user research outputs

A Guide to User Research Analysis

When designers perform user interviews, field observations, or usability tests, they gather tons of notes and data to help inform design decisions and recommendations. But how do they make sense of so much qualitative data? Talking to customers is great, but most people walk away feeling overwhelmed by the sense of more information than they know what to do with. Learning how to properly analyze UX research helps turn raw data into insights and action.

What Is User Research Analysis?

User research analysis is a vital part of any research process because it is the very act of making sense of what was learned so that informed recommendations can be made on behalf of customers or users.

As researchers conduct analysis, they’re spending time categorizing, classifying, and organizing the data they’ve gathered to directly inform what they’ll share as outcomes of the research and the key findings.

Why Should Researchers Spend Time on Analysis?

Our natural instinct is to believe we can remember everything we heard or saw in an interview. But following impulsive decisions made from raw notes and data can be misleading and dangerous. Recommendations based on a single data point can lead a team down the path of solving the wrong problem.

Further, doing so is simply reacting to data, not making sense of it. This can cause companies to focus on incremental improvements only and miss important opportunities to serve customers in more meaningful, innovative ways.

A great example of this is when we see teams sharing research findings like, “6 out of 10 people had difficulty signing in to our application.” On the surface, a reasonable recommendation could be to redesign the sign-in form. However, proper research analysis and finding the meaning behind what that data represents is when the real magic happens. Perhaps the reason people had trouble signing in was due to forgotten passwords. In this case, redesigning the sign in form wouldn’t necessarily solve this problem.

Performing the necessary analysis of user research data is an act of asking “why” the “6 out of 10 people had difficulty signing into the application.” Analysis transforms the research from raw data into insights and meaning.

Consider what Slack did with their sign-in process. Slack allows a user to sign in by manually typing their password or having a “magic link” sent to their email which the person simply needs to click from their inbox.  They get signed in to their Slack team and get started.

Slack offers a magic link instead of asking users to type their password.

Slack emails a magic link within seconds that saves the user typing their password.

This decision wasn’t an accident; it came from a deep understanding of a customer pain point. That deep understanding came from making sense of user research data and not simply jumping to a conclusion. Slack’s example demonstrates the power of spending time in analyzing user research data to go beyond reacting to a single observation and instead understanding why those observations occurred.

When to Do Research Analysis

Before the research begins.

Great analysis starts before research even begins. This happens by creating well-defined goals for the project, research, and product. Creating clear goals allows researchers to collect data in predefined themes to answer questions about how to meet those goals. This also allows them to create a set of tags (sometimes known as “codes”) to assign to notes and data as they conduct their research, speeding up analysis dramatically.

Before any research session begins, craft clear goals and questions that need to be answered by the research. Then brainstorm a list of tags or descriptors for each goal that will help identify notes and data that align to the goals of the research.

During the Research

Researchers often tag or code data they gather in real time. This can be done multiple ways using spreadsheets, document highlighting or even a specialized research tool like Aurelius.

When taking notes in a spreadsheet, tags can be added to individual notes in an adjacent column and later turned into a “ rainbow spreadsheet .”

For teams physically located in the same space, an affinity diagram with sticky notes on the wall works well. Here, each note can be added to an individual sticky note with top level tags or themes grouped physically together.

A student stands in front of an affinity exercise on a whiteboard. Photo via Wikimedia

There are also software tools like Aurelius that help researchers tag and organize notes as they’re taken which also makes for quick viewing and analysis of those tags later.

View of analyzing notes and tags in Aurelius.

It’s also useful for teams to have a short debrief after each research participant or session to discuss what they learned. This keeps knowledge fresh, allows the team members to summarize what they’ve learned up to that point, and often exposes new themes or tags to use in collecting data from the remaining research sessions.

When the Research Is Done

This is where most of the analysis happens. At this point researchers are reviewing all the notes they’ve taken to really figure out what patterns and insights exist. Most researchers will have a good idea of which tags, groups, and themes to focus on, especially if they’ve done a debrief after each session. It then becomes a matter of determining why those patterns and themes exist in order to create new knowledge and insight about their customers.

How to Analyze User Research

Tag notes and data as you collect it.

Tagging notes and data as they’re collected is a process of connecting those tags to research questions and the research questions back to the project or research goals. This way you can be confident in the tags and themes being created in real time. Here’s how to make the connection between tags, research questions and project goals.

Imagine the research goals for the project are:

• Increase the number of people signing up for our product free trial
• Increase the number of people going from free trial to a paid account
• Educate trial customers about the value of our product prior to signing up for a paid account

From there, research questions can be formed such as:

• “Does the website communicate the right message to share the value of a free trial?”
• “Is it easy for a new customer to sign up?”
• “Are new customers easily able to start a free trial and begin using the product?”

From those questions, we can extract topics and themes. Since we’re researching the free trial, sign up process and general usability of that process, they become clear choices for tags. Also, since the research is meant to answer a question about whether or not potential customers understand the value of our product and free trial, this too provides a clear topic and tag we can use. So, useful tags based on those questions would be:

• #free-trial
• #value-prop
• #signup-reason
• #signup-process
• #onboarding

As the team conducts the research, they can tag notes and observations according to those themes that align to the high level goals and questions for the project. All of this highly increases the ease and effectiveness of research analysis later.

Analysis After Each Session

A common user research practice is for the team to debrief after each interview, usability test, or field study to discuss what was learned or observed. Doing this while also reviewing the notes and observations helps researchers hear the same information from a new perspective.

Let’s imagine the team found the following patterns while conducting their research:

• Potential customers visited the product page, free trial sign-up page, and went back to the product page several times prior to starting a free trial.
• Some people had multiple browsers open with competitor sites pulled up while signing up for the free trial.
• Potential customers mentioned waiting for the “right time” to start their free trial on several occasions.

This may help the researchers create new tags (or codes) for remaining sessions, such as:

• #right-time
• #competitor-review
• #feature-comparison

Using these new tags adds another dimension to analysis and provides deeper meaning to patterns the team is finding. You can see how the combination of these tags and themes already begin to paint a picture of customer needs without any detailed notes!

Here are some good tips for knowing when to tag or code a note:

• It aligns directly to a project/research goal.
• The participant specifically said or implied that something is very important.
• Repetition – a thing is said or heard multiple times.
• Patterns – when certain observations are related or important to other tags and themes already established in the project goals or research.

Steps for Analyzing Research Once It’s Done

Once all the research is done, it’s time to dig in to find patterns and frequency across all the data gathered .

Step 1 – Review the notes, transcripts, and data for any relevant phrases, statements, and concepts that align to the research goals and questions.

Step 2 – Tag and code any remaining data that represents key activities, actions, concepts, statements, ideas and needs or desires from the customers who participated in the research.

Step 3 – Review those tags and codes to find relationships between them. A useful tip for this is to pay close attention to tags that have notes with multiple other tags. This often indicates a relationship between themes. Create new tags and groups where appropriate to review more specific subsets of the data. Continue this process until meaningful themes are exposed. Once that happens, ask questions like:

• Why do these patterns or themes exist?
• Why did participants say this so many times?
• Does the data help answer the research questions?
• Does the data inform ways to meet the research goals?
• Does one tag group or theme relate to another? How? Why?

Sharing Key Insights from User Research

A key insight should answer one or more of your research questions and directly inform how to meet one or more of the established business goals. When sharing key insights, be sure to make a clear connection between one of the business goals, research questions and why the key insight is relevant to both. The most effective way of turning research into action is by helping teams make a connection between key insights and business outcomes.

3 Parts to a Key Insight

There are three parts to creating a key insight from user research :

• Statement of what you learned
• Tags that describe the insight (often used from the analysis, but can also be new tags entirely)
• Supporting notes, data, and evidence that give further context to the key insight and support the statement of what was learned

A key insight from the example project might be:

“Prospective customers are worried they might not have enough time to review our product during the free trial.” #right-time #signup-process #free-trial

This represents the pattern observed of customers mentioning the “right time” to sign up for a free trial and comparing the product to competitors. It also goes beyond sharing the quantitative data that those things occurred and offers a qualitative explanation of why they happened. All of this leads to clearer recommendations and the ability for other teams to take action on the research findings.

Creating key insights from the research in this way allows for the most effective sharing and reuse later. By providing supporting notes to each insight, stakeholders and others consuming the research findings can learn more detail about each key insight if they so choose.

Next Steps for User Research Analysis

Conducting detailed analysis of user research data helps teams clearly share what was learned to provide more actionable recommendations in design and product development.

Here are some tips for making user research analysis faster and easier on upcoming projects:

• Begin the user research by creating well defined questions and goals.
• Create tags based on each goal.
• Tag research notes and data as it’s collected to speed up analysis later.
• Debrief after each research session.
• Review the data once research is finished to find patterns, frequency, and themes.
• Make statements about each pattern or theme that was uncovered, describing what it means and why it’s important (aka: create key insights).
• Share the key insights!
• An Analytics-First Approach to UX, Part 1
• Putting Big Data in Context
• 4 Quick Tips for Getting the Most out of Google Analytics

Analytics is more than just a numbers game. It's a way of tracking and analyzing user behavior over time. In this article, we explore this intersection of user experience and data, so that budding designers can add productive web analytics to their process.

UX Booth is trusted by over 100,000 user experience professionals. Start your subscription today for free.

• Reviews / Why join our community?
• For companies
• Frequently asked questions

User Research: What It Is and Why You Should Do It

User research is an essential part of UX design. Unless we understand who we are designing for and why, how can we even know what to create or where to begin? Depending on your project, requirements and constraints, you can choose different types of research methods, from surveys and tests to interviews and the most common method — usability testing. Here, we’ll look at what user research is, and the three most common reasons for doing user research — namely, to create designs that are truly relevant, to create designs that are easy and pleasurable to use, and to understand the return on investment of your user experience (UX) design .

What is User Research?

User research, or “ design research ,” as it’s sometimes called, covers a wide range of methods. It can mean anything from doing ethnographic interviews with your target group, to classical usability studies, to quantitative measurements of return on investment (ROI) on your user experience design. What all user research has in common is that it helps place people at the center of your design process and your products . You use user research to inspire your design, to evaluate your solutions, and to measure your impact. User research (and other kinds of research) is often divided into quantitative and qualitative methods.

Surveys and formal experiments such as A/B testing and tree testing are examples of quantitative research tools. Quantitative user research methods seek to measure user behavior in a way that can be quantified and used for statistical analysis.

Interviews and (to some degree) usability tests are examples of qualitative research tools. These are often more exploratory and seek to get an in-depth understanding of the experiences and everyday lives of individual users or user groups.

Each research method has benefits and drawbacks. As such, each can be used for achieving different goals. Which method you choose depends on what you want to achieve as well as a number of practical concerns, such as what type of project you are working on, your budget and your time constraints. With that in mind, let’s look at some different reasons for why you should involve users in your design process.

Three Good Reasons for Doing User Research

“ Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.” — Tim Brown, CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO

The type of user research you should do depends on your work process as well as your reason for doing user research in the first place. Here are three excellent reasons for doing user research:

1. To Create Designs That are Truly Relevant

If you understand your users, you can make designs that are relevant for them. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your users, you have no way of knowing whether your design will be relevant. A design that is not relevant to its target audience will never be a success .

The first step and core of the design thinking process is to empathize with your users. User research is one of the best ways to do that. Conducting different types of interviews and observing people in the contexts where they will use your design is a common method of doing this type of user research. We often place this type of research at the very beginning of a project to ensure that the overall direction for the project is relevant to potential customers and users. In order to ensure that your design continues to be relevant as your project progresses, validating your ideas with prospective users on a continuous basis is a vital habit to stick to. Talk to them about how they perceive your design and how they could imagine using it, or involve them directly in your design process, to ensure that you are still on the right track.

Let’s look at an example: In 2005, Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung did a number of ethnographic user studies that completely changed the way it thought about designing TVs. Together with the innovation and strategy consultancy ReD Associates, Samsung representatives visited people in different countries to observe how they live and to talk to them about their homes and the TV’s role in their homes. What they found surprised them. At the time, Samsung and most other TV manufacturers primarily designed their TVs with technical specs such as high-quality picture and sound in mind. The TVs were designed to show off their technical capabilities, but what Samsung found when visiting people was that they viewed a TV more like a piece of furniture . As a TV is turned off most of the time, people do not want it to dominate their living room. So, rather than show off their expensive TV with all its technological capabilities, they tried to hide it away as much as possible.

