Basics of User Experience Research

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User Experience Research

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What is UX?
User experience (UX) is the way a person feels about using a product,
system or service. It includes a person’s perceptions, as well as
practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the
system.
Wikipedia

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Q. Who creates the user experience?

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A. All of us
Product, Engineering, Marketing, Design, Research,
Support...

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Q. What does this mean?

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A. We may not be like our users.

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"Focus on the user and all else will follow."
Content from Google philosophy page

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Designers:
Designing experience – facilitate user
goals via UI that is useful, usable,
desirable, accessible, and credible.
Researchers:
Evaluate experience – examine how the
audience and its behavior relate (or not)
to a product.
UX teams help define a product

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Developing User Experience

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Why?
Why are we doing it?
Who is it for?
What is the problem we are solving?
How are people addressing this
problem today?
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Research: Interviews, surveys, field
studies, diary studies, task analysis,
personas, gap analysis
Design: Brainstorms, idea generation
Does not include UI or technical specs,
low or high fidelity designs.
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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What?
How will it behave?
What will it look like?
How will people use it?
What is the plan?
How will it be different from competitors?
How does it fit into the overall product (if
exists)?
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Research: Interviews, surveys, focus groups, field
studies, diary studies, task analysis, personas,
competitive analysis
Design: Sketches, user flows
All: Initial scoping and prioritization, key entry points,
product flow, brainstorming, defining success
metrics
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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"What did you want to know recently?"
Foundational research

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How?
What is the detailed user flow?
What cases should be supported?
How does it fit visually and architecturally into
the rest of the product?
What are the UI patterns/color palette?
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Research: Mini-experiments, heuristic
evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, paper
prototype testing, card sorting
Design: Flow charts, participatory design
session, low-fidelity designs, high-fidelity
design
All: Use cases, review designs, func. specs
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Does it work?
Can users accomplish their goals using the
product designed?
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Research: Eye tracking, heuristic evaluation,
cognitive walkthrough, formal usability test
Design: Iterate designs based on findings,
move towards high fidelity rendering
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Iterative research
Version 1 Version 3Version 2

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React
What did we learn from user testing?
How will we address problems?
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Research: Log analysis, diary studies, usability
testing, field studies
Design: Iterate on interface design bugs,
prioritize issues
All: Analyze user data, prioritize issues
plan next releases
Create ConceptRelease and Iterate
Develop Product Design Interfaces
Define Problem

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Q. So what is the takeaway?

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A. Success of the product relies on...
• Understanding the users
• Clear goals and success metrics
• All team members working together, without any hierarchy
• Open communication
• Involving all teams from the beginning
• Respect the sequence of methods and exercises
that move the product development along

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Q & A