User Research Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus User Research

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Zusammenfassung von User Research

Name: User Research
Rating: 3.8 (67 reviews)
Author: Stephanie Marsh

Stephanie Marsh

A Practical Guide to Designing Better Products and Services

3.8 (67 Bewertungen)

19 Min.

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User Research by Stephanie Marsh is a guide to conducting effective research on users to inform the design of digital products. It covers methods such as interviews, surveys, and analytics to gain insights into user behavior and preferences.

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Unternehmertum Strategie Kleine Unternehmen

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User Research
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What’s in it for me? Unleash your company’s potential with this guide to user research.

We live in a data-driven world, and that’s good news for businesses. Companies have never had so much information about customers at their fingertips. But all that data can be overwhelming. If you’re not asking the right questions, you’ll never discover what your customers truly want and need.

That’s why it pays to think carefully about your user research methodology. With so many different approaches out there, you want to make sure you’re picking the right method for your business. Luckily, the insights of seasoned professional Stephanie Marsh make this easy to do.

Marsh is a user experience and research consultant who has worked with everyone from the British government to EasyJet. As actionable as they are insightful, these blinks offer a crash course in making your research count.

Along the way, you’ll learn

how to use neutral questions;
how to tackle sensitive topics; and
why observation is just as important as the questions you ask.

User research is a key business strategy, but make sure it’s above board.

Being a natural-born number cruncher probably didn’t do much for your popularity in the playground, but it does set you up for success in the job market. Today’s data-driven world is mad about numbers. The folks who know how to collect and analyze them are ideally placed to help companies conduct user research.

User research is key in any business strategy, and there’s never a bad time to do it. Let’s say you’re developing a new product. The first thing you’ll want to find out is straightforward – will folks like it enough to reach for their wallets? Well, you’ll only know if you ask them – that’s user research. When you’re still in the early stages of product development, it’s enough to sketch your idea on a piece of paper and see how people react to it.

This way, you gain a sense of whether your product addresses a common problem. If you get positive feedback, you might be onto something. Now’s the time to start investing time and money. Your aim now is to perfect your product. If you’re working on something that already exists, user research will help you beat the competition.

Like all experimental trials, user research should be carried out according to legal and ethical requirements. The key here is transparency. Make sure participants know what they’re taking part in and be upfront about your objectives and methods. In practice, that means using your first research session to explain everything and ask participants for legal consent to have their data collected, saved and used.

It’s also important to tell them whether you’re recording their data. If you’re using video or audio equipment, point that out. You should also make sure you’re clear about whether or not you’ll use their data for other research purposes. Once you’ve explained all that, you need to explicitly ask for their consent. If they withhold it, end the research session immediately and destroy the information you’ve collected so far.

Observe behavior and ask neutral questions to create more reliable data.

The data generated by user research is only valuable if your participants are honest. But getting an honest answer is often harder than you may think. Sometimes people are just too polite to tell you they have difficulty using your product. So how do you get the information you need?

For starters, don’t just focus on what they’re saying. Pay attention to how they behave. Consider this example from the author’s experience as a consultant. When she was working with the British government, she assessed how user-friendly its website was. To do that, she ran a user test in which participants completed a series of tasks on the site. Some tasks were simple, while others were more complicated.

Moderated usability testing has advantages and disadvantages.

Now you know that user research is vital to determining the viability of your product. But how do you actually do it? It’s time to talk about methodology. Before you decide on your approach, you need to know what kinds of methods are out there.

Let’s kick things off with moderated usability testing. It’s a mouthful, but it’s a pretty simple concept. “To moderate” in this case means to monitor. In this approach, you observe a participant try out a product or service. Sometimes you’ll literally look over their shoulder. Other times, you’ll use screen-sharing tools to watch what they’re doing remotely.

Unmoderated usability testing has advantages and disadvantages.

You’ve probably already guessed one of the obvious alternatives to moderated usability testing – that’s right, unmoderated usability testing. The set-up is almost identical to the one we discussed in the previous blink. However, there’s one important difference – participants are left to their own devices as they complete tasks and test your product or service. That makes your life pretty easy, right?

Well, yes – unmoderated usability testing definitely has its advantages. First off, you can carry out this kind of testing remotely, allowing participants to take part wherever and whenever suits them. That’s handy if you’re attempting to create a large data pool and don’t have time to schedule individual meetings with each user. One added bonus is that you can reach out to people who live in hard-to-reach locations, as well as people who don’t have the financial means to travel to you.

With well-constructed surveys, you can gather large amounts of data.

So far we’ve looked at a couple of research methods which might be new to you. In this blink, we’ll turn our attention to one you’ve definitely heard of before – the survey. It’s probably the most widely used and well-known methodology in user research.

Let’s start with the obvious stuff. A survey is the statistical equivalent of an industrial trawler – it collects vast amounts of quantitative data. The key here is a representative sample – a group of people that represents your target market as a whole. As a rule of thumb, this group should contain at least 2,000 individuals. Any less than that and your data won’t be statistically significant.

Allow for interruptions and structure your interviews carefully when dealing with sensitive topics.

What comes to mind when you think of user research? Chances are, it’s a company asking what customers think of its latest technological gizmo. Sure – that is a pretty common question. But user research also tackles more sensitive issues. In this case, it’s important to proceed carefully and tactfully.

Take it from the author. In 2014, she was conducting user research for a charity that helps people with terminal illnesses and their loved ones. Most of the folks she was talking to were either terminally ill or related to someone who was. As you can imagine, emotions were running high.

Effective interviewing is all about accepting awkward silences and fielding participants’ questions.

User research isn’t just about gathering data – it’s also about communication. Participants won’t always give you the unambiguous and straightforward answers you need. Luckily, there are a few tricks you can use to get through difficult interviews.

Let’s start with awkward silences. There are few things interviewers dread more, but they’re part and parcel of user research. That means you should accept them, rather than filling them with your own words. Why? Well, improvising and making conversation is usually counterproductive, since it derails the conversation and steers you away from your research topic.

Ethnography can identify customers’ real needs, and technology makes that easier than ever before.

Like fish in water, humans usually take their environment for granted. We function on autopilot and don’t question our immediate surroundings. That means you’re unlikely to gain any real insights by asking interviewees how they feel about the world around them. That’s where ethnography comes in.

Ethnography is the study of people and culture. It involves in-depth observation of how people behave and interact with their surroundings. As an ethnographic researcher, your aim is to reveal things you may have missed by failing to consider the real-world application of your products or services.

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Worum geht es in User Research?

User Research (2018) is a practical how-to guide for entrepreneurs, researchers and managers interested in answering the most important question in business – does your product meet your customers’ needs? Drawing on author Stephanie Marsh’s years of experience in user research, these blinks present the most commonly used methods, clearly describing the advantages and disadvantages of each.

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Make sure the research participants have understood what you have told them, and that they are happy to go ahead with the research.

—Stephanie Marsh

Wer User Research lesen sollte

Entrepreneurs working on the next big thing
Managers looking to optimize their business strategy
Researchers investigating user experience testing

Über den Autor

Stephanie Marsh is a user research expert based in the UK. She is the head of user research and analysis for the Government Digital Service, an official body tasked with the digitalization of public services. Before taking up her current position, Marsh was a consultant and led user experience design firm, Bunnyfoot. Her previous clients include the BBC, Arsenal Football Club and EasyJet.

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