Following this insight, Samsung changed its design strategy radically, moving the inbuilt speakers to make the TV slimmer and creating a subtler, minimalistic design that would fit more seamlessly into people’s living rooms. Technical capabilities were still important, but they had to be balanced with design choices that made the TVs fit into people’s homes. “Home” was the watchword here, and Samsung got hard to work on the transformation. The challenge involved getting away from treating a living room like a showroom or sports bar, and going for “harmony” instead. By 2007, Samsung had doubled its share in the global TV market because it had proven to understand how to make its TVs relevant to its customers.

User research made Samsung change its TV design strategy to focus on making more minimalistic designs that fit into the customer’s home. Although TVs have not become smaller, everything extraneous has been removed. As we see here, the TV functions as a gallery-sized moving picture — with all the “bells and whistles” discreetly housed — light-years away from the old notion of “peacocking” its technical prowess as if it were a James Bond gadget.

2. To Create Designs That are Easy and Pleasurable to Use

“If the user is having a problem, it’s our problem.” — Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers

All products should have a high level of usability (i.e., be easy to use ), and usability tests can be a big help in achieving that. The days when programmed technology was a tool only to be used by experts are long gone. People expect products to be easy to learn and easy to use. They expect to pick them up and do things with them while only thinking about what they hope to achieve, not having to think about the products themselves. If your user experience is not good, chances are that people will move on to another product . Unless you work in a field with no competitors, a high level of usability (and a matching high-quality user experience) is essential in making any product a commercial success. Not to mention that your users will love you for creating a great user experience. Even if you are designing products for — e.g. — a highly specialized work environment where the users have no alternatives, products with a high level of usability will make work processes faster, safer and more efficient.

Wikiwand is a good example of a company that operates solely on providing a great user experience. Their product is a browser plugin which changes the design of Wikipedia articles to make them more appealing and user-friendly. Wikiwand does not provide different content from the classic Wikipedia webpage, but the company has thousands of users who praise it for the awesome user experience it delivers.

To the left is the classic Wikipedia interface; to the right is the Wikiwand version of the same article. The content is the same, but the experience is different.

When you are designing or developing a product, you become the primary expert on how to use it and what functionalities it has. Because you know your own product so well, however, you can become blind to functionality in your product that is difficult to use. As designers, we need that level of understanding of our products, but it also means that we can all too easily shift far away from the same perspective as our users. The author has personally participated in many projects where the designers know the ideas behind the interface and functionality of a product so well that separating the understandable from the not-so understandable is really difficult for them. This tendency of seeing things from the point of view of one’s profession — what we call “déformation professionnelle” — and not stepping back to catch the reality of what’s going on from a fresh, generalist angle is a natural one, incidentally.

Happily, though, you can avoid a lot of usability issues by following various guidelines and rules of thumb, but there will always be situations that the guidelines don’t cover, or where different guidelines tell you different things. You might also be designing for a target group such as seniors or children where the regular guidelines do not apply. That means testing the user experience of your product is always a good idea. Usability tests work best when they are an integrated part of your work process so that you test your product iteratively and from an early stage of development onward. Early tests are what we can do on primitive prototypes — e.g., using paper; from there, we progress to more refined prototypes until we have something that resembles the final product. If you only start testing when you have an almost-finished product, you run a very serious risk in that your findings might come too late for you to make larger changes to the product. For instance, if all the software is done or if you can’t push your release date, you’ll have your back against the wall. So, stay fluid with your design until the very end of the process — it’s amazing what insights can come from an eleventh-hour test of the ‘last’ version you have planned for rollout.

3. To Understand the Return on Investment of Your UX Design

Although the importance of good design has become widely recognized, UX designers and researchers still experience having to fight for resources to enable them to do their work. Executives and shareholders sometimes fail to see the value in investing in user research and UX design. UX design and user research is not as tangible as new features or fixing software bugs; so, overlooking their value can happen all the more easily. If resources become scarce, UX is also often one of the first areas to experience cuts; the reason is that consequences are not as immediately felt as when you save on development or similar areas. If you make cuts in say, software development, you can immediately see that the consequences involve cutting back on features or having buggy software; however, if you make cuts in UX, you don’t experience the consequences until your product reaches your users, and when your competitors attract your users towards them.

We can easily argue for the value of great UX; it is much more effective if we can show it. This is where studies to show the return on investment (ROI) on UX efforts are worth their weight in gold (or the weight, at least, of the printouts). If you can show that the changes you made in the design generated more sales, resulted in a larger number of customers, or made work processes more efficient, you have a much stronger case for investing in UX. User studies to measure the effect of your design are mostly quantitative and can take different forms. You can do A/B tests during development that compare different versions of your design, or you can do studies after your product is released to measure differences in use patterns. With apps and webpages, you often build in different types of analytics to inform you of different user patterns.

The global online marketplace Etsy is a good example of a company that has built its success on a focus on customer experience throughout the entire customer journey and that continuously measures the user experience. 

For example , Etsy routinely tests different versions of user interfaces to constantly improve the platform’s usability as well as business metrics. Etsy's continued position as one of the largest online marketplaces is a result of its rigorous focus on usability, research and testing.

The world’s most successful companies continually test and iterate their products, as is evident in their A/B tests. Here is one of several that GoodUI has been tracking. You can see more such “leaked” tests from AirBnb, Amazon, Booking, Netflix and others on their website.

The Take Away

Here, we have shown three good reasons for doing user research and we have touched on when in your design process you can integrate user research. Here are the three reasons again:

Do user research to ensure that you create products that are truly relevant to your target group.

Do user research to ensure that your products deliver a great user experience.

Do user research to show the ROI of your design efforts.

You can — and should — do user studies at all stages of the design process. You do studies before you start designing so as to get an understanding of what your target group needs ; you carry out iterative tests during development to ensure that the user experience is on track, and you can measure the effect of your design after your product is released. This “holy trinity” approach can keep you three steps ahead as every dimension of your release will have been considered, analyzed, and tested before you sit down to see the results of the ultimate test (the ROI), more confident that you’ve got a winning design.

References and Where to Learn More

For an in-depth coverage of different user research methods, take the following courses:

User Research – Methods and Best Practices

Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX

In this interview, founder of Wikiwand, Lior Grossman explains the company’s approach to designing a more usable encyclopedia.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

Get Weekly Design Insights

Topics in this article, what you should read next, the 5 stages in the design thinking process.

• 1.8k shares
• 3 weeks ago

What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?

• 1.6k shares

A Simple Introduction to Lean UX

• 1.3k shares
• 3 years ago

How to Do a Thematic Analysis of User Interviews

• 1.2k shares

How to Conduct User Interviews

7 Great, Tried and Tested UX Research Techniques

Make Your UX Design Process Agile Using Google’s Methodology

• 1.1k shares

Design Thinking: Get Started with Prototyping

Test Your Prototypes: How to Gather Feedback and Maximize Learning

Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test

Open Access—Link to us!

We believe in Open Access and the  democratization of knowledge . Unfortunately, world-class educational materials such as this page are normally hidden behind paywalls or in expensive textbooks.

If you want this to change , cite this article , link to us, or join us to help us democratize design knowledge !

Privacy Settings

Our digital services use necessary tracking technologies, including third-party cookies, for security, functionality, and to uphold user rights. Optional cookies offer enhanced features, and analytics.

Experience the full potential of our site that remembers your preferences and supports secure sign-in.

Governs the storage of data necessary for maintaining website security, user authentication, and fraud prevention mechanisms.

Enhanced Functionality

Saves your settings and preferences, like your location, for a more personalized experience.

Referral Program

We use cookies to enable our referral program, giving you and your friends discounts.

Error Reporting

We share user ID with Bugsnag and NewRelic to help us track errors and fix issues.

Optimize your experience by allowing us to monitor site usage. You’ll enjoy a smoother, more personalized journey without compromising your privacy.

Analytics Storage

Collects anonymous data on how you navigate and interact, helping us make informed improvements.

Differentiates real visitors from automated bots, ensuring accurate usage data and improving your website experience.

Lets us tailor your digital ads to match your interests, making them more relevant and useful to you.

Advertising Storage

Stores information for better-targeted advertising, enhancing your online ad experience.

Personalization Storage

Permits storing data to personalize content and ads across Google services based on user behavior, enhancing overall user experience.

Advertising Personalization

Allows for content and ad personalization across Google services based on user behavior. This consent enhances user experiences.

Enables personalizing ads based on user data and interactions, allowing for more relevant advertising experiences across Google services.

Receive more relevant advertisements by sharing your interests and behavior with our trusted advertising partners.

Enables better ad targeting and measurement on Meta platforms, making ads you see more relevant.

Allows for improved ad effectiveness and measurement through Meta’s Conversions API, ensuring privacy-compliant data sharing.

LinkedIn Insights

Tracks conversions, retargeting, and web analytics for LinkedIn ad campaigns, enhancing ad relevance and performance.

LinkedIn CAPI

Enhances LinkedIn advertising through server-side event tracking, offering more accurate measurement and personalization.

Google Ads Tag

Tracks ad performance and user engagement, helping deliver ads that are most useful to you.

Share the knowledge!

Share this content on:

or copy link

Cite according to academic standards

Simply copy and paste the text below into your bibliographic reference list, onto your blog, or anywhere else. You can also just hyperlink to this article.

New to UX Design? We’re giving you a free ebook!

Download our free ebook The Basics of User Experience Design to learn about core concepts of UX design.

In 9 chapters, we’ll cover: conducting user interviews, design thinking, interaction design, mobile UX design, usability, UX research, and many more!

New to UX Design? We’re Giving You a Free ebook!

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

• Homeland Security Enterprise
• Customer Experience (CX) at DHS
• CX Learning
• Basics of User Research

User Research Outputs & Outcomes

Basics of User Research Lesson | 20 Minutes

Lesson Objectives

• Understand what to do after a research session
• Understand which methods to use to analyze user research data
• Understand what to include in a user research report
• Understand how to make findings actionable

After conducting user research, you need to synthesize findings, identify insights, and create actionable recommendations. Starting with a team debrief and ending with a research report, the outputs and outcomes of user research led to more human-centered products and services.

Let’s start with our first step, a research session debrief.

After a Research Session

Debrief: After a research session, the team meets to discuss what happened and reflect on what they learned.

Debriefing right after the research session keeps the information fresh. As you and your team discuss the session, share what you heard, observed, and learned. Was anything surprising? Discussing, as a team, helps identify different interpretations and highlights valuable findings.

Before debriefing, your team should set guidelines. Consider the following when creating your guidelines:

• What questions/responses you want to focus on
• How much time to spend debriefing each section
• How/what tool you will use to document your debriefing session
• Next steps after the debrief

During the debrief, you may focus on:

• Initial thoughts and reactions to how the session went
• Participant responses that stood out during the session
• Responses related to your research goals

Initial team interpretations of participant feedback will set the groundwork for analyzing the data more deeply, later.

Retrospective: Time for the team to reflect on the overall research process and lessons learned.

After you’ve completed research and debriefed, hold a retrospective. During the retrospective, discuss and document:

• What went well
• What could be improved
• What you can do next time to improve user research

The purpose of a retrospective is to highlight what is working for your team and ways to improve.

Analyze Your Data

Once you have collected data from your research sessions, you need to analyze it to draft findings and actionable insights. This data can be in multiple forms: observational notes, direct quotes, metrics, etc.

Findings vs insights

• Findings: Factual information that includes descriptions, observations and patterns found in your data. What are you seeing? You can highlight common themes in responses/comments and common statistical data points.
• Insights: Interpretations that explain your findings. Why are you seeing what you are seeing? What is the data telling you? Consider relevant background information, and previous research, as you interpret findings. Insights are based on a deeper and more holistic understanding of the data.

Findings come from your user’s participation during the research session(s) in the form of direct and indirect interactions with your research team. Insights come from interpretations your research team makes when analyzing research data and background information. Interpretations have potential for bias – be aware of yours and/or your team’s as you analyze findings to create insights.

Coding your data

A code is shorthand text, color, and/or symbols used to label and categorize data. Each code should match a description of what each code stands for. Using codes can make your data easier to sort and keep organized. Your code should be explained with a matching key or section in the appendix portion of your research report.

Example: When facilitating a discussion with a focus group, use code to document which participant provided feedback and what kind of feedback was shared.

Identifying patterns in your data

Affinity mapping is a visual way to organize your data by identifying patterns and groupings among your data points. After your user research session, take all team observations, quotes, findings, etc. and put each of them on a different sticky note (either virtually or physically). Once you have your collection of stickies, you can begin grouping. Your team can either create categories as you group items, or you can use predetermined categories. Both methods help your team visualize patterns and groupings in your data to identify findings and insights.

