.
 Recommendations for acting on the conclusions.
o The stronger the connection between your research
conclusions and your recommendations – the more likely
your stakeholders will take the actions you’ve proposed.
- Types of test phase research:
o User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Determines if the product does what it was
designed to do.
o Quality assurance testing (QA): Examines the product for any unwanted errors
and tests if everything works as intended. If, during QA testing, the UX design
team discovers something that doesn’t work as intended, such as a button that
does not redirect to the correct page, they may submit a bug report to the
development team so the issue can be fixed.
 o Accessibility evaluation: Ensures that all aspects of the product adhere to the
accessibility standards. This evaluation may be part of the QA testing.
- Elements of a UX research plan:
o Project Background
 “What led you to conduct this research?”
 Importance of Project Background:
 Gets the team on the same page at the beginning of study.
o Your team should agree on why you’re doing the study.
 Shows you understand why you’re doing this research.
 Promotes confidence in the overall quality of your analysis and
insights.
 How to write the Project Background:
 Identify the signals that indicated research was necessary.
 Describe any previous research that has been conducted or
solutions that have been tried.
 List insights the research will generate.
o Insight: An observation about people that helps you
understand the user or their needs from a new perspective.
o Research Goals (aka Research Objectives)
 “What design problems are you trying to solve? How will the results of
the research impact our design decisions?”
 Use the answers to set goals.
 The type of research goal depends on when in the product dev life cycle
you conduct your research.
 Foundational research goal: Understand why or if you should
build the product.
o Before the design process
 Design research goal: understand how to build the product.
o During the design process
 Post-launch research goals: Understand if the product worked as
expected.
o After the design process.
o Research Questions
 The questions your research is trying to answer.
 EX: How long does it take a user to find and book a dog walker?
 Important because they guide your research. They provide focus and
structure for your research study.
  How to write Research Questions:
 Actionable – clear way to answer
 Specific
 Avoid leading questions – neutrally phrased
 The way you write your questions will determine whether your data is
quantitative or qualitative.
 How many vs How did they feel..
o Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Definition: critical measures of progress towards an end goal.
Usually, you would only use a few of these KPIs when conducting
a Research Study.
 Time on task
 How long it takes for a user to complete a task.
 Generally- the shorter amount of time = easier to use
 Use of navigation vs search
 The number of people who use a website or app’s navigation
compared to the number of people who use the search
functionality.
 If one is way more preferred, it could be a design issue.
 User error rates
 Indicate the parts of design that cause users to make errors.
 Point to areas that you may need to edit the UX.
 Drop-off rates
 How many users abandon the experience.
 Conversion rates
 Measures the percentage of users who complete a desired action.
 System Usability Scale (SUS)
 A questionnaire to measure the usability of your designs.
 Net Promoter Score (NPS)
 Measures the likelihood that a user would recommend your
product to a friend or colleague.
o Methodology
 The steps you take to conduct your research.
 How will you collect data? How will you analyze the data once
you get it?
 Why to include it? Methodology informs your stakeholders of what will
happen during the study, give stakeholders more confidence in your
 results, provides details that other researchers need to repeat the exact
same study in the future.
o Participants
 Who will you survey? What characteristics do the participants have?
 Make sure you have diversity in your participants & no sample bias.
 Research plan should include this information about your participants:
 Characteristics
 Screener survey
 Incentive
 Diverse perspectives and abilities
o Script a.k.a. “Discussion Guide”
 Script the questions you ask study participants as they test your product.
 Tips for writing interview questions:
 Use the same questions for each interview.
 Ask open-ended questions.
o How did you feel about.. What bothered you about..
 Encourage elaboration.
o “Tell me more about that..”
 Ask the same question from different angles.
 Don’t mention other users.
 Don’t ask leading questions.
 How to write the script:
 Getting Started
o Welcome, Thank them for their time, Get consent to record,
Learn their basic information, Remind participants that
they’re not being tested, Let participants ask questions.
 Usability tasks
o Based on research goals, Specific, Make participants take
action, Avoid providing clues on how to complete the task.
 Conclusions
o Ask clarifying questions, End the recording, Thank the
participant.
- Importance of keeping user data private
o It’s the right thing to do
o Privacy laws and ethics
o Risk of hacking
o Protecting your company’s brand
- Types of data to protect:
o Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
 Specific details that could be used to identify a user.
 Names, home address, email address, phone numbers
o Sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (SPII)
 Data that, if lost, compromised, or stolen, could cause your users financial
harm, embarrassment, or discrimination.
 Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, passport numbers,
financial account numbers, date of birth, race, disability status,
gender, sexuality, criminal history, medical information
- Privacy and security practices:
o Be transparent about data collection.
o Only collect user data that’s absolutely essential for your study.
o Get active consent.
o Detail how you’ll use participants’ information and protect their privacy.
o Allow users to withdraw.
o Inform users of who will have access to their data.
o Explain how you plan to store and delete user’s data once it’s been used.
- Vulnerable populations: Groups of people who have limited ability to provide their
consent or have special privacy concerns.
- Main privacy concerns:
o Data recording: Document your study and results in a way that’s consistent with
UX research standards.
o Data storage: Make sure your data is held in a way that’s safe from hacking and
physical damage.
o Data retention: How long you and your company hold on to research data.
- Tools to maintain privacy:
o De-identification: Removing any identifying information from a users’ data that
you collect during a study.
o Non-Disclosure Agreement: A contract that gives on party legal protection
against another party stealing their ideas.
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