user research

Getting co-creative with research

Make things with people to identify where opportunities are.

What is User Research?

The information in the remainder of this chapter will give you a glimpse into the basics of user research and testing. Though it’s not an in-depth how-to on conducting user research, it’ll give you broad insight into the types of user research methods so you can incorporate user research into your project timelines.

How to choose the right UX metrics for your product

If you want your product’s design to be informed by large-scale data, it really helps to have metrics that reflect the quality of the user experience, and that map closely to your main goals. Try using HEART and Goals-Signals-Metrics to help you get there.

Start Up on the Right Foot — Build a Customer Advisory Board

“We were able to email 10 of our customer advisory board members, give them mockups of the new feature and invite them for an hour of usability testing — we threw in Amazon gift cards as a reward — and the results were amazing,” says Peter Kazanjy, best known for co-founding recruiting startup TalentBin and his proven early-stage sales wisdom. “With a Customer Advisory Board (CAB), you essentially have a captive audience of folks who are fired up for your success, and who you can leverage on an ongoing basis to build the best product possible.”

Get the most out of your research with storytelling

The job of research is to distill complex problems so that your team understand the what, the why, and the how of the problem at hand.

Quantitative User-Research Methodologies: An Overview

This article lists the most common use cases for UX research methods, and estimates cost and difficulty for each.

UX Mapping Methods: When to Use Which

UX mappings are visual representations that depict different processes and have different goals, yet they all build common ground within an organization.

One Day of User Research with Liston Witherill

You’ll learn how to perform the most effective research activities: customer interviews, passive research, analytics, and competitor analysis.

Data-Driven Design with Brent Palmer

How do you make sure your design efforts are effective? There’s no bigger mistake than just guess! Brent Palmer, a design lead at Zendesk, walks us through the tools and methods for data-driven design. You’ll learn how to approach customer research the right way, why testing is important, and how to deal with the research results.

Exploratory Research is Product Management

Teena Singh, Director of User Experience at ADP, shares why she interviews customers at their workplace, how to craft user stories with context and the role of domain expertise in product management.

Building Internal Solutions is Product Management

Michael Montecuollo, Director of User Experience and Design at DOOR3, shares how to align stakeholders on a project’s priorities and how he conducts user research when the client is the end user.

Organizing a UX Research Panel with Ashley Warren

Research panels are a fantastic way to do UX research: instead of emailing the entire user list, you’re working with a small loyal segment of your audience.

From sketching to Legos, UX Researcher Sydney Hessel talks about the creative benefits of serious play

In this episode, Aidan Simpson interviews UX Researcher and Sprint Master Sydney Hessel about her unconventional research background, the ins and outs of the sprint methodology, and getting people out of their comfort zones to generate creative ideas.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traff

Hotjar

See how visitors are really using your website, collect user feedback and turn more visitors into customers.

Typeform

Build beautiful, engaging, and conversational online forms, surveys, quizzes and much more.

Optimal Workshop

Optimal Workshop offer a suite of tools to help design researchers and information architects improve the user experience of their products.

Lookback

User experience recording made simple. See the screen, face, voice and touches of your users. Record in-house or remotely and without equipment.

UsabilityHub

Capture design feedback quickly and easily with our online usability tests.

Mixpanel

Deeply understand every user's journey with instant insights for everyone on mobile and web.

Groove HQ

Collaborate on all your customer emails, social media posts, live chats and calls together in one helpdesk.

FullStory

FullStory's pixel-perfect session replay tells you everything you want to know about your customer's online experience. Capture every click, swipe, and scroll.

Fabric - App Development Platform for teams

From development to launch and beyond, Fabric gives everyone on your mobile team a complete, real-time understanding of your app's performance and health at every stage. Crashlytics · Answers · Fastlane.

Amplitude

Get web and mobile analytics for building better products. Amplitude is the only analytics software built for modern product teams.

Survicate

All the tools you need to find out what your customers are thinking, who they are and why they behave as they do.

Validately

A comprehensive solution for user research that includes a dedicated testing platform, recruiting services, and automated reporting.

Appsee

Appsee is a mobile app analytics platform that offers you powerful, qualitative analytics tools that enable you to track and optimize the UX in your app.

Researching UX: Analytics: Understanding Is the Heart of Great UX

This book will show you, step by step, how you can use website and app analytics data to inform design choices and definitively improve user experience

The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide

The User Experience Team of One prescribes a range of approaches that have big impact and take less time and fewer resources than the standard lineup of UX deliverables. Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you're a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.

Validating Product Ideas: Through Lean User Research

Want to know what your users are thinking? If you're a product manager or developer, this book will help you learn the techniques for finding the answers to your most burning questions about your customers. With step-by-step guidance, Validating Product Ideas shows you how to tackle the research to build the best possible product.

Observing the User Experience, Second Edition: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research

The gap between who designers and developers imagine their users are, and who those users really are can be the biggest problem with product development. Observing the User Experience will help you bridge that gap to understand what your users want and need from your product, and whether they'll be able to use what you've created.

It's Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects

It’s Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects discusses frameworks, strategies, and techniques for working with stakeholders of user experience (UX) research in a way that ensures their buy-in.

Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of Design

Generative design research is an approach to bring the people we serve through design directly into the design process in order to ensure that we can meet their needs and dreams for the future. The book introduces an emerging domain of design that is of immense interest today not only to the academic design research community but also to those in the business community charged with the development of human-centred products, systems, services, and environments.