Create a Report

After you have analyzed your data, it is time to draft a user research report. Your report should include the following:

• Executive Summary: Highlight top insights and actionable recommendations
• Background: Briefly summarize why you completed the study. This should include context as to why it's important to your work
• Recommendations: Present recommendations clearly and concisely. Consider organizing recommendations by priority - which items need to be addressed now? Which can be addressed later?
• Findings & Insights: Include summaries of what you found from the data and insights your team uncovered.
• Methodology: Describe your research approach, including the type and methods you used

Include visuals like charts, graphs, and journey maps to help readers understand your data and recommendations.

Make Findings Actionable

What you learn from user research should be digestible and shared, broadly. The following are ways to visualize, share, and make your findings and insights actionable:

Journey mapping : A journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s interactions with your organization along a scoped journey (what is the experience and when does it begin and end?). Journeys typically include: actions, thoughts, feelings, and pain points. You can include more (or less) individual and organizational elements – it depends on your needs and where you’d like to focus. You can use a journey map to improve or create services and products based on moments that matter across the journey.

Service blueprint: A service blueprint is focused on the organization's operational processes and perspective to deliver a service to customers. A service blueprint uses findings to highlight the what’s working and what can be improved to deliver services that meet your customers’ expectations. You can create multiple service blueprints to represent different users, scenarios and current vs. future states. The process of creating a service blueprint can identify friction points between customers and service delivery.

Prototyping : Uses findings and insights from user research to create a draft version (paper or digital) of a concept, service, or product to explore and test with users. Prototyping should happen early, before anything is developed or created – it minimizes risk by saving time and resources. Prototyping is a proactive and cost-effective way to test multiple versions and iterations of a future service/product.

• Low-fidelity : This version can be made of paper and does not have interactive features. This helps design teams visualize future services/products and improve upon rough concepts (EX: sketches or mock-ups of a service/product).
• High-fidelity: Often a more realistic interactive experience, closer to what the “final” version will look like and how it will function. This helps design teams test a more refined representation of a future service/product. (EX: fully functional digital applications or a usable physical model that can be interacted with).

Communicating with stakeholders and sharing actionable recommendations is just as important as completing the research. User research is beneficial if findings and insights are used to make improvements or take action.

At DHS, user research is an essential practice that gives the public a voice. We learn from the public and use feedback to create more human-centered products and services.

What Did You Learn?

Take our short knowledge check to find out how much you know about user research outputs & outcomes.

Disclaimer: Responses and results are anonymous and may be used to improve the course offerings.

Check Your Knowledge

Two exercises for improving design research through reflective practice (18F)

Shedding Light on Underserved Users through Research (Digital.gov)

The Content Corner: User Research for Complex Systems (Digital.gov)

Web Resource:

18F User Experience Design Guide: Interview Debrief Guide (18F)

Sharing user research findings (GOV.UK)

User Research Basics (Usability.gov)

Customer Experience Center of Excellence Playbook (GSA)

Podcast: Collecting information from users (GOV.UK)

Common User Research

Learn about common user research methods and how to get started.

• Customer Experience (CX)
• User Experience (UX)

• Set up your Design System Workshop
• Tečaj: oblikovalski sistem
• UI tečaj: od ideje do prototipa
• DSG Newsletter
• The Design Strategy Cards
• The Ultimate Design Strategy e-book
• Free Design Strategy Crash Course

No products in the cart.

How to conduct user research: A step-by-step guide

This is part one of a guide to User research.

Continue with part two: How to conduct user research: A Step-by-step guide

Continue with part three: What is exploratory research and why is it so exciting?

What user research did you conduct to reveal your ideal user?

Uh-oh. Not this question again. We both know the most common answer and it’s not great.

“Uhm, we talked to some users and had a brainstorming session with our team. It’s not much, but we don’t have time to do anything more right now. It’s better than nothing.”

Let’s be brutally honest about the meaning of that answer and rephrase it:

“ We don’t have time to get to know our actual user and maximize our chances of success. We’ll just assume that we know what they want and then wonder why the product fails at a later stage.”

If that sounds super bad, it’s because IT IS. You don’t want to end up in this situation. And you won’t.

After reading this guide, you’ll know exactly how to carry out the user research that will become your guiding star during product development.

On this page

Why is user research so important?

Step #1: define research objectives.

Go ahead – create that fake persona

Step #2: Pick your methods

Qualitative methods – the why, quantitative methods – the what, behavioral and attitudinal methods, step #3: find your participants, how to recruit participants, how many participants, step #4: conduct user research.

Focus groups

Competitive analysis

Field studies

What’s next?

User research can be a scary word. It may sound like money you don’t have, time you can’t spare, and expertise you need to find. That’s why some people convince themselves that it’s not that important.

Which is a HUGE mistake.

User research is crucial – without it, you’ll spend your energy, time and money on a product that is based around false assumptions that won’t work in the real world.

Let’s take a look at Segway, a technologically brilliant product with incredible introductory publicity. Although it’s still around, it simply didn’t reach initial expectations. Here are some of the reasons why:

• It brought mockery, not admiration. The user was always “that guy”, who often felt fat or lazy.
• Cities were not prepared for it. Neither users nor policemen knew if it should be used on the road or on the sidewalk.
• A large segment of the target market comprised of postal and security workers. However, postal workers need both hands while walking, and security workers prefer bikes that don’t have a limited range.

Segway mainly fell short because of issues that could’ve been foreseen and solved by better user research.

Tim Brown, the CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO, sums it up nicely:

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

? Bonus material Download User research checklist and a comparison table

Never forget – you are not your user.

You require proper user research to understand your user’s problems, pain points, needs, desires, feelings and behaviours.

Let’s start with the process!

Before you get in touch with your target users, you need to define why you are doing the research in the first place. 

Establish clear objectives and agree with your team on your exact goals – this will make it much easier to gain valuable insights. Otherwise, your findings will be all over the place.

Here are some sample questions that will help you to define your objectives:

• What do you want to uncover?
• What are the knowledge gaps that you need to fill?
• What is already working and what isn’t?
• Is there a problem that needs to be fixed? What is that problem?
• What will the research bring to the business and/or your customers?

Once you start answering questions like these, it’s time to make a list of objectives. These should be specific and concise .

Let’s say you are making a travel recommendation app. Your research goals could be:

• Understand the end-to-end process of how participants are currently making travel decisions.
• Uncover the different tools that participants are using to make travel decisions.
• Identify problems or barriers that they encounter when making travel decisions.

I suggest that you prioritize your objectives and create an Excel table. It will come in handy later.

Go ahead, create that fake persona

A useful exercise for you to do at this stage is to write down some hypotheses about your target users.

Ask yourself:

What do we think we understand about our users that is relevant to our business or product?

Yes, brainstorm the heck out of this persona, but keep it relevant to the topic at hand.

Here’s my empathy map and empathy map canvas to really help you flesh out your imaginary user.

Once you’re finished, research any and every statement , need and desire with real people.

It’s a simple yet effective way to create questions for some of the research methods that you’ll be using.

However, you need to be prepared to throw some of your assumptions out of the window. If you think this persona may affect your bias, don’t bother with hypotheses and dive straight into research with a completely open mind.

Alright, you have your research goals. Now let’s see how you can reach them.

Here’s the main question you should be asking yourself at this step in the process:

Based on our time and manpower, what methods should we select?

It’s essential to pick the right method at the right time . I’ll delve into more details on specific methods in Step #4. For now, let’s take a quick look at what categories you can choose from.

Qualitative research tells you ‘why’ something occurs. It tells you the reasons behind the behavior, the problem or the desire. It answers questions like: “ Why do you prefer using app X instead of other similar apps?” or “What’s the hardest part about being a sales manager? Why?” .

Qualitative data comes in the form of actual insights and it’s fairly easy to understand.

Most of the methods we’ll look at in Step #4 are qualitative methods.

Quantitative research helps you to understand what is happening by providing different metrics.

It answers questions such as “What percentage of users left their shopping cart without completing the purchase?” or “Is it better to have a big or small subscription button?”.

Most quantitative methods come in handy when testing your product, but not so much when you’re researching your users. This is because they don’t tell you why particular trends or patterns occur.

There is a big difference between “what people do” and “what people say”.

As their names imply, attitudinal research is used to understand or measure attitudes and beliefs, whereas behavioral research is used to measure and observe behaviors.

Here’s a practical landscape that will help you choose the best methods for you. If it doesn’t make sense now, return to it once you’ve finished the guide and you’ll have a much better understanding.

Source: Nielsen Norman Group

I’ll give you my own suggestions and tips about the most common and useful methods in Step #4 – Conducting research.

In general, if your objectives are specific enough, it shouldn’t be too hard to see which methods will help you achieve them.

Remember that Excel table? Choose a method or two that will fulfill each objective and type it in the column beside it.

It won’t always be possible to carry out everything you’ve written down. If this is the case, go with the method(s) that will give you most of the answers. With your table, it will be easy to pick and choose the most effective options for you.

Onto the next step!

This stage is all about channeling your inner Sherlock and finding the people with the secret intel for your product’s success.

Consider your niche, your objectives and your methods – this should give you a general idea of the group or groups you want to talk to and research further.

Here’s my advice for most cases.

If you’re building something from the ground up, the best participants might be:

• People you assume face the problem that your product aims to solve
• Your competitors’ customers

If you are developing something or solving a problem for an existing product, you should also take a look at:

• Advocates and super-users
• Customers who have recently churned
• Users who tried to sign up or buy but decided not to commit

There are plenty of ways to bring on participants, and you can get creative so long as you keep your desired target group in mind.

You can recruit them online – via social media, online forums or niche community sites.

You can publish an ad with requirements and offer some kind of incentive.

You can always use a recruitment agency, too. This can be costly, but it’s also efficient.

If you have a user database and are changing or improving your product, you can find your participants in there. Make sure that you contact plenty of your existing users, as most of them won’t respond.

You can even ask your friends to recommend the right kind of people who you wouldn’t otherwise know.

With that said, you should always be wary of including friends in your research . Sure, they’re the easiest people to reach, but your friendship can (and probably will) get in the way of obtaining honest answers. There are plenty of horror stories about people validating their “brilliant” ideas with their friends, only to lose a fortune in the future. Only consider them if you are 100% sure that they will speak their mind no matter what.

That depends on the method. If you’re not holding a massive online survey, you can usually start with 5 people in each segment . That’s enough to get the most important unique insights. You can then assess the situation and decide whether or not you need to expand your research.

Finally! Let’s go through some of the more common methods you’ll be using, including their pros and cons, some pro tips, and when you should use them.

Engaging in one-on-one discussions with users enables you to acquire detailed information about a user’s attitudes, desires, and experiences. Individual concerns and misunderstandings can be directly addressed and cleared up on the spot.

Interviews are time-consuming, especially on a per participant basis. You have to prepare for them, conduct them, analyze them and sometimes even transcribe them. They also limit your sample size, which can be problematic. The quality of your data will depend on the ability of your interviewer, and hiring an expert can be expensive.

• Prepare questions that stick to your main topics. Include follow-up questions for when you want to dig deeper into certain areas.
• Record the interview . Don’t rely on your notes. You don’t want to interrupt the flow of the interview by furiously scribbling down your answers, and you’ll need the recording for any potential in-depth analysis later on.
• Conduct at least one trial run of the interview to see if everything flows and feels right. Create a “playbook” on how the interview should move along and update it with your findings.
• If you are not comfortable with interviewing people, let someone else do it or hire an expert interviewer. You want to make people feel like they are talking to someone they know, rather than actually being interviewed. In my experience, psychologists are a great choice for an interviewer.

Interviews are not really time-sensitive, as long as you do them before the development process.

However, they can be a great supplement to online surveys and vice-versa. Conducting an interview beforehand helps you to create a more focused and relevant survey, while conducting an interview afterwards helps you to explain the survey answers.

Surveys are generally conducted online, which means that it’s possible to gather a lot of data in a very short time for a very low price . Surveys are usually anonymous, so users are often more honest in their responses.

It’s more difficult to get a representative sample because it’s tough to control who takes part in the survey – especially if you post it across social media channels or general forums. Surveys are quite rigid and if you don’t account for all possible answers, you might be missing out on valuable data. You have to be very careful when choosing your questions – poorly worded or leading ones can negatively influence how users respond. Length can also be an issue, as many people hate taking long surveys.

