1. Discovery - UX Research Methods Overview

Introduction

• User experience (UX) research is key to designing products and services that maximize user satisfaction.
• UX research involves studying user behaviors, attitudes, and preferences to inform the design process.
• A well-structured UX research plan provides a roadmap for researchers to achieve objectives effectively.
• Various research methods (behavioral, attitudinal, qualitative, and quantitative) help collect data and understand user experiences. Using these methods allows designers to develop effective solutions that meet user needs.

Research Methods

• Focus Groups: Facilitate discussions to gather diverse opinions and generate qualitative data.
• A/B Testing: Compares two design versions to determine the better performing option.
• Contextual Inquiry: Observe users in their natural environments to understand their behaviors firsthand.
• Individual Interviews: Gather detailed insights from participants, exploring their perspectives.
• Card Sorting Activities: Arrange information based on user input to improve navigation and categorization.
• Usability Testing: Evaluate user interactions with a product to identify areas for improvement.
• Diary Studies: Capture long-term user experiences via self-reported entries.
• Surveys: Collect data through structured questions to reach a large audience efficiently.

Parts of Contextual Inquiry

• Observation Guide: Create a guide outlining specific behaviors, tasks, observation areas, and questions.
• Interpretation: Collaborate with participants to accurately interpret observations.
• Context: Observe users in their real-world environments to understand actions.
• Partnership: Foster collaboration with participants enabling immersion in their tasks.

UX Research

• UX research aims to understand user behaviors, needs, and preferences to inform user-friendly design.
• Answering the questions of WHO, WHAT, and HOW for user groups.
• Define UX research goals including comprehension of user motivations, identification of usability issues, validation of design concepts, and enhancing user satisfaction.

Research Plan

• UX research requires a well-defined plan outlining the research problem, study participants, and timeline.
• The research plan should include scope, timeline, participant list, and research methods. This plan acts as a repository for project details and a contract amongst team members and stakeholders.

Components of the Research Plan

• Project Scope: Defines the objectives and limitations of the project.
• Participants List: Outlines individuals to be involved in the research study ensuring diverse representation.
• Project Timeline: Defines the duration allocated for completing a project, ensuring timely delivery & milestones.
• Project Research Methods: The methods used to gather data and insights.

Four Categories of Research Methods

• Behavioral Methods: Observe and analyze user actions when interacting with a product or service.
• Attitudinal Methods: Uncover user opinions, perceptions, and attitudes toward a product or service.
• Qualitative Methods: Gather descriptive data answering the 'why' and 'how' of user experiences.
• Quantitative Methods: Collect and analyze numerical data like 'how many' or 'how much' to provide statistical insights.

Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods

• Qualitative: Explores in-depth insights and subjective experiences through interviews or observations.
• Quantitative: Prioritizes statistical analysis to quantify the impact of design changes.

Surveys

• Gather structured data from a large group of users to understand their opinions.
• Allow for large sample sizes, analysis of user perspectives, and tracking user experiences over time.

Card Sorting Activities

• Help organize information into categories, facilitating intuitive information architectures and navigation systems that align with user expectations.

Contextual Inquiry

• Observe users in their environments and engage in contextual conversations to understand user challenges with product usage.
• Provides contextual insights into the real-world situations users face in relation to product interaction.

Individual Interviews

• Offer immediate feedback to guide the interview process, allowing for a deeper understanding of user needs, pain points, and desires.
• The methodology captures detailed insights and feedback about the product or service.

Conducting Individual Interviews

• Allocate appropriate time to obtain valuable insights without rushing.
• Ask questions in a logical order to maintain a smooth conversation flow.
• Avoid leading questions that may alter participant responses and maintain unbiased dialogue.

Focus Groups

• Collaborative discussions led by a facilitator to gather participant opinions, new ideas, and expectations.
• Used for evaluating features or solutions, enabling open dialogue, and building on each other's ideas.

Usability Testing

• Observe and evaluate user interactions with a product to determine if design meets user expectations.
• Helps to validate assumptions about user behavior and gather user insights that help validate user expectations.

A/B Testing

• Compares two or more design variations to determine which performs better with metrics like conversion rate, user engagement, and other benchmarks.
• Offers a scalable method for testing hypotheses about design solutions and allows for improvements/iterative design development based on real-world data.
• Provides important data and user feedback about the impact of design changes.

Diary Studies

• Involve participants documenting their experiences over an extended period.
• Enables researchers to study user behaviors and provide more accurate representation of user experiences and perceptions.

Research Questions

• The aim and scope of UX research questions guide and provide clarity.
• The "aim" defines the research goal, while the "scope" specifies its focus.
• Includes structure of research questions with an introductory phase, middle section addressing key topics, and concluding phase for user input.
• The research questions focus on understanding and addressing the user's situation and challenges within the context of their work, usage, and needs.

Research Questions Biases

• Biases in research questions refer to potential influences or assumptions impacting participants' responses that don't represent genuine user thoughts.
• Leading questions can distort collected data and avoid this bias by incorporating open-ended questions that encourage open ideas, thoughts, and feedback.
• Inquiries into user thoughts instead of emotions provide more objective responses and insight.

