- to understand people & their behavior related to the product or service
- To design the best UX, pay attention to what users do, not what they say
- enables to empathize & get to know the context
- is "Becoming friends with reality" - Erika Hall
- motivation to find out how customers or other relevant actors experience a given service
- helps to move beyond assumptions
- two main types:
- qualitative
- answers the question "Why?"
- quantitative
- answers the question "How?"
- starts with a Research question and aims to derive Insights
- usually is based on ethnographic methods
- typical process:
- research scope & planning -> data collection -> synthesis -> key Insights
- gives us:
- customer problems & needs
- experience gaps
- testing & feedback collection
- outcomes should be clear & understandable to the whole team
- use Triangulation - allows to have more & better Prototypes
- starts with Research planning
- results should be visualized by Research Visualization
- "CX oriented research is rather inductive (finding out along the way), whereas testing prototypes is deductive (validating hypothesis)"
- Important to take notes [well][https://condens.io/user-research-note-taking/]
- The mismatches between user attitudes and user actions are often a great source of insights.
- Two main fidelities
- pure - rigorous research uncovering completely new knowledge
- applied - less rigorous, borrows ideas and techniques from pure research but is more relaxed
- Research can be also looked through the double diamond paradigm