• Keep your surveys brief , particularly if participants won’t be compensated for their time. Only focus on what is truly important.
• Make sure that the questions can be easily understood. Unclear or ambiguous questions result in data on which you can’t depend. Keep the wording as simple as possible.
• Avoid using leading questions. Don’t ask questions that assume something, such as “What do you dislike about X?”. Replace this with “What’s your experience with X?”.
• Find engaged, niche online communities that fit your user profile. You’ll get more relevant data from these.

Similar to interviews. It depends on whether you want to use the survey as a preliminary method, or if you want a lot of answers to a few, very focused questions.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are moderated discussions with around 5 to 10 participants, the intention of which is to gain insight into the individuals’ attitudes, ideas and desires.

As focus groups include multiple people, they can quickly reveal the desires, experiences, and attitudes of your target audience . They are helpful when you require a lot of specific information in a short amount of time. When conducted correctly, they can act like interviews on steroids.

Focus groups can be tough to schedule and manage. If the moderator isn’t experienced, the discussion can quickly go off-topic. There might be an alpha participant that dictates the general opinion, and because it’s not one-on-one, people won’t always speak their mind.

• Find an experienced moderator who will lead the discussion. Having another person observing and taking notes is also highly recommended, as he or she can emphasize actionable insights and catch non-verbal clues that would otherwise be missed.
• Define the scope of your research . What questions will you ask? How in-depth do you want to go with the answers? How long do you want each discussion to last? This will determine how many people and groups should be tested.
• If possible, recruit potential or existing users who are likely to provide good feedback, yet will still allow others to speak their mind. You won’t know the participants most of the time, so having an experienced moderator is crucial.

Focus groups work best when you have a few clear topics that you want to focus on.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of existing products . It explores how successful competitors act on the market. It gives you a solid basis for other user research methods and can also uncover business opportunities. It helps you to define your competitive advantage , as well as identify different user types.

A competitive analysis can tell you what exists, but not why it exists. You may collect a long feature list, but you won’t know which features are valued most by users and which they don’t use at all. In many cases, it’s impossible to tell how well a product is doing, which makes the data less useful. It also has limited use if you’re creating something that’s relatively new to the market.

• Create a list or table of information that you want to gather – market share, prices, features, visual design language, content, etc.
• Don’t let it go stale. Update it as the market changes so that you include new competitors.
• If you find something really interesting but don’t know the reason behind it, conduct research among your competitor’s users .
• After concluding your initial user research, go over the findings of your competitive analysis to see if you’ve discovered anything that’s missing on the market .

It can be a great first method, especially if you’re likely to talk to users of your competitors’ products

Field Studies

Field studies are research activities that take place in the user’s context, rather than at your company or office. Some are purely observational (the researcher is a “fly on the wall”), others are field interviews, and some act as a demonstration of pain points in existing systems.

You really get to see the big picture –  field studies allow you to gain insights that will fundamentally change your product design . You see what people actually do instead of what they say they do. A field study can explain problems and behaviours that you don’t understand better than any other method.

It’s the most time-consuming and expensive method. The results rely on the observer more than any of the other options. It’s not appropriate for products that are used in rare and specific situations.

• Establish clear objectives. Always remember why you are doing the research. Field studies can provide a variety of insights and sometimes it can be hard to stay focused. This is especially true if you are participating in the observed activity.
• Be patient. Observation might take some time. If you rush, you might end up with biased results.
• Keep an open mind and don’t ask leading questions. Be prepared to abandon your preconceptions, assumptions and beliefs. When interviewing people, try to leave any predispositions or biases at the door.
• Be warm but professional. If you conduct interviews or participate in an activity, you won’t want people around you to feel awkward or tense. Instead, you’ll want to observe how they act naturally.

Use a field study when no other method will do or if it becomes clear that you don’t really understand your user. If needed, you should conduct this as soon as possible – it can lead to monumental changes.

We started with a user persona and we’ll finish on this topic, too. But yours will be backed by research 😉

A persona outlines your ideal user in a concise and understandable way. It includes the most important insights that you’ve discovered. It makes it easier to design products around your actual users and speak their language. It’s a great way to familiarize new people on your team with your target market.

A persona is only as good as the user research behind it. Many companies create a “should be” persona instead of an actual one. Not only can such a persona be useless, it can also be misleading.

• Keep personas brief. Avoid adding unnecessary details and omit information that does not aid your decision making. If a persona document is too long, it simply won’t be used.
• Make personas specific and realistic. Avoid exaggerating and include enough detail to help you find real people that represent your ideal user.

Create these after you’ve carried out all of the initial user research. Compile your findings and create a persona that will guide your development process.

Now you know who you are creating your product for – you’ve identified their problems, needs and desires. You’ve laid the groundwork, so now it’s time to design a product that will blow your target user away! But that’s a topic for a whole separate guide, one that will take you through the process of product development and testing 😉

PS. Don’t forget -> Here is your ? User Research Checklist and comparison table

About the author

Oh hey, I’m Romina Kavcic

I am a Design Strategist who holds a Master of Business Administration. I have 14+ years of career experience in design work and consulting across both tech startups and several marquee tech unicorns such as Stellar.org, Outfit7, Databox, Xamarin, Chipolo, Singularity.NET, etc. I currently advise, coach and consult with companies on design strategy & management, visual design and user experience. My work has been published on Forbes, Hackernoon, Blockgeeks, Newsbtc, Bizjournals, and featured on Apple iTunes Store.

More about me  *  Let’s connect on Linkedin   *  Let’s connect on Twitter

Explore more

Username or email address  *

Password  *

Remember me Log in

Lost your password?

Insert/edit link

Enter the destination URL

Or link to existing content

What is User research? Methods & Examples.

• Bartek Dziegiel

What is User Research?

User research  is a study of users who will use a product. It aims to give designers insight into users’ frustrations, problems, and needs. Armed with this insight, designers can create better products.

User research is a continuous part of the product development life cycle. The data gathered during the research form patterns that tell you how to create better products.

UX research aims to improve websites and apps for those who use them. It’s all about understanding users — what they like, their frustrations, and what they need.

User research, however, equips you with valuable insights. It ensures your design decisions are based on facts, not just guesses.

Why Should You Do User Research?

User research may seem like an extra step in the design process, but it’s undeniably crucial. Many designs fail specifically because of the lack of proper user research. User research helps to formulate the problem the product is trying to solve. 

By understanding your users, you can build digital experiences based on them. You can create a product that meets their expectations and solves their problems, which, as a result, makes them satisfied. Actionable insights you gain from your study lead to better designs.

Better designs lead to happier users who are more likely to keep using your product and even recommend it to others. Plus, it can save you time and money in the long run by helping you avoid having to change the design after the development stage.

It is easier to correct the errors before the development stage. This is why conducting extensive user research early on is so important.

In a nutshell, user research helps create better designs. Conducting user research allows you to make your digital creations more user-friendly and, as a result, successful.

User Research Methods

UX researchers can use various methods and strategies to gain knowledge about their users. Several methods of gathering data are standard among UX researchers. These methods can be broadly categorized into two main types:  qualitative  and  quantitative  research.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research methods are a way to learn about  why  users act in a specific way and  how  they perform tasks. Understanding that can lead to insights into how designers can improve a product.

Qualitative methods involve interviews and different forms of user observation and testing. It helps designers understand their motivations and emotions on every step of users’ journey and the thought processes behind their actions. You uncover a lot of valuable information by simply having a conversation with your users.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research , comparatively, focuses on collecting numerical data. If qualitative research answers the question “how users behave,” quantitative methods answer “how many users act like this.”

This type of research often involves methods like surveys that gather answers from a large number of participants, different analytics tools, A/B testing, and others. Various tools and software help with collecting and analyzing this type of data. Quantitative methods provide actual numbers about users’ behaviors. They enable researchers to identify trends and the prevalence of specific user behaviors.

Combining qualitative and quantitative user research methods allows researchers to understand what design choices are essential for creating user-centered digital experiences.

Methods of Qualitative Research

As mentioned before , qualitative research  is all about diving into the complexities of human experience. To learn about them, researchers can use some of these essential commonly used methods:

User interviews

Interviews involve having one-on-one conversations with users. By asking open-ended questions, researchers can learn much about the users — their needs, frustrations, expectations, and problems. It is also an opportunity to ask your users follow-up questions. Moreover, researchers can ask study participants to elaborate on their answers. Comparatively, that opportunity never arrives during surveys, even though they are somehow similar to the interviews. Conversation with users lets you explore their thoughts in detail. Gathered insights will improve your design. 

Focus groups

Focus groups are much like user interviews but within a small group. Researchers ask questions, and users are asked to discuss their experiences and opinions. This method can uncover group dynamics and shared perspectives, providing insights that individual interviews might miss.

Diary Studies

Another method of qualitative research is diary studies. Researchers ask users to keep a diary of their interactions with a product over time. Study participants capture their frustrations, which researchers can use to identify pain points in the design. This method captures insights from long-term usage patterns.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a method to understand how users categorize and organize information. Imagine that you are trying to find an item on an e-commerce website. Finding an item will be easier when it is attributed to a specific category. Card sorting is a valuable tool to determine which object should be in which category. It works by creating a list of items (which are often written on separate cards – hence the name). Participants of this study sort the things into categories. After several times, the researcher can learn how their audience will expect how particular objects should be categorized. It helps optimize the structure of content or navigation.

Usability study

It is one of the most commonly used research methods. Researchers perform usability study once the first draft of the design is created. The design, in the form of a prototype or a developed product, is confronted with users who are asked to perform specific tasks. By observing how users interact with it, the researcher can determine what part of the design needs improvement early on.

Each qualitative research method has unique strengths and is suited to different research objectives. Researchers always choose methods appropriate to what they need to learn in a specific scenario. By employing these methods, you can get valuable information on how to create user experiences that resonate with your target audience. As a matter of fact, it can help you find your target audience.

Methods of Quantitative Research

In contrast to qualitative research,  quantitative research  is all about numbers and measurable data. It is basically gathering evidence to support your case. Quantitative research supports the data collected by qualitative research. Here are some essential methods commonly used in quantitative user research:

Surveys are like questionnaires that can be distributed to a large number of users. Similarly to ser interviews, they involve creating a series of questions for users. However, unlike interviews, surveys are the most effective only when they ask mainly closed-ended questions. Nevertheless, their main strength is that they can gather a large amount of data in a short amount of time. The data you collect will form statistical patterns researchers can translate into actionable insights. 

Analytics tools can track user interactions with your website or app. They can inform researchers by providing data on metrics like page views, bounce rates, conversion rates, and others. This method offers insights into user behavior on a broader scale. 

A/B Testing

A/B testing presents a design’s two versions (A and B). The study participants answer which version they prefer. Alternatively, their interaction with the design is measured. A/B test aims to establish which version of the design performs better. This method helps quantify the impact of design changes on user behavior and preferences.

Heatmaps are a visual representation of users’ interaction with a design. They show where users put most of their attention in the design. Heatmaps present where users click, how they move their cursors, or where they spend the most time on a webpage. They offer a visual summary of user interactions with a design. If the users’ attention is misplaced in some way – for example, the CTA button is gathering less focus than one may hope – it can inform about potential issues.

Quantitative research methods are instrumental if designers are in a position where they need to justify their design decisions. They can help make data-driven decisions. Moreover, they provide solid arguments for why specific design changes are required. By using these methods, researchers can gain a comprehensive understanding of user behavior and preferences at scale, informing their design choices and optimizing user experiences.

Examples of User Research

User research is a broad concept. However, a study performed by a researcher often aims to answer a particular question. Planning a user’s study involves considering a research question you must answer.

It becomes more evident when we explore real-world examples. Here are some scenarios where user research can make a significant impact

User Research for an E-commerce Websites

Imagine you’re the owner of an online store specializing in electronics. You sell laptops, smartphones, etc. Unfortunately, you’ve noticed that your website’s sales have plateaued. Something on your website makes users abandon their intent to buy. In this situation, user research can uncover problems on your website and discover ways to boost revenue.

Research Methods

You choose various research methods, including user interviews, website analytics, and heat maps.

During interviews, you ask shoppers about their preferences, pain points, and overall experiences on your online store.

Simultaneously, you analyze data from your analytics tools. You track page abandonment rates, conversion rates, and other metrics.

At the same time, heatmaps provide visual insights into which product categories and features attract the most attention and where users drop off.

Research results

As the data begins to pour in, patterns emerge.

