UX Research Methods: The Complete Guide

User Interviews

User interviews are online surveys to gather valuable information about a specific person’s behavior, preferences, attitudes, intention, and opinions.

• How it works: This is a face-to-face discussion with one or more people who represent your target audience about their goals, challenges, motivations, and feelings about what’s currently available (if anything). You can also learn many revealing things by talking to people “in the wild” who are using your products or services.
• When to use it: This is an ideal starting point because you can get specific feedback about what real users are doing and thinking. It’s also helpful in understanding different user types, pain points, mental models, decision-making processes, challenges, and areas of confusion.
• Pro Tip: Bring someone with you who’s an experienced interviewer to make the whole process less scary. It also helps if they have experience moderating user interviews (asking follow-up questions without biasing results, etc.).

Contextual Inquiry

Contextual Inquiry is a technique for gathering data to understand the context in which people use technologies.

• How it works: This is a flexible approach to UX research - so it pays to have an experienced moderator on hand. You observe people as they go about their regular business, and at opportune moments you stop them and ask questions about their goals, motivation, challenges, etc. It’s a great way of understanding user motivations and user behavior in the context of a real-life situation. Plus, you can usually find participants on-site (e.g., in an office or at home).
• When to use it: This is especially useful for understanding how people work within their own environments, e.g., do they prefer to stand while working? How does this affect the way they perform specific tasks?

Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is a systematic, efficient, and user-centered approach to evaluating the usability test of a product. This process is user-centered because it considers the users’ experience with the product.

• How it works: This is an ideal way of understanding how your product or service performs on different levels (e.g., on-page messaging, navigation, etc.) and where you could improve things with the user experience. Heuristics are essential “rules” to guide decision-making, so you’ll apply well-known design patterns and conventions as well as customer feedback to spot problems or areas where you could improve the user experience.
• When to use it: As a rule, you should run through heuristic evaluations before and after your UX projects (or iterations thereof) to uncover any usability problems before they become significant (and expensive) issues for your business.

Focus Groups

Focus groups include people who are brought together to discuss a topic. They are often used for research for marketing purposes. They are also used in UX research, where they are called focus groups or usability tests, and can be conducted by either the company doing the study or an outside organization.

• How it works: This is an opportunity to observe how people interact in group situations, and you can get a good understanding of their motivations, reactions, and opinions about your product or service. The best way to run a focus group is by explaining the task you want them to do and then asking them questions that prompt more open-ended responses (rather than yes/no answers).
• When to use it: If you’re testing new products and services with existing users, this can be a good way of understanding their motivations and how you can ease the pain points of different tasks. It’s also helpful in knowing which features are more desirable than others (who would pay more, etc.).
• Pro Tip: If you’re testing with existing users or customers, be sure to get permission before recording them. Some people get nervous when being recorded (and it’s important to respect their privacy).

Diary Studies

Diary studies within the field of UX research can be defined as a method for collecting “real-world” behavioral data about the user experience. Users are asked to keep daily records of their thoughts and actions relating to a particular product or service. Diary studies allow designers to gain valuable insights into what users find important and how they feel about certain aspects. Results from diary studies provide a more holistic view.

• How it works: This is another flexible approach that, at its core, involves asking participants to record their experiences over a series of days or weeks. For example, you can have them report on specific tasks, milestones (the “when” and “what”), and their current mood and feelings (the “how”). The great thing about diary studies is that you get a second-by-second record of how people use your product or service without observing them in real-time.
• When to use it: If you’re exploring new ideas and concepts with an existing user base, diary studies can be a great way to uncover patterns or trends you might otherwise miss.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a UX research method in which people are asked to group items. The idea is typical to help the organization gain valuable insights into how their content should be organized.

• How it works: Participants are given a set of cards (e.g., descriptions of different features) and requested to sort them into groups that make sense according to a set of given categories. You might, for example, want them to separate the cards into logical groups such as “must-have” vs. “nice to have.” Once they’ve sorted all the cards, you can present their groupings back to them and ask a few questions (which may vary depending on the type you’re running).
• When to use it: This is an ideal way of understanding how people think about your existing site or application. You can then use their “groupings” as a basis for classifying data and UX workflows.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your website’s navigation, check out the full article on card sorting here.

Tree Testing

Tree Testing in UX research is a method used to measure the usability and user experience. Tree testing is a usability evaluation technique that involves having the user complete tasks from a website or software application and follow the appropriate “tree” of links to reach each task.

• How it works: In a tree test, users are presented with a series of tasks and asked to complete them from start to finish (no skipping allowed). Once they’ve completed all the tasks, you can ask them how difficult (on a scale from 1 to 5) each one was and then challenge them by saying, “I’m thinking of deleting this task.” The goal here is to understand how much (and what kind of) effort users are willing to put in.
• When to use it: This is useful to measure task completion, frustration levels, or even see how many people would abandon a critical task (if you delete it, how many participants would follow suit?).
• Pro Tip: Don’t ask users to complete tasks that are irrelevant or redundant. If you’re testing with existing users and customers, be sure to get permission before recording them. Some people get nervous when being recorded (and it’s important to respect their privacy).

Remote Unmoderated Testing

Remote unmoderated testing is a form of user research where a participant does not interact with a UX researcher in real-time. Instead, the participant provides feedback through clicks on mockups. Whenever the participant encounters a mockup relevant to their task, they click on it and provide feedback. The method provides participants with an incentive for providing more information by doing this. It also doesn’t require any travel from the participant.

• How it works: Remote unmoderated testing is similar to using an online survey (see #2 above), but with one significant difference. During a remote unmoderated test, users are presented with tasks on paper or via your application/website. It depends on what you’re testing. They then complete the assigned tasks in their own time and send them back via email or upload.
• When to use it: This is an excellent way of understanding people’s attitudes toward your product/service, especially if you want to identify usability issues from a more general perspective (e.g., which parts of a process are confusing or unclear).