Course 1 week 4 is the last part of Foundations of UXD. Finally, we have made it! We have made great strides towards learning this "artform" so now let's finish it on a high note.

This week is a bit heavier as User Research, one of the most important parts of UXD is introduced here.

Week 4: Integrating research into the design process

Introduction to User Research

1. UX research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation and feedback.
2. UX research can help bridge the gap between what a business thinks the user needs and what the user actually needs, before an expensive and time-consuming product is made.
3. User research is a continuous part of the product development life cycle and takes place before, during, and after phase 3: Design.

Types of User Research

1. Research that takes place before anything is designed is usually called foundational research. Some UX teams might also call it strategic or generative research.
   • Answers the question, "What should we build?"
   • "What are the user problems?"
   • "How can we solve them?"
   • "Am I aware of my own biases, and am I able to filter them as I do research?"
2. Research that takes place during the design phase, phase 3, of the product development life cycle, is called design research or tactical research.
   • Answers the question, "How should we build it?"
   • "How is the experience of using the prototype?"
   • "Was the product easy or difficult to use? Why? Why not?"
3. Research that takes place at the end of the product development life cycle is called Post-launch Research.
   • Answers the question, "Did we succeed?"

Research Methods

1. Foundational Research Common foundational research methods include:

   • Interviews
   • Surveys
   • Focus groups
   • Competitive audit: An overview of your competitor's strengths and weaknesses.
   • Field studies: Research activities that take place in the user's context or personal environment, rather than in an office or lab.
   • Diary studies: A research method used to collect qualitative data about user behaviors, activities, and experiences over time. Often, a user will log, or diary, about their daily activities and provide information about their behaviors and needs, which can help inform your designs.

2. Design Research Common design research methods include:

   • Usability Study: A technique to evaluate a product by testing it on users using prototypes.
   • A/B testing: A research method that evaluates and compares two different aspects of a product to discover which of them is most effective.
   • Cafe or guerrilla studies: A research method where user feedback is gathered by taking a design or prototype into the public domain and asking passersby for their thoughts.
   • Card sorting: A research method that instructs study participants to sort individual labels written on notecards into categories that make sense to them. This type of research is largely used to figure out the information architecture of your project.
   • Intercepts: A research method that gathers on-site feedback from users as they engage in the activities being researched.

3. Post-Launch Research Research methods you might use to conduct post-launch research include:

   • A/B testing
   • Usability studies
   • Surveys
   • Logs analysis: A research method used to evaluate recordings of users while they interact with your design, tools, etc.

Categorization of Research

1. Based on who conducts the research

   • Primary Research: Conducted by the designer. Example: Interviews, Usability study, surveys
   • Secondary Research: Information someone else has put together. Example: Books, Articles, or Journals.
   • Most of the time, secondary research is done at the very beginning of the product development lifecycle, before any ideation happens. Secondary research is often done by product leads, not UX designers.

2. Based on the type of data collected

   • Qualitative research: Focus on a smaller number of users and understand their needs in greater detail.
   • Quantitative research: Focuses on large data that can be gathered by counting or measuring.
   • Quantitative research gives you the "what" and qualitative research gives you the "why."

Research Methods in Detail

1. Interviews

   • Helpful in collecting in-depth information on people's opinions, thoughts, experiences, and feelings.
   • Best practice is to conduct at least five user interviews during your research.
   • It can be time-consuming, expensive and the sample sizes are smaller, due to time and money constraints.
   • Group interviews can be affected by the bandwagon effect

2. Surveys

   • Helpful to understand what most people think about a product.
   • Large sample size, quick and inexpensive
   • No personalization and feedback process

3. Usability Study

   • Helpful to demonstrate if a product is on the right track or if the design needs to be adjusted
   • Usability studies can challenge your assumptions about your product by demonstrating a completely different result than you were expecting.
   • There can be differences between a “controlled” usability study in a lab versus how a user experiences the product in real life.

4. Secondary Research

   • Cheaper, faster, can be done online, and acts as a good supplement to primary research.
   • No feedback, can be misleading

Bias in User Research

A bias is favoring or having a prejudice against something based on limited information. Biases can seriously impact your user research and negatively influence the design of your final product.

Types of Bias

1. Confirmation Bias: Occurs when you start looking for evidence to prove a hypothesis you have. Because you think you already have the answer, you're drawn to information that confirms your beliefs and preconceptions.
2. False consensus Bias: It is the assumption that others will think the same way as you do. In UX research, the false consensus bias happens when we overestimate the number of people who will agree with our idea or design, which creates a false consensus.
3. Recency Bias: Forming preconceived notions around the latest thing you heard/read about someone or something.
4. Primacy Bias: Remembering the first impression of someone or something most strongly and forming opinions around that.
5. Implicit Bias or Unconcious Bias: A collection of attitudes and stereotypes we associate to people without our conscious knowledge.
6. Sunk Cost Fallacy: This is the idea that the deeper we get into a project we've invested in, the harder it is to change course without feeling like we've failed or wasted time.
7. Social Desirability Bias: This happens when a participant answers a question based on what they think you want to hear.
8. Availability bias: Occurs when you rush the user recruitment process or skip screener questions to attract a bigger pool of users, even if they don’t fit the qualifications or characteristics that you’ve already determined are present in your ideal user.

How to Avoid Biases in User Research

1. Best method is to ask open-ended questions wherever possible
2. Get into the habit of actively listening without adding your own opinions.
3. Include a large sample of users with diverse perspectives to minimize False consensus bias.
4. Take detailed notes or recordings of research method used to avoid recency and primacy bias
5. Interview/interact with each participant in the same way
6. Ask others to point out our biases
7. To avoid the sunk cost fallacy, break down your project into smaller phases, and then outline designated points where you can decide whether to continue or stop.

Congrats! You have completed the short-notes version of Foundations of User Experience (UX) Design. Whether it was your first time going through this or you use these notes as a refresher, I hope it was helpful to you.
We have gone through a lot of material in these four weeks and I, for one, find the Bias in User research part the hardest.
I had a lot of fun creating these blogs, much more than expected, so apologies in advance if I committed some mistakes in the heat of the moment.