During interviews, you discover that users frequently search for specific product categories like smartphones and laptops. Additionally, you learn that they often struggle with finding relevant accessories.

Your analytics reveal that a significant number of users abandon their shopping carts at the shipping and payment stage, hinting at potential pain points in the checkout process. 

Heatmaps show that certain design elements, like prominent call-to-action buttons and clear product images, receive the most interaction, which is a desirable outcome.

Taking Action on Insights

With these insights in hand, you’re equipped to make targeted improvements.

You decide to modify the product categorization and search functionality. That should make it easier for users to find accessories. You can also create a way for users to have accessories automatically suggested for the item (like a laptop or smartphone) they just bought or showed interest in.

To reduce cart abandonment, you streamline the checkout process, implement a guest checkout option, and introduce trust signals like security badges.

The results of your user research not only boost sales but also enhance the overall user experience. Customers find discovering and purchasing products easier, increasing satisfaction and loyalty. This can also lead them to suggest your store to their friends, which can definitely be beneficial for your business. 

User Research for Mobile App Development

User research is crucial when the product is very early in its lifecycle. Imagine you’re part of a team creating a new fitness-tracking app. To build a great product, you must first understand your target audience’s specific needs and preferences. In a nutshell, you must first understand what you need to develop.

After some background research, you and your team came up with a first draft of the design. You created a prototype and want to test whether you are on the right track.

Consequently, your team conducts a usability study. You invite a group of potential users to interact with the app’s prototype while you observe and gather feedback. During the testing, participants perform tasks like setting fitness goals, tracking workouts, and reviewing their progress. As they navigate through the app, you take note of any problems users may have, any confusion, or areas where users express frustration. You also collect qualitative feedback through open-ended questions, asking participants about their overall experience and any suggestions for improvement.

Research Results

During the usability study, participants revealed that they struggled to find the option to customize their workout plans. Additionally, some users find the interface overwhelming, with too many features visible simultaneously. Moreover, participants appreciate the app’s tracking accuracy but would like more personalized recommendations for workouts based on their fitness goals.

You start by simplifying the app’s interface. You declutter the dashboard and make the customization options easier to find. To address users’ desire for personalized recommendations, you integrate an algorithm that tailors workout suggestions based on individual goals and progress. You also add customization queries to the onboarding experience of your app.

After implementing these changes, you conduct a follow-up usability test with the same participants. This time, users find the app easier to navigate and express higher satisfaction. They praise the personalized workout suggestions and feel more motivated to use the app.

This example showcases how, by listening to the voices of their target audience, designers can transform initial challenges into opportunities for improvement, resulting in a more seamless and user-friendly experience.

The Take away

These examples illustrate how user research can be tailored to specific industries and products. Regardless of the context, user research helps designers and businesses make informed decisions that lead to better digital products and happier users.

Sources and where to learn more

User research is a vast topic. UX research can (and should) be done at any stage of the product life cycle. The research can improve a product, regardless of whether the product is just being made or has already been launched.

To further explore the fascinating world of user research and UX design, there are abundant resources available:

Baymard Institute:  https://baymard.com/

Nielsen Norman Group:  https://www.nngroup.com/

Smashing magazine:  https://www.smashingmagazine.com/

UX Collective:  https://uxdesign.cc/

Interaction Design Foundation:  https://www.interaction-design.org/

CareerFoundry:  https://careerfoundry.com/

Articles about user research

UX Research: 5 Fundamental Research Methods for E-Commerce Sites

https://baymard.com/learn/ux-research

KickMaterial — Fan-made Kickstarter for Android concept.

https://medium.com/android-by-outline/kickstarter-for-android-6dffe4edd2dc

Secrets of Perfect User Interview by Talebook

https://medium.com/ux-planet/secrets-of-perfect-user-interview-by-talebook-ee61a7e155c7

Kickstart your research with Talebook.

If you are considering starting your journey with user research, we recommend  Talebook , an interactive research repository. It provides you with valuable tools that facilitate user interviews, presenting your research, and other features that will help you on your journey of becoming a UX designer.

User Research: What Is It and How to Do It in SaaS

12 min read

Looking for the best ways to conduct user research and gather actionable insights?

Whether you’re building a product from scratch, updating something on your platform, or just want to listen to users and create better experiences , this article provides the guide you need.

We covered:

• The benefits of proper user research.
• A detailed 5-step process for conducting effective research.
• Types of user research and different methods to implement.
• User research employs various qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate and understand users better. It helps you create a user-centered design process and ensure your final product is what customers love.

Effective user research helps you:

• Understand user behaviors, needs , and preferences.
• Identify experience gaps and remove friction.
• Increase product value and improve user experience .

Implement this user research process to gather data that’s exhaustive and actionable:

• Define your main objective and build a hypothesis.
• Choose research participants that represent your target audience.
• Choose the appropriate research method .
• Start collecting data.
• Analyze and form a conclusion.

User research methods for SaaS:

Usability testing

User testing, user interviews, focus groups, session replays, first click testing, user feedback surveys, card sorting, a/b testing, product analytics.

• Userpilot can help you conduct user experience (UX) research and easily interpret the data. Book a demo to discuss your needs with our team and get tailored solutions.

What is user research?

User research employs various qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate and understand users.

It’s a critical part of the product development process that helps inform design decisions and ensure the final product aligns with user expectations.

Why is conducting user research important?

Without effective user research, you’ll be building or updating your product based on assumptions, and that’s not a good place to be.

It’s like trying to construct a bridge without ever stepping onto the riverbank. You might craft something impressive, but without understanding the water’s flow, depth, and potential hazards, your bridge risks being unusable or, worse, dangerous.

Understand user behaviors, needs, and preferences

By conducting proper user research, you’ll gain data showing how users interact with your tool and their underlying needs and motivations.

This knowledge forms the foundation for designing products that resonate with users. It ensures what you build not only meets functional requirements but also aligns with the specific desires of your target audience.

Identify experience gaps and remove friction

An experience gap refers to the disparity between users’ expectations and their actual experience with your product. Such gaps can lead to customer dissatisfaction, as user needs are not adequately met.

User experience research is pivotal in closing experience gaps and removing friction from the user journey. By identifying pain points through methods like usability testing and feedback collection, you can pinpoint areas for improvement.

This proactive approach allows you to implement targeted enhancements, ensuring a smoother and more satisfying user experience. Ultimately, addressing these gaps not only boosts user satisfaction but also cultivates customer loyalty and positive brand perception.

Increase product value and improve user experience

Continuous user experience research ensures your product keeps adding more value and enhancing the user experience. With this, users will be more comfortable interacting with your product regularly.

As they incorporate your tool into their workflows and increase engagement, they’ll have more reasons to expand their accounts, leading to higher revenue for your business.

How to conduct user research to improve user experience

Ready to start conducting user research? Here’s a five-step process to follow:

1. Define your main objective and build a hypothesis

Before diving into user research, clearly define your primary objective. Whether it’s improving onboarding processes , enhancing navigation, or refining a specific feature, having a focused goal is crucial.

Use the objective to create a hypothesis of the results you hope to get. The research will then confirm or reject this hypothesis.

For instance, if your objective is to enhance your app’s usability, a hypothesis might be that simplifying the navigation will lead to a higher user satisfaction score . You can then design user feedback surveys to collect user opinions and see if your hypothesis is correct.

2. Choose your research participants

Identifying the right participants is key to obtaining relevant insights. Define segments based on characteristics like user type (current users, new users), demographics, or usage patterns.

For example, if you’re improving a feature specific to premium users, draw research participants from users who have engaged with the feature enough to provide valuable feedback. Taking this targeted approach ensures the data you obtain is relevant and actionable.

3. Choose the appropriate research method

There are many user research methods, but what you use generally depends on your objective. For example:

• Usability testing : Helps assess how easily users can accomplish specific tasks within the app.
• Features heatmap : Visually highlights user interaction with specific elements or features of your tool.
• First click testing : Focuses on the first click users make, revealing initial impressions and navigational challenges.
• User feedback surveys : Collects user opinions, preferences, and suggestions, providing valuable qualitative data.
• Card sorting : Helps understand how users categorize information, aiding in intuitive information architecture and a user-centered design process.

Depending on your objectives, you can employ several other types of user research methods. We’ll provide an extensive list in a later section.

4. Start collecting data

After deciding on your objective and choosing a suitable user research approach, it’s time to execute and gather valuable data.

Ensure you have the necessary resources (user research tools, participants, and the like) and clearly define the steps for data collection.

For instance, let’s return to the example we discussed in step 1. Recall the objective was to enhance app usability, and the user research technique was customer feedback surveys. Now that you have those two settled, it’s time to begin collecting data.

You want to keep the survey short and concise to get the best result. Combine various question types, including multiple-choice, open-ended, and rating scales. This provides a more comprehensive view of user opinions and allows for both quantitative and qualitative user research.

For example, you can ask: “ How would you rate the overall usability of [your app] on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is very poor, and 5 is excellent? ” and follow up with, “ Please share any specific challenges or difficulties you encountered while using the app, and if you have any suggestions for improving the usability, feel free to provide them here .”

Imagine your objective is broader—you want to understand usability, then decide which of two features to prioritize for an update. After the initial survey, you can ask what feature they prefer and the reason for their choice. Make a decision based on the data you obtain.

5. Analyze and form a conclusion

Once data collection is complete, the next step is to analyze the gathered information. Bring together all the data you’ve collected and form a comprehensive understanding of user behavior. Identify patterns, trends , and pain points within the data.

When you’re done, it’s time to implement changes to improve the user experience. For instance, imagine your research data shows your onboarding takes too long and results in drop-offs due to several unnecessary steps.

Your product team can work on identifying areas of the onboarding flow they can cut off. Also, you can implement an onboarding checklist to reduce the time to value and boost adoption rates.

Types of user research

User research is quite broad, but when you look at it closely, anybody researching users is either implementing quantitative or qualitative methods—or both.

Quantitative research

This user research type involves collecting numerical data to measure and analyze specific aspects of user behavior and preferences.

It uses surveys, analytics, and A/B testing to uncover user data.

Qualitative research

While quantitative research asks the what questions, qualitative research focuses on uncovering the why behind user behavior . For example, realizing that users are dissatisfied with a new feature is just the first step in your research process. You still don’t have sufficient data to make the changes your users will love.

But by conducting research that asks users why they don’t like the feature, you can identify changes to make. Examples of qualitative research methods include interviews, focus groups, and open-ended user feedback surveys.

User research can be both attitudinal and behavioral:

• Attitudinal research helps uncover user attitudes, opinions, and emotional responses to your product.
• Behavioral research focuses on observing and analyzing actual human behavior and interactions with your product.

User research methods

Combine any of the following qualitative and quantitative research methods to collect comprehensive user data and make informed development decisions:

Usability tests involve observing users as they interact with a prototype or an existing product to identify challenges and assess the overall user experience. You can do this remotely using specialized usability testing tools or have testers come together in a physical test lab while a user researcher observes and records everything.

You can also implement think-aloud protocols, asking users to verbalize their thoughts while interacting with the product.

During the test, aim to identify how well your product performs against these usability components :

• Learnability : The ease with which users can understand and navigate your product for the first time.
• Efficiency : User speed and effectiveness in performing tasks—this says a lot about your UI.
• Memorability : The extent to which users can remember how to use the product or feature after an initial encounter. Good memorability is a sign of a reduced learning curve.
• Errors : The frequency and severity of user mistakes while interacting with your product. Too many test participants making errors is a sign of friction.
• Satisfaction : The overall fulfillment and positive sentiment users experience when interacting with the product.

User testing and usability testing sound similar; people even use them interchangeably, but they’re not the same.

While the former is focused on evaluating functionality and ease of use , user or UX testing encompasses a broader spectrum, digging deep into user needs and preferences . Another way to put it is that usability testing is a subset of UX testing.

The specific approach you adopt when testing users depends on your research objectives, but just like any user research approach, you begin by deciding what feature, product, or prototype to test. Then, create the test task with a list of objectives and have it done remotely or in person.

Example of UX testing: create different interface designs , then ask users to interact with them and mention the one they find most appealing. Implement task analysis to analyze the data and uncover user user preferences.

If it were to be a usability test, you’d create a prototype and ask users to accomplish a specific task with it—e.g., schedule social media posts—then observe the steps they follow and how long it takes.

User interviews involve one-on-one conversations between you and participants to gather in-depth qualitative insights into their experiences and collect relevant data.

