The UX Research Process
TL;DR
- The 4 steps of UX research process
- How to know if your research was successful
Research is most effective when you involve your entire team.
But how?
In my experience, there are plenty of opportunities to involve the product team throughout a research project. I like to think of it as a group hike: I’m the tour guide, and my product team is joining me on the journey.
As we make our way down the trail (through the research project), I point out interesting things along the way: “Look! There’s a pretty mountain!” That’s me highlighting important findings as they come up during data collection.
Eventually, though, I need to step away for a bit. I tell the group, “Just a second, I’ll be right back!” and duck into a cave to analyze the data. This is one part of the process where I don’t think it’s particularly useful to involve the whole team. Once I’m done, I meet back up with everyone, we finish the hike, and debrief in the parking lot (the research read-out). Then we each hop in our cars and head home.
Okay, let’s set analogies aside and talk about how to move through a research project. I have a few steps that I follow every time I do a research project, and I’m going to share them here:
Steps of the UX Research Process
Plan and Prep
Who is needed: UX researcher, product team
UX researcher’s main tasks during this stage:
- Get onboarded to the product if you’re new to it
- Gather questions from product team
- Draft research plan that includes project background information, research objective, questions to answer, participant requirements, recruitment methods, timeline, research methods, script or questionnaire, and analysis plan
- Get product team to sign off on research plan
- Begin recruiting and scheduling participants
- Invite members of your team to shadow user sessions, if applicable
- Any other miscellaneous prep
Why it’s important: Your team is much more likely to implement findings if you ensure you’re asking the right questions — and that happens during this stage.
Data collection
Who is needed: UX researcher, UX designer, anyone you want to shadow user sessions
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UX researcher’s main tasks during this stage:
- Collect data (run interviews, launch survey, etc)
- Allow product team (especially UX designer) to shadow user sessions anonymously
- Provide regular updates to product team via Slack or Microsoft Teams so there aren’t any surprises during the research read-out
Why it’s important: There’s no research without data-collection! This is the meat and potatoes of research.
Analyze and synthesize data
Who is needed: UX researcher
UX researcher’s main tasks during this stage:
- Analyze findings using your selected method
- Create final report
Why it’s important: Sometimes during qualitative data collection we fall prey to anchoring bias or primacy effect where the first thing we hear sticks in our brain as the most important. Doing a formal analysis of the data helps us combat these biases.
Share results
Who is needed: UX researcher, product team
UX researcher’s main tasks during this stage:
- Share findings and recommendations with product team
- Discuss next steps with product team (how we’ll implement findings, who owns what task, etc)
- If desired, conduct a retrospective to reflect on how the research project went
Why it’s important: If your product team doesn’t understand the findings, doesn’t know where to find the report, or doesn’t understand what to do next then there’s no point to doing research. This step is very important!
How to know if your research was successful
Once you finish your research project, there are a few ways to know if it was successful.
- The team has you do additional research
- Your research results are implemented
- You see measurable product or UX improvements between research projects
- You gain leverage in the company to contribute to higher-level strategy
Ultimately, successful UX research is about what your team does with the results. If we’re just learning things from users and not implementing them, then that research is not successful. The more you involve your team throughout the process, the more likely they are to understand the findings, see their value, and actually do something about them.