Best Practices of UX Research

• Hawthorne Effect: Awareness of being observed can modify participant behavior or performance and influence results.
• Best Practices: Researchers should create a welcoming atmosphere and encourage open communication; ask non-leading questions to avoid bias in responses; accurately document participants' responses.

Focus Groups - focus groups are perfect for leading the customers through a discussion while obtaining verbal and written feedback

Tree testing is a quantitative method of testing to determine how easy it is to find items in a hierarchy and eyetracking is used for measuring where participants look when performing certain tasks.

Community Managers are internal users who manage the external parts of the Experience Cloud site in order to maintain standards and provide member support. The Site Admin and Site Builder personas are also internal users, who manage the backend or internal side of the Experience Cloud Site. The Site User persona is used for the external customers or partners who access the Site.

Pipeline Builders are the users who are typically building relationships and logging activities. A Deal Closer focuses on conducting in-person sales meetings and closing deals. A Trusted Advisor is known for prospecting new opportunities in existing accounts and gathering requirements from prospects. Finally, a Data Expert will be in charge of building and viewing reports and dashboards.

Your company has recently implemented Salesforce, and you are starting to notice a decline in unique user logins per day. In order to determine a cause for this you want to conduct a contextual inquiry study to understand how users are working in Salesforce. What is involved in the Partnership process of the inquiry? Immersing yourself in your users’ work

Attitudinal methods focus on what people say, while Behavioral methods focus on what people do. Qualitative methods try to answer “Why”, while Quantitative methods try to answer “How much?”

While observing users at their desk, you’ll want to ensure they are comfortable and you stay focused on the process. Along with this, it’s recommended to avoid words like “usually” to avoid generalization so you can get specific examples. You will not want to direct or lead the user to any specific answer to avoid bias and should not promise implementing each of the user’s requests as it might not be best practices or fit Salesforce features. Finally, it is okay to let users have “no opinion” on certain topics so you don’t force them into an incorrect guess.

When developing discovery sessions, it’s necessary to keep your questions within the scope of the project, segmented to a specific audience, and unbiased. Compensating your interviewees will not help with creating discovery questions and could lead to biased results.

Typically employees in the I.T. department will support marketing operations either through helping with segmentation or troubleshooting journeys. The Marketing Manager tends to oversee the actual campaigns and craft the strategy, while the Designer-Developer will work on coding the actual marketing assets. A Marketing Cloud Expert is not a persona.

Personas help designers build better products by understanding the users and designing for their needs. They cannot be based on an individual’s specific request as they typically capture a large number of users.
Personas help you better understand the real people who use your product, beyond their title or role as they provide insight into users’ work behaviors. This will ultimately help determine which licenses should be purchased during the implementation.

Expert Agents handle escalated cases, contribute to their company's knowledge base through knowledge article creation and editing, and provide training to other agents. They primarily interact with customers via phone or email; some also offer live chat or social media support. Their main activities during this time included troubleshooting customer issues, viewing case statuses, logging activities, collaborating with colleagues to resolve cases, and creating support cases.

Case Solvers handle customer support and escalated cases, but their responsibilities do not include contributing to the knowledge base or providing training to other agents as required.

Team Leaders oversee and train agents, however, their activities are not aligned with handling escalated cases, contributing to knowledge articles, or training other agents as specified in the given scenario.

The Jobs to Be Done framework is useful in the UX design process because it helps designers understand the underlying motivations and goals that drive users’ behaviors. It focuses on identifying the ‘job or tasks users are trying to accomplish and their desired outcomes, by conferring directly with users.

Personas allow designers to identify user demographic and psychographic data. While they are an important part of UX design, the Jobs to be Done framework specifically emphasizes understanding user goals and motivations rather than demographics.

A crucial component of the Jobs to be Done framework is to consult directly with customers / users, not build requirements without them.

Surveys allow UX researchers to reach a more significant number of customers and gather their feedback on specific aspects of the checkout process, such as ease of use, clarity of instructions, and overall satisfaction. Surveys provide quantitative data that can be analyzed to identify common pain points and areas for improvement.

Card sorting focuses more on grouping elements together, than on gathering requirements.

Heatmaps and clickstream data provide valuable insights into user behavior and interactions with the website but may not directly capture user requirements or preferences related to the checkout process.

Diary studies allow participants to document their experiences, which may be forgotten in traditional research methods.

A/B testing's scalability permits the involvement of many users, providing reliable insights into preferred designs.

Diary studies encourage participants to document their experiences, leading to nuanced data that might be forgotten in traditional methods.

Interpretation involves researchers collaborating with participants to interpret their observations, ensuring accuracy.

A well-structured UX research plan acts as a roadmap, guiding researchers in achieving their objectives.

Moderated group discussions aim to gather opinions and foster new ideas through active participant engagement.

Behavioral methods specifically focus on observing and analyzing users' actions and behaviors.

A/B testing enables continuous improvement based on user engagement data, supporting user-centered design practices.

Qualitative methods are focused on gathering insights that are subjective and often narrative in nature.

Provided with a set of business requirements, determine which research methodology and tools should be used to design a solution.