Although it can be more tasking than a quick usability test, a user interview allows you to collect extensive data and get immediate responses to your follow-up questions.

The best way to conduct interviews for your SaaS is over video conferencing platforms like Zoom—the one-on-one interaction allows for easy communication.

Here’s an interview preparation template you can use when preparing to interview users:

This is a structured group research involving a small group of 6-12 users (you can do more if you have the resources). Usually, an experienced moderator is present to facilitate discussions and debates about your product.

While the discussion is ongoing, someone is recording user thoughts, opinions, and attitudes toward the topics raised. In the end, you’ll gather useful qualitative data from different participants and use it to advise your product design process.

Side note: you can also use focus groups if you’re conducting market research as part of your development process.

This method involves using tools like Hotjar to record and analyze user sessions on your website or app.

By viewing clicks, scrolls, and keystrokes in a natural environment without users knowing someone is recording, you’ll gather quantitative data on click patterns and session duration, among other things. You can analyze the results to identify if users follow your tool’s happy path and see how they respond to your interface.

The first click test is an incredibly important component of user research. When users make the right first click, they’re more likely to achieve their goals faster and be satisfied with your tool than when they click several times on the wrong UI elements before finding the happy path.

First click testing helps you determine if your product is intuitive—and if it isn’t, you’ll see the errors users make and know what changes to implement.

To conduct this test, show users a mockup, screenshot, or prototype of your tool and ask them to verbally share their initial click choice and reasoning.

You can also have an interactive test where you share the task with users and have them click on what they think should be the first step. That’s what user researchers did in the example below:

They presented users with Bank of America’s homepage and tested to see where users click to find information. 82% of the test participants went to the right section of the homepage, demonstrating an intuitive design.

From quick quantitative questions to more in-depth qualitative research, user feedback surveys come in different forms.

The specific survey type you use depends on your objective. For instance, if you need to understand the ease of using your platform, trigger a customer effort score survey asking users to rate how much effort they put into using specific features. Other common survey types you might want to implement include NPS and CSAT surveys.

Userpilot can help you create in-app surveys, decide who sees them, and analyze the results quickly. Here’s what building your surveys with our tool looks like:

This research method comes in handy when testing your information architecture. Card sorting involves giving test participants cards representing various features, functions, or sections of your SaaS. For example, the cards might include “dashboard,” “reports,” “settings,” and so on.

You can ask participants to categorize the cards into predefined groups or tell them to do it as they deem fit. Choose the former if you already have a structure you wouldn’t want to change.

Take note of participants’ grouping patterns and any challenges or uncertainties they may encounter in the process. Once you’re done, implement task analysis to interpret the result and make data-driven decisions.

A/B testing compares two versions (A and B) of a webpage, email, or feature to determine which performs better in terms of user engagement or conversion.

With a tool like Userpilot, you can create different versions of the in-app flows or UI elements you want to test, and then run them through specific user segments. Userpilot also allows you to conduct multivariate tests where you compare more than two variables.

Product analytics involves collecting and analyzing data from user interactions with your platform to understand their behavior and preferences.

Userpilot’s robust analytics platform lets you track user actions extensively and generate different analytics reports to identify trends, patterns, and changes in user behavior. What’s more, you can visualize the results in a detailed analytics dashboard for easy interpretation and decision-making.

Heatmaps provide visual representations of user behavior. They’re generated based on data from user interactions, such as clicks, scrolls, or mouse movements, recorded during user sessions on a website or app.

As in the image below, heatmap tools assign colors ranging from warm to cool tones to demonstrate different engagement levels. Hotter colors (e.g., red) indicate high interaction, while cooler colors (e.g., blue) represent lower or no interaction.

Userpilot allows you to select the features of your product you want to track and generate real-time heatmap reports to see how users interact with your tool. This is useful when you want to make quick decisions about what features receive better engagement.

User research always pays off.

When you invest in understanding user needs, expectations, and pain points, you’ll build an exceptional user experience that drives retention and loyalty.

That’s not to mention the fact that your product will stay competitive, making it easy to expand your user base and offering.

Ready to start reaping these benefits? Book a demo now and see how Userpilot can help you implement different user research methods and easily interpret the results.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Get The Insights!

The fastest way to learn about Product Growth,Management & Trends.

The coolest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends. Delivered fresh to your inbox, weekly.

The fastest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends.

You might also be interested in ...

11 user flow examples + how to inform ux design with them.

[email protected]

5 Methods to Visualize Customer Feedback for Actionable Insights

User activity patterns: how to identify them for saas.

• Learn center
• Design & UX

Discovery research is a UX essential — Here’s how to get started

Georgina Guthrie

April 13, 2022

Design is all about problem-solving. Often, these are quite big problems with complex answers — so designers break the process down into different stages to make it more manageable. These stages generally focus on research, design, and testing/development.

Today, we’ll take a closer look at how designers can move between the first two stages to gather information and test their ideas before fully launching into the development phase.

With this back-and-forth approach, it’s possible to analyze and make informed decisions about which findings to take forward. Discovery research ultimately leads to a final product that meets users’ needs—  not just the designer’s assumptions .

What is discovery research?

Discovery research (also called generative, foundational, or exploratory research) is a process that helps designers understand user needs, behaviors, and motivations through different methods, such as interviews, surveys, and target market analysis.

Discovery research is related to product research but involves a broader analysis. Whereas the former deals with all kinds of research — for brands, innovations, products, and more — the latter is solely focused on the product.

How does discovery research help with design?

Discovery research helps designers understand user needs, behaviors, and motivations, which form the basis of key design decisions.

Conducting this early-stage analysis also ensures that designs are based on real user needs rather than the designer’s assumptions. This approach leads to products that feel more like tailor-made creations rather than a broad approximation of what users want.

Finally, it saves time and money by revealing potential problems before they become bigger (and more expensive) issues further down the line.

What are the main goals of discovery research?

• Understanding your users better : the first and most important goal of discovery research is to help you get under the skin of your users. By understanding user goals and pain points, you can design solutions that address their needs.
• Improving design decisions : the second goal of discovery research is to improve design decisions. Instead of simply creating a product the design team thinks is cool, you can develop a product roadmap based on relevant data.
• Save time and money : testing before leaping right into development means you can spot potential problems and work through them, investing time and resources wisely.
• Creating a shared vision : discovery research can create a shared vision for a project among the design team. Because the research provides a common understanding of user needs, design teams can more easily agree on what to prioritize.

What are the benefits of using both qualitative and quantitative research methods?

Qualitative research is based on open-ended questions and provides insights into people’s attitudes, opinions, and feelings. Typically, this research involves interviews, focus groups, or surveys. Quantitative research, on the other hand, uses closed-ended questions and focuses on hard data, including:

• Performance analytics : websites and apps contain a wealth of numerical data. Google Analytics can show you everything from the number of page views to time spent on a page.
• Target market analysis : demographic research looks at characteristics such as the age, gender, and location of your target market. It’s often collected through surveys and distributed via email.

The benefits of using qualitative and quantitative research methods are twofold.

Qualitative research is often viewed as ‘creative’ and exploratory, while quantitative research is considered more ‘scientific’ and focused. Both types of research reveal something different, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

Qualitative research is good for exploring new ideas and getting an in-depth understanding of user needs. However, it’s often less reliable than quantitative research and deals with smaller samples, which may not represent the wider population.

Quantitative research is good for obtaining hard data and measuring people’s feelings about specific topics or activities. The downside is it’s less nuanced than qualitative research and may provide a less multifaceted analysis of user needs.

Using both qualitative and quantitative research methods, designers can get a complete picture of user needs.

When should you run a discovery session?

Use a discovery session any time the design team needs to move forward in a design and/or when relying on guesswork or intuition is impossible or risky.

Here are some common real-life examples:

• New market opportunities : companies that want to enter a new market must understand user needs and identify opportunities to fill current gaps.
• Rebranding : before rebranding , organizations have to understand how users feel about the current brand, what they want from it, and what issues to avoid moving forward.
• Redesign : when redesigning a product, design teams need to understand what users like and dislike about the current product and how they can innovate in the future .
• Mergers : to ease the transition, merging companies need to understand how employees from both companies feel about the merger and design processes to meet their needs .
• New organizational strategy : when implementing a new strategy, organizations must consider how employees view the upcoming changes and communicate plans and expectations .
• Organizational problems : companies that are struggling with organizational problems must investigate the root cause of the problem to develop effective solutions.

How do you run a discovery research session?

The exact route you take will depend on your goals. Sometimes, you’ll want to use a mixture of methods (the more, the better). At other times, you’ll focus on one or two options. Here are some common discovery research methods.

User interviews

Interviews are a common qualitative research method. They involve sitting down with users and asking open-ended questions about their needs, behaviors, and motivations. Interviews are very useful for understanding user feelings and attitudes in their own words prior to any design work taking place.

Focus groups

Focus groups are a type of qualitative research that involves a group of people discussing a topic together. Not only does this help you find out how people feel about a design, but it also draws out deeper responses as participants build on each other’s comments.

Tips for running a focus group

• The ideal group size is around eight to ten people. To get started, you’ll need to define the topic of discussion and prepare some questions to spark conversation.
• When conducting the focus group, it’s important to moderate the discussion effectively. Keep things on track, offer up discussion points if the momentum slows, and ensure everyone can speak.
• Once the focus group is over, analyze the data you collected. Write a transcript of the discussion, or use diagramming software to help with the analysis.

Surveys are a quantitative research method that asks closed-ended questions about user needs. However, including a few open-ended questions is common to provide context for a user’s responses to closed-ended questions. This type of research is useful for obtaining hard data.

Decide what type of questions you want to ask: closed-ended or open-ended. Closed-ended questions have a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, or participants can choose a specific response from a list of options. Open-ended questions can have a longer, freeform answer subject to various conditions.

Ethnographic user research

Ethnographic user research is a form of qualitative research in which you observe users in their natural environment. This type of research is useful for understanding user behaviors and needs.

Tips for conducting ethnographic user research

• Define the scope of your research, and decide on the observation methods prior to session kick-off.
• Choose one to three research methods that suit your resources and goals. Interviews, surveys, and user testing are all valid forms of observation.
• Once you collect user data, collate and analyze it. At this point, you’ll have dense information. Turning the raw data into business intelligence that makes sense for the wider team and stakeholders is important.

Diary studies

Diary studies are a qualitative research method asking participants to write down their thoughts and feelings about a given topic. Journaling gives a glimpse of a user’s thought processes, so you can better understand how they feel about a design or prototype.

Here are some questions you can ask to get the user thinking:

• What were your thoughts and feelings about the design/prototype?
• How easy was it to use the product?
• What did you like or dislike about it?
• Why did you feel that way?
• What problems did you encounter?
• How well did the design meet your needs?

Diary logging techniques you need to know

• Interval-contingent protocol : ask participants to record their thoughts and feelings at fixed intervals (e.g., every hour or every day). Use this type of diary study to understand how people feel over time.
• Event-contingent protocol : ask participants to record their thoughts and feelings after specific events, such as using a feature or carrying out a particular process. Choose this format to study how people react to specific events.
• Saturation sampling : ask participants to keep a diary until they have nothing new to say about the topic. Similar to interval methods, this diary study helps evaluate user feelings over time.
• Choice sampling : give participants a list of topics to choose from and ask them to record their thoughts and feelings about their chosen topic. This study helps you understand how people feel about different design aspects and what issues are most important to them.

Tips for conducting diary studies

• Make sure you store the data securely if the diaries contain personal or sensitive information.
• Define the study’s goals and the logic you’ll use to evaluate the data you receive. Diary studies can be time-consuming for both participants and researchers. As such, ensuring the study is well-designed and the results are worth the effort is crucial.
• Provide participants with an incentive to take part. Diary studies require time and energy, so it’s a good idea to compensate participants with a gift voucher or free product.

Sort cards are a type of qualitative research that involves asking participants to sort a set of cards into groups. The goal is to observe how people think about a particular topic and design intuitive products.

Where else can you find data?

Chatting with users is important, but don’t neglect the wealth of data already at your fingertips. Web analytics, social media, and customer support data can give you insights into how your users think and feel.

• Business data : if you’re working on an internal tool, you probably have access to a lot of data about how it’s used. This information is invaluable for understanding the steps users take to perform an action or solve a problem.
• Web analytics data : this data tells you how people are using your website or app. Use it to understand what pages are being visited, how much time users spend on a page, and what elements they interact with.
• Social media data : social media can be a great way to understand how people feel about your brand. Use social listening tools to track mentions of your brand and see what people are saying.
• Customer support data : if you offer customer support, the data can show you what problems people encounter when using your product.
• Competitor resources : it’s worth looking at competitor resources, such as websites, blog posts, and whitepapers, for ideas on improving or differentiating your product.

