Leveraging User Experience Research in Driving Business Results: A Quick Guide

Understanding the Differences Between User Research and Market Research

It is quite common for people outside the field of user experience to confuse user research with traditional market research. In fact, despite their being some overlap between the two, user research is very different from market research in some critical ways. User research focuses on understanding users’ interactions with a product, while market research focuses on customers’ attitudes toward and perceptions of a brand, a product, a message, or a pricing model. The key word here is interactions. Because of this difference, user research leverages an interview process that looks at the context, the tasks, and the end-to-end workflows for how users interact with a product; and focuses heavily on what they do to drive research conclusions, while market research places more emphasis on what they say.

You can and should combine user research and market research for a one-two punch that lets you deliver truly comprehensive customer insights. While market research can lead the way when you’re looking at market share, general customer sentiment, and user segmentation, user research can give you insights into what kind of user experience you should deliver to drive sustained business success. For instance, you might start by conducting market segmentation research, then follow up by creating digital-space personas, basing them on your segmentation data and additional user-research interviews. The combined insights let you understand the overall market, as well as exactly what you should deliver to create a delightful customer experience.

Synthesizing Findings from Multiple Studies

While you must do research studies one at a time, no one study can truly provide a 360-degree understanding of user behavior. On the other hand, you can and should synthesize insights that you derive from individual studies to get a more comprehensive picture of your users. For example, by conducting, say, two rounds of usability studies on a particular product, you should be able to derive greater understanding of your users’ overall workflows and usage scenarios from the studies—if you include a few questions that probe these extra dimensions in your test script. You can integrate such holistic insights with insights you’ve derived from analyses of Web metrics and quantitative surveys, leading to the development of personas that reflect the full range of users’ psychological and behavioral traits.

Validating Target Users and Use Cases

Oftentimes, product managers or business stakeholders have already identified the target users and use cases for the product your research is to examine. However, as a user researcher, it is your responsibility to review, challenge, and propose new ideas about users and use cases during the course of your interviews.

For instance, let’s say product managers think that large eBay sellers use eBay Web applications in their selling process, but in fact, many such sellers hire someone else to deal with stuff on the computer and have little direct knowledge of the eBay Web applications for selling. The implication of such a finding would be that eBay should design the Web applications to meet the needs of those who are actually using the software rather than the eBay sellers themselves. This kind of learning helps a business align product development efforts with the needs and use cases of actual users.

Getting Team Participation While Still Maintaining Control

It is very important to have your product team members observe research sessions during which you interview users. No research report can replace the experience of their observing first-hand how users interact with a product or the understanding of users that they can gain thereby.

After each research session, your team can discuss new learnings from what you’ve just observed and work collaboratively to come up with innovative solutions for the issues that you’ve identified. The product manager and UX designers likely have a deep knowledge of the product domain and design expertise, respectively. By incorporating the team’s feedback, a user researcher can come up with design recommendations that make better design and business sense.

However, I do not mean to suggest that the analysis of research findings is a democratic process. The user researcher always owns the interpretation of findings from research and drives any brainstorming sessions, but he can leverage team discussions to enrich and facilitate his interpretation of the findings.

Doing Preliminary Design Work Before Conducting User Research

To effectively leverage user research in informing design decisions, it’s best to do some preliminary work on design before conducting user research. Creating a few alternative designs that illustrate competing design philosophies is a great way to elicit design insights through research. To make this work, user researchers and designers need to figure out what key elements differentiate the design alternatives—for example, different color schemes, different navigational models, different page layouts—and collaborate on creating prototypes that accurately depict the differences among these elements.

Answering Strategic Questions

Certainly, it’s common to conduct user research studies primarily to answer tactical questions that stakeholders have posed. But to truly deliver user and business benefits through user research, a researcher should always think of the bigger picture—both when planning the user research and when proposing recommendations.

Even when you are conducting usability studies that have very well-defined objectives like evaluating ease of use and content discoverability in relation to specific user tasks, you can use the opportunity to validate both your team’s

• overall design approach—Does this workflow most effectively meet user expectations? and
• business model—Despite a user interface’s having great usability, does it effectively guide user behavior in driving conversions, registrations, and repeat visits?

Taking this strategic approach requires user researchers to do more than their stakeholders have asked them to do. But these kinds of value-adding activities really elevate the quality of your research work to a different level.

Leveraging Your Understanding of UX Design Principles and Cognitive Psychology

How effectively you, as a user researcher, can influence stakeholder behavior has a lot to do with whether your insights are trustworthy. You can certainly leverage your extensive professional experience to make good arguments for your recommendations. But to improve their quality, depth, and credibility, you should refer to known principles of human-computer interaction and cognitive psychology whenever appropriate.

For example, in explaining why it’s important to provide an explicit call to action in a user interface, you can refer to the fact that humans are better at recognizing an action that they can see on the screen than recalling, from memory, what action they should take without any reminder on the screen. Referring to such principles helps you to connect your observations of user behavior to scientific findings—thus, lending depth and authority to your design recommendations.

Keeping in Mind Your Goals for User Research

Researchers do not conduct user research for its own sake—there are always goals and actions that you intend to take based on your research findings. While this may sound like common sense, it’s unfortunately all too common for a researcher to conduct user research without a product team’s having a clear understanding of exactly how the research could help their project. Should the research influence a product’s entire design direction? Can you improve a product’s detailed interaction design? Can you influence the visual identity of a brand? Or are you just trying to feel comfortable with your design without having any intention of really improving it?

You should think through all of these questions before conducting any user research and try to achieve consensus among your team members on the actions you’ll take to utilize your findings. Throughout all stages of research planning and execution, keep in mind what actions you intend to take based on your findings. In so doing, you can create a more targeted interview guide; more effectively follow up with in-depth, probing questions during interviews; and develop more actionable UX design recommendations.