User research (user experience research/UX)

User research encompasses a range of approaches which can utilised to understand how users experience or use a product or service and what they expect from it. When interacting with a product or service, people are not typically seeking the interaction itself, but rather the end result or the solution to a problem. In the long run, successful user research and on-going user experience research will save time and development costs.

Our user research approach is driven by some fundamental thinking – including the paradox of specificity and research from Nielsen Norman Group which suggests you will find the majority of usability problems in a problem or service within the first five user tests.

As such, we advocate relatively rapid testing user research tests, in short bursts. This allows our clients to iterate on each version of concept, product or service and results in improved overall outcomes, quicker, for the same or less cost.

The benefits of user research

User research has a number of benefits, including:

• The ability to directly involve designers in the research process – this could be through our 'designer in the room' approach, or the use of rapid-prototyping to quickly develop, alter, improve or disregard concepts.
• Provides the ability to focus on elements of design which are most important to users – vital in the development of a minimum viable product for instance.
• Can highlight differences between different user groups – this can aid product or service line development, as well as feeding in to messaging and marketing.
• In the moment research allows us to see how people really use products and services, rather than relying on recall or internal hypotheses.
• We can dig in to the why not just the what – user research can be used to help understand the nuances within larger datasets (e.g. Google Analytics or customer satisfaction data).
• Time and money: user research provides a clear vision of the way forward, giving a defined path to launch or for development.
• Third party research can help solve any differing views within internal stakeholder groups.

Our approach to user research is tailored to the specific client requirements in question, but we can utilise a wide-range of research approaches, including qualitative and quantitative approaches, as well as both implicit (e.g. eye-tracking, response-time measurement) as well as explicit (in-depth interviews, focus groups, accompanied surfs).