Analyzing and assessing discovery research

So, you’ve got all this data. Now what?

It’s time to assess it. Evaluating your discovery research involves looking at the numbers and determining how it fits together. You can write a report or create a diagram or graph to help you visualize it all.

When assessing qualitative data, it is important to consider the following factors:

• The quality and reliability of the data : bad data could send you in the wrong direction. If in doubt, chuck it out.
• The quantity of the data : too much could be a burden when turning it into reports. Too little might give you unreliable results.
• The context of the data : make sure you apply data to the relevant area, but at the same time, don’t look at it in isolation.
• The meaning of the data : only include responses that directly answer your questions. Don’t include irrelevant or unclear data.
• The validity of the data : data goes out of date. Disregard anything that’s no longer relevant.

Final thoughts

Data visualization features, like those in Cacoo , can help turn all those numbers into insight that makes sense.

Resources like persona templates , user story maps , and other research and design diagrams can help you see patterns and trends in the data and communicate your findings to others — including stakeholders who might not have a technical background.

Remember, your top priority is to make the data as understandable as possible for everyone on the team — whatever their background. After all, data is only useful if it’s used and understood!

[Flowchart] Keep busy and fulfilled with a new hobby this fall

A detailed guide to the product design process

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Learn with Nulab to bring your best ideas to life

28 UX Research Deliverables

If you haven’t guessed by now, I love making lists.

And as a maximizer, I’m always looking for new ways to grow as a researcher and strategist—whether it’s new research methods or techniques, reasons to invest in UX , or ways to communicate my research findings.

Are you looking for ways to deliver research insights more effectively to stakeholders or the design team? Do you find report writing to be too slow or too redundant? Or do you need a deliverable that the entire design team can collaborate on together?

Here are 28 54 UX research deliverables to consider incorporating into your workflow:

• Accessibility Audit
• Activity System Map
• Affinity Map
• Competitive Analysis
• Competitive Matrix
• Concept Map
• Concept or Sketch
• Content Audit
• Content Map
• Context Map
• Customer Journey Dashboard
• Customer Journey Map
• Customer Problem Map
• Customer Stories (e.g., photobook, posters)
• CX Ecosystem
• CX Scorecard
• Design Tenets
• Ecosystem Map
• Empathy Map
• Experience Audit
• Experience Map
• Fishbone Analysis
• Gap Analysis
• Heuristic Analysis / Expert Review
• Hypothesis Map
• Impact-Effort Map
• Journey Atlas
• Ladder Diagram
• Mental Model
• Process Map
• Research Repository
• Research Wall (or Room)
• Scenario Map
• Service Blueprint
• Social Media Persona
• Stakeholder Map
• Story Map & User Stories
• Strategy Blueprint
• SWOT Analysis
• Task Analysis Grid
• Touchpoint Map
• Usability Study Log
• User Personas
• User Scenarios

See also: 8 Ways to Share User Research Findings & Customer Insights

Related Articles

• Discovering Hidden Insights with Kano Analysis: A Case Study
• ESAT & CSAT: A Survey Alignment Love Story
• UX Research Toolbox: Anatomy of a Compelling Narrative for Your UX Research Reports
• Data Overload? How to Manage the Flow of CX Insights Effectively
• Bias-Free UX Research: Innovative Approaches to Mitigating Bias in the Research Process

Author: Kristine Remer

Kristine Remer is a CX insights leader, UX researcher, and strategist in Minneapolis. She helps organizations drive significant business outcomes by finding and solving customer problems. She never misses the Minnesota State Fair and loves dark chocolate mochas, kayaking, escape rooms, and planning elaborate treasure hunts for her children. View all posts by Kristine Remer

The 10 UX Deliverables Top Designers Use

Regardless of the environment, UX professionals need a set of deliverables to help facilitate communication, document work and provide artifacts. Here are 10 of the most common UX deliverables.

By Miklos Philips

Miklos is a design leader, author, and speaker with more than 18 years of experience in the design field.

PREVIOUSLY AT

Listen to the audio version of this article

The work of a UX designer happens in many different environments—from lean startups and Agile environments where teams work with little documentation, to consulting engagements for third-parties, or large enterprises and government entities with strict documentation requirements. Regardless of the nature of the engagement or environment (and the one thing that ties it all together), is a need for UX professionals to effectively communicate their design ideas, research findings and the context of projects to a range of audiences.

During the UX design process designers will produce a wide variety of “artifacts” and project deliverables as part of their UX design methodology. These may take many forms: product design deliverables help UX designers communicate with various stakeholders and teams, document work, and provide artifacts for meetings and ideation sessions. They also help create the “single source of truth” — guides and specifications for implementation and reference.

Here are the 10 UX deliverables a UX designer typically produces during an engagement. (This UX design deliverables list is by no means comprehensive and may potentially be longer depending on the nature of the engagement.)

1. Business Goals and Technical Specifications

This is a fundamental step. For a UX professional it all starts with an understanding of the product vision, i.e. the reason for the product’s existence from a business perspective. Written in simple terms, the statement should include the problem being addressed, the proposed solution, and a general description of the target market. It should also describe the delivery platforms and touch lightly upon the technical means by which the product will be delivered.

It need not be longer than one page, but should describe the core of the What, Why and How. Here is an example: “The Fantastic App Co. has identified a gap in gift-giving applications on mobile platforms for the Millennial market (iOS and Android). A large number of Millennials have trouble remembering special dates, identifying the best gift, then finding and buying those gifts. Our solution is designed to alleviate that stress. Employing anticipatory design and the latest AI technologies the App delivers a useful and almost magical user experience.”

2. Competitive Analysis Report

For anyone starting to design a new product, it’s vital to make sure it’s a good market fit. Crucially, as part of a UX strategy the product must also have a compelling competitive advantage and a UX that is superior to others in the marketplace.

Competitive analysis means: “Identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to those of your own product or service .”

One of a UX designer’s initial tasks is to research what products or services the target customers are currently using to solve the problem. Is there an equivalent product or service out there? Is there an alternative solution people are using that’s good enough but not perfect? A Band-Aid—a vitamin but not a painkiller? How can better UX make a difference?

A competitive analysis report is a UX research deliverable that identifies the top five competitors and examines what it is they are doing right, as well as what they’re doing wrong. This step will help set a design direction where clear goals are defined and the elements to be focused on spelled out.

3. Personas and UX Research Reports

UX designers need to make sure stakeholders understand the needs of the product’s customers. Creating personas to encapsulate and communicate user behavior patterns and conducting user research are tried-and-true ways to do it. Personas are representative of a product’s typical users—by incorporating their goals, needs and interests, they help the team working on the project develop empathy towards the user.

User research is also an integral component in the UX design process. It involves a range of techniques used to extract behavioral patterns, add context and give insight into the design process. There are many types of user research tools and techniques available—it’s all about choosing the right “lens” for the right situation.

Before embarking on user research, it’s important to take the time to develop a research plan . This is a document that will help communicate research aims and methods as well as get buy-in from stakeholders. It is also a great tool that can be used to help keep everyone on track during the research project.

At the conclusion of the user research phase a report translating the research findings into actionable items is generated. The UX team is then set to design the product around those items.

4. Sitemap and Information Architecture

A sitemap is a visually organized model of all the components and information contained in a digital product. It represents the organization of an App or site’s content. Along with wireframes, they are one of the most fundamental of UX deliverables and rarely skipped in a UX design process.

Sitemaps help lay out the information architecture—the art and science of organizing and labeling a product’s components—to support navigation, findability and usability; they also help you define the taxonomy and user interface.

Sitemaps are handy references to have as a resource and adjust as the product evolves based on iterative prototyping and user testing. During the design workflow, a numbering system is often employed to keep everyone on the same page when discussing the product’s content.

5. Experience Maps, User Journeys and User Flows

An experience map is a visual representation that illustrates a user’s flow within a product or service—their goals, needs, time spent, thoughts, feelings, reactions, anxieties, expectations—i.e. the overall experience throughout their interaction with a product. It’s typically laid out on a linear timeline showing touchpoints between the user and the product.

User journeys and user flows are more about a series of steps a user takes, and demonstrate the way users currently interact—or could potentially interact with a product. They demonstrate behavior, functionality and the key tasks a user might perform. By examining and understanding the “flow” of various tasks a user might undertake, you can start to think about what sort of content and functionalities to include in the user interface, and what kind of UI the user will need to accomplish them.

Much of UX is about solving problems for users. When crafting a user journey, the designer needs to understand the persona, the user’s goals, motivations, current pain points and the main tasks they want to achieve.

What’s the difference between a user journey and user flow ? Think of a user flow as the user working on one task or goal via your product or service, e.g. booking a car on Lyft; a user journey illustrates the bigger picture. A user journey expands beyond tasks, and looks at how a particular customer interaction fits into a larger context.

6. UX Wireframes

A staple of UX design methodology, wireframes are two-dimensional “blueprint” illustrations of a design framework and interface elements, and show what goes where. Primarily a layout tool, they help define the information architecture, the spacing of content, functionalities, the interaction design and intended user behaviors.

Wireframes are bread-and-butter for designers and one of the most common UX design deliverables on a project. “Show me your wireframes” is probably heard more often than anything else during a UX designer ’s interview.

A major phase in the UX design process, wireframing is a cost-effective way to explore ideas and generate innovative concepts that address customer goals. They’re great tools to quickly ideate beyond sketching, and they come in many different flavors—from low-fidelity (no styling, black and white boxes, greeked text) to high-fidelity (fully styled, color, very detailed).

Sometimes referred to as “wires” in workplace shorthand, wireframes can save a ton of time and money down the line because they’re so pliable and quick to produce. They serve as a centerpiece around which to have conversations with stakeholders and team members while figuring out the design direction.

Wireframes are foundational, and as such are instrumental in helping to define a design structurally, and how a user flow works through an App or site under different use case scenarios. There are some interesting twists on wireframes such as “wireframe maps” discussed in a previous piece here on the Toptal Design Blog and “ wireflows :” a UX deliverable for workflows and Apps from the NNGroup .

7. Interactive Prototypes

Another dominant deliverable during a user-centered design process , interactive prototypes breathe life into a product. Rudimentary prototypes save a ton of time and money—they demonstrate how things will work in an actual use case scenario, and allow for rapid design iteration and user testing. They also help a designer communicate their design effectively at different stages of the UX design process.

Prototyping can happen at any point in the journey of discovery through iteration. From paper prototypes to highly polished designs , an internal review of a product prototype lets everyone on the team see how things will work when an actual user interacts with it.

Static sketches and wireframes don’t bring a product to life in a way that an interactive prototype can. Almost magically, it is seen and felt how the product will behave—how everything connects. Different designs and features can be explored; new ideas may emerge. Trouble spots can be spotted and awkward interactions uncovered.

Interactive prototypes help user testing immensely. Rather than walking people through static pages, potential users can test a product that feels 100% real, provide ideas and give valuable feedback.

These days, prototyping tools for designers come in all shapes and sizes. Here are 21 interactive prototyping tools for UX design.

8. Visual Design

Visual design is the “final coat of paint” on the product. However, it’s not just that: visual design can greatly affect the UX of a product, and therefore must be approached very carefully. Hopefully, a lot of interaction design and usability heuristics were worked out during prior steps of the UX design process so that the designers can focus on the visuals. It’s one last opportunity to take the product to the next level.

Visual design is the last step before handoff to developers and the phase where a styleguide and final specs are crafted. It’s not just about “making things pretty,” but an opportunity to define, or implement a brand color-scheme and affect usability with the layout, contrast, and visual hierarchy.

9. Styleguide and Specifications for Developers

The final step in the UX design workflow is to put together specifications and a styleguide for developers. Styleguides are a must if a product’s design is to succeed in the long run.

A styleguide is for making sure designs are implemented consistently across branding, visual styles, colors, fonts and typography. It’s also used for design patterns, language, rules (such as keyboard shortcuts and data display rules), and specifying UI behaviors (such as error handling).

Some styleguides and specifications are put together manually, and others are generated automatically. Putting together a styleguide manually is a tedious process and can often take six months, so any automation tool is a welcome timesaver.

