03 The UX Research Process

Learning with Lee Anne

I graduated with an HCI degree and a minor in design in 2018. I (naively) believed that I was fully equipped to understand UX in business, outside of school, but it turns out — I wasn’t! (Surprise!) Luckily, we never stop learning due to our peers, mentors, and random articles on the internet like this one. Since this is a time where my vulnerabilities and struggles are leading me to better understand research, I thought I’d document my learning process of how UX Research works in my everyday world of business!

It’s funny that I decided to finally talk about what the UX Research process looks like on my third article of this series when in retrospect it should have been my first post. It’s so ingrained into me that I realized the process is not well known to everyone. It definitely was not clear cut to me as a student, that’s for sure.

So what exactly does that process look like? This varies between different teams, but the basic structure is probably similar across the board. Here’s what it looks like in my world:

1. Research Request

The first step is receiving the research request and understanding who, what, and why research needs to be done.

Sometimes this can also be a more proactive approach on the research side with a researcher finding a research need and initiating a project for it. For our team, research is often requested by others.

2. Research Design Proposal

After understanding the details of the research request, a researcher then puts a research design proposal together that presents the research method that will be used, the general recruit criteria, and the timeline of the project.

This is often done to get the stakeholders and researchers on the same page. Collaboration on both ends helps get the project structure to the right place.

3. Understanding the Stimuli (prototype, product, whatever is being tested)

As researchers, we are not always experts on a particular product or system — at least not to the extent a designer or product owner may be. This means some projects may require learning and understanding the product/ system that’s to be tested.

Learning may be in the form of looking at resources or meeting with stakeholders to understand more.

4. Recruit
(Not part of the process if it’s a survey)

This process begins as soon as possible in order to ensure that recruiters can fill the recruit. This can take anywhere from 2–3 weeks, depending on the criteria.

Creating screeners is typically one of my first action items after everyone agrees on the research project proposal.

5. Interview Guide/ Survey Writing

As the recruit takes place, it’s the perfect time to create the interview or survey guide, whatever research method is going to be used.

It can take some time to create and refine study materials. This is also a time to create any additional stimuli that will be presented to participants.

6. Interviews/ Survey Launch

Before the actual interviews is the pilot, which is done a few days before. The interviews themselves typically take place over the course of a week depending on the number of participants. If it’s a survey, the completes are received typically within the first few days.

For qualitative research, sometimes the interviews can take place over multiple weeks depending on how long they are, how many participants there are, and what type of research it is.

7. Analysis

After the interviews, the researcher goes into the data and works to make sense of the information in order to make recommendations.

I typically do this simultaneous to creating the results deck. Going back and forth helps prevent information overload and data fatigue.

8. Report out

The final step is presenting the findings and recommendations to the stakeholders.

9. Reaching the Right People

Simply knowing what people think, desire, or dislike about a system/ product is important to know for anyone involved in said system/ product no matter what their job title is. Research results help clarify questions and also lead to brainstorms of future plans.

While there are the stakeholders who requested the research, sometimes the findings can also be relevant to other people like developers, other designers on the team, other people who work on the product, and especially leaders with power. Making sure the right people are aware of the research results, even if it does not affect their work immediately, is valuable because it allows the voice of the user to be heard.

10. Storing the Research

Storing the research is also important because this information needs to be revisited over and over again.

Being able to revisit this information is important for creating new questions and cultivating the way forward.