Watching users use your app and taking notes isn’t enough for user research or UX research. If you don’t take proper precautions, it can end up hurting your reputation and have financial consequences. Using user research is both an art and a science; anyone can master it with some understanding and practice. We would like to discuss a few issues that could derail your UX research project in this article.
Contents
BLUNDER PREVENTION
An unplanned start
One of the biggest mistakes in UX research is not defining the whole process at the start of the process. Trying to wing it as you go along can lead to missing an important step and wasting precious time on trivial data points. Moreover, the synergies among researchers will be lost as well. As they lose track of the project objectives, each step in the process will become futile. As a result, the project’s overall quality will suffer. When it comes to UX research, it is very true that if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Do not ask users to explore a new feature
Users should provide measurable feedback for specific functionality. Instead of opinions. Do not treat user research as a screen-by-screen exploration at the discretion of users. Establish your goals and success criteria (explained later) and proceed accordingly.
Users are not informed of the process
Most users have no idea what to expect during user research or what their responsibilities are. You won’t tell them they’ll be given tasks and asked to speak out loud what they think as they use your app. Most users anticipate that the interview will be oral or written, and they don’t expect they will have to contribute more actively to the research process. This should be done when setting up the interview and again on the day of the interview. You should do this especially when your prototype requires that they set aside some real data for processing.
IGNORE INEFFICIENCIES IN UX RESEARCH
Complicated schedules
Having too many interviews in a day will exhaust your researchers easily, and the quality of your insights will suffer. Stop it immediately if you’re doing it. Some days, the interviews will fly by quickly, and other days, the interviewee will give a lot of information, which you don’t want to miss due to a busy schedule. Balance is key.
The concept of preconceived notions
Are you expecting certain results when you begin the UX research process? That’s impossible! You could influence the outcome of a UX research process with your ideas, preconceived notions, and judgments of how things can or cannot be done. You should discard them immediately when you come across them. If you do this, you will be able to get fresh insights from your user interactions, which will help you to create unique user experiences.
Finding out what users want
It’s a big deal. Jakob Neilson even described it as the first rule of usability – do not listen to your users. Most users only think about what they have already experienced. A decades-ago, if you asked people what they wanted, they would have said, “faster horses”.”.”. The creator of the car is responsible for designing it. UX researchers are no different. The habit of asking the user what they want or prioritizing listening over observing should be abandoned immediately.
Taking notes and facilitating at the same time?
You will probably miss one if you try to take notes while facilitating the interview. It is a demanding job in and of itself. Keep eye contact with the participant, help him/her stay on track with the tasks, remember the questions to ask and decide whether they need to be tweaked, and so on. Note-taking should no longer be the facilitator’s responsibility and should be delegated to someone else.
Getting off to a good start
Get to know your users
Take a walk outside. UX research cannot be done by locking yourself in a room and sitting at a computer. The first step is to step outside the building, meet the customer, observe their living environment and how they (plan to) use the product or service. Through this exercise, you will gain valuable insight into further development. If you do it frequently, you will succeed.
Research further to support your findings
Another mistake users make is accepting feedback at face value. You might receive conflicting information that requires clarification. In other cases, the information you gather will be incomplete. This data needs to be supported, strengthened and verified with secondary research.
Keeping stakeholders informed
In the absence of regular communication, your business team may make the wrong decisions. Assuming that your project is on schedule – without realizing that it has been delayed – they may start securing your next assignment. Create a regular meeting with all stakeholders right from the beginning of the project to update them on the progress of the project – or its lack thereof.
Establish success criteria and metrics
Be clear about the tasks you want the user to complete and the success criteria. Organize user behaviors and categorize them by persona. Track completion rates and confidence intervals. When you do this well, you’ll be able to spot obvious issues and create solutions to overcome them.
Conclusion
There are several ways that your user research project can get away from you. Among them are the following. We have enumerated the most common mistakes we have seen occur repeatedly. It is our hope that you will be vigilant in your user research projects and find ways to avoid making the same mistakes and abandon them and explore the many other ways to begin the project on the right foot.