The automated ways vary depending on the tool used. They are a more agile, incremental way to handoff designs vs. styleguides crafted over a long time. They can be thought of more like “bibles of style” on the shelf that everyone on the team can refer to.

If you work in Sketch there are god-sends such as Zeplin . Zeplin is a collaboration tool for UI designers and front end developers. It goes beyond the design workflow and helps teams with the design hand-off.

In addition, a design styleguide can be generated in a few seconds from Sketch with the Craft plug-in , or measurements and CSS grabbed from the design by generating an HTML file with the Marketch plug-in as outlined in this article .

Here are 50 great styleguide examples . Also one from the BBC , and one from IBM , both of which host their guides online which makes it easy for everyone to view it.

10. Usability Testing and Usage Analytics Reports

A UX designer’s job is never done. Even after a product’s release there are opportunities to gather feedback, collect data on usage, refine, release and start the cycle all over again.

A usability test will tell you whether your target users can use your product. It helps identify the problems people are having with a specific UI, and reveals difficult-to-complete tasks and confusing language.

Usability testing reports are typically delivered during the prototyping phase, but it’s not unusual to test existing products with users to see where there may be room for improvement.

Understanding data gathered during usability testing—collecting, sorting and the generation of reports, is becoming an increasingly common task among UX practitioners—in fact, it’s becoming a critical UX skill. Here’s a usability testing report template .

After the product is released into the wild another set of data gathering—a quantitative method—will tell the design team how the product performs with users on a mass scale.

There are countless tools and ways to capture user behavior and analyze it. From eye-tracking to click-tracking and heatmaps (which show clicks, taps, and scrolling behavior) to UI element tagging which tracks the digital footprint of every user across mobile and web devices.

Analytics reports show which features customers use, how much time they spend on your mobile App or site, trends over time—and they aggregate results across geographies, accounts, users, and custom segments. They provide full visibility into how features are being used and by whom.

Analytics companies usually automatically generate customized reports on demand. These reports are very useful and can provide surprising insights into your product’s usage. That amazing feature you thought would win over all your customers may turn out to be hardly ever used. On the flipside, a small, insignificant function in the UI may prove to be getting a lot of use and you may decide it’s time to focus on expanding that particular functionality.

A UX designer’s mission is to empower companies to make products and services based on a deep understanding of human behaviors, goals, and motivations. The UX deliverables checklist above includes some of the most common outputs produced by UX designers as they craft great experiences as part of “design thinking” and a user-centered design process.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• UX Myths – Prototyping, User Testing, and UX Deliverables
• The Ultimate UX Guide for Designers and Organizations
• Think S.M.A.R.T. When Defining Business Goals for Your Next UX Project
• The True ROI of UX: Convincing the Executive Suite
• The Value of User Research
• Product Design

Miklos Philips

London, United Kingdom

Member since May 20, 2016

About the author

World-class articles, delivered weekly.

Subscription implies consent to our privacy policy

Toptal Designers

• Adobe Creative Suite Experts
• Agile Designers
• AI Designers
• Art Direction Experts
• Augmented Reality Designers
• Axure Experts
• Brand Designers
• Creative Directors
• Dashboard Designers
• Digital Product Designers
• E-commerce Website Designers
• Full-Stack Designers
• Information Architecture Experts
• Interactive Designers
• Mobile App Designers
• Mockup Designers
• Presentation Designers
• Prototype Designers
• SaaS Designers
• Sketch Experts
• Squarespace Designers
• User Flow Designers
• User Research Designers
• Virtual Reality Designers
• Visual Designers
• Wireframing Experts
• View More Freelance Designers

Join the Toptal ® community.

Create an account

Create a free IEA account to download our reports or subcribe to a paid service.

Oil Market Report - March 2024

About this report

The IEA Oil Market Report (OMR) is one of the world's most authoritative and timely sources of data, forecasts and analysis on the global oil market – including detailed statistics and commentary on oil supply, demand, inventories, prices and refining activity, as well as oil trade for IEA and selected non-IEA countries.

• Global oil demand is forecast to rise by a higher-than-expected 1.7 mb/d in 1Q24 on an improved outlook for the United States and increased bunkering. While 2024 growth has been revised up by 110 kb/d from last month’s Report, the pace of expansion is on track to slow from 2.3 mb/d in 2023 to 1.3 mb/d, as demand growth returns to its historical trend while efficiency gains and EVs reduce use.
• World oil production is projected to fall by 870 kb/d in 1Q24 vs 4Q23 due to heavy weather-related shut-ins and new curbs from the OPEC+ bloc. From the second quarter, non-OPEC+ is set to dominate gains after some OPEC+ members announced they would extend extra voluntary cuts to support market stability. Global supply for 2024 is forecast to increase 800 kb/d to 102.9 mb/d, including a downward adjustment to OPEC+ output.
• Refinery crude runs are forecast to rise from a February-low of 81.4 mb/d to a summer peak of 85.6 mb/d in August. For the year as a whole, throughputs are projected to increase by 1.2 mb/d to average 83.5 mb/d, driven by the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Refining margins improved through mid-February before receding, with the US Midcontinent and Gulf Coast as well as Europe leading the gains.
• Global observed oil inventories surged by 47.1 mb in February. Offshore stocks dominated gains as seaborne exports reached an all-time high and shipping disruptions through the Red Sea tied up significant volumes of oil on water while onshore inventories declined. Global stocks plunged by 48.1 mb in January, with OECD industry stocks at a 16-month low.
• ICE Brent futures rose by $2/bbl during February as ongoing Houthi shipping attacks in the Red Sea kept a firm bid under crude prices. With oil tankers taking the longer route around Africa more oil was kept on water, further tightening the Atlantic Basin market and sending crude’s forward price structure deeper into backwardation. At the time of writing, Brent was trading at $83/bbl.

Oil on water

Benchmark crude oil prices were range bound in early March, as the market had already priced in the announced extension of OPEC+ voluntary production cuts through 2Q24. North Sea Dated rose by $2.13/bbl to $84.66/bbl during February as continued tanker attacks in the Red Sea lengthened supply routes and global on-land oil inventories fell for a seventh consecutive month to reach their lowest level since at least 2016.

Global onshore oil stocks fell a further 38 mb last month, taking the draw down since July to 180 mb, according to preliminary data. Over the same period, oil on water surged. Trade dislocations from the rerouting of Russian barrels and more recently due to unrest in the Middle East, have boosted oil on water by 115 mb. In February alone, oil on water surged by 85 mb as repeated tanker attacks in the Red Sea diverted more cargoes around the Cape of Good Hope. At nearly 1.9 billion barrels as of end-February, oil on water hit its second highest level since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trade flow disruptions also boosted bunker fuel use. Longer shipping routes and faster vessel speeds saw Singapore bunkering reach all-time highs. That, along with surging US ethane demand for its petrochemical sector underpins a slight upward revision to our global oil demand expectations for this year by 110 kb/d compared with last month’s Report. World oil demand growth is now forecast at 1.3 mb/d in 2024, down sharply from last year’s 2.3 mb/d expansion.

The slowdown in growth, already apparent in recent data, means that oil consumption reverts towards its historical trend after several years of volatility from the post-pandemic rebound. A weaker economic outlook further tempers oil use, as do efficiency improvements and surging electric vehicle sales. Growth will continue to be heavily skewed towards non-OECD countries, even as China’s dominance gradually fades. The latter’s oil demand growth slows from 1.7 mb/d in 2023 to 620 kb/d in 2024, or from roughly three-quarters to half of the global total, under the gathering weight of a challenging economic environment and slower expansion in its petrochemical sector.

As in 2023, non-OPEC+ oil supply growth will eclipse the oil demand expansion by some margin. Led by the United States, non-OPEC+ production is forecast to rise by 1.6 mb/d in 2024 compared to 2.4 mb/d last year when global oil output climbed by 2 mb/d to 102 mb/d. Substantial gains will also come from Guyana, Brazil and Canada, all forecast to pump at record-highs this year. Together, the non-OPEC+ Americas quartet is set to add 1.3 mb/d of new oil production in 2024.

Iran, which last year ranked as the world’s second largest source of supply growth after the United States, is expected to increase production by a further 280 kb/d this year. Output policy for the remainder of the OPEC+ bloc will be revisited when ministers meet in Vienna on 1 June to review market conditions. In this Report, we are now holding OPEC+ voluntary cuts in place through 2024 – unwinding them only when such a move is confirmed by the producer alliance (see OPEC+ cuts extended). On that basis, our balance for the year shifts from a surplus to a slight deficit, but oil tanks may get some relief as the massive volumes of oil on water reach their final destination.

1. Includes extra voluntary curbs where announced. 2. Capacity levels can be reached within 90 days and sustained for an extended period. 3. Excludes shut in Iranian, Russian crude. 4. Angola left OPEC effective 1 Jan 2024. 5. Iran, Libya, Venezuela exempt from cuts. 6. Mexico excluded from OPEC+ compliance. 7. Bahrain, Brunei, Malaysia, Sudan and South Sudan.

Definitions of key terms used in the OMR, access the OMR Glossary here.

For more info on the methodology, download the PDF below.

• Download the methodology circle-arrow

Previous editions

Purchase licence

• 24 months (-10%)
• Unlimited users
• Multiple locations

Need help with your purchase ? Visit our help centre

See if you qualify for a discount. Learn more

Request price

Cite report

IEA (2024), Oil Market Report - March 2024 , IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-march-2024

Share this report

• Share on Twitter Twitter
• Share on Facebook Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn LinkedIn
• Share on Email Email
• Share on Print Print

Subscription successful

Thank you for subscribing. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of any IEA newsletter.

Skip navigation

• Log in to UX Certification

World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Calculators and quizzes: user expectations.

March 22, 2024 2024-03-22

• Email article
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Twitter

Calculators and quizzes accept unique information from users and generate personalized outputs based on their circumstances.

In This Article:

Calculators and quizzes defined, users have low commitment to initial outputs, users don’t want to share contact information, more-experienced users are harder to impress, more detail should yield better results, people use calculator tools forward and backward.

Calculators are generally self-contained tools that allow users to manipulate inputs to explore resulting outputs. These tools are often embedded on one webpage and accept a limited number of inputs (2–7).

Quizzes generally accept more than just a few user inputs (5+) in a drawn-out format and generate personalized results. They often take the form of a wizard .

Both calculators and quizzes help inexperienced users make complex decisions. Because both types of tools serve the same general purposes, yet vary in their interface presentations, this article will refer to both as calculators. Our research shows that calculator outputs are not blindly accepted as truth: they are only part of users’ decision-making processes.

Users see calculator tools as a way to gather information and build a mental model about a problem space. When users discover a calculator tool that seems useful, they initially enter roughly estimated information. They try to determine the value of the tool by testing it out before spending the effort to make sure all information is precise. Users know initial outputs are somewhat inaccurate and thus have a low commitment to the results.

Users want to try calculators without having to commit to an organization. They don’t want to share contact information or register for an account when they’re casually assessing their options. They like the interaction to be anonymous because they are often uninformed and unsure in this exploratory phase, and don’t want companies bombarding them with messages just because they sought a little guidance.

People are particularly annoyed when they must submit contact information to get their results at the end of a calculator. They’ve invested time and expect immediate results. While this pattern is commonly used to bring users into the purchasing funnel, people often feel tricked and annoyed.

The more experience a user has in a problem space, the less likely they are to value the outputs of a calculator tool . Users quickly give up on them when outputs don’t align with their prior experience or well-founded expectations.

For example, one research participant entered his insurance information into an insurance checkup tool, which recommended that he get a health-savings account (HSA) and cancel his pet insurance. With skepticism, he commented:

“HSAs — I find annoying. I never understand them. [... And] I don't know about that. [Pet insurance has] definitely helped me quite a number of times.”

The more information users feed a tool, the more personalized they expect the outputs will be. This expectation matches users’ mental models for interacting with real-life specialists, such as doctors. The more details you can provide, the more accurate a diagnosis should theoretically be.

Calculator tools can fail in this area in two ways: not gathering enough details or not utilizing the provided details.

• Not gathering enough details: When a tool does not accept all the details users are ready to provide, people assume the tool can’t fully consider their circumstances. This is like a doctor prescribing medication before the patient finishes describing their symptoms.
• Not utilizing provided details: Tools that accept many details but only offer general information are considered equally useless because they don’t seem capable of personalization. For example, one participant answered 24 questions about himself in a career-path recommendation quiz, but the outputs were so broad that he wondered whether it had utilized the data he provided.

Conduct research using methods like surveys or interviews to discover what types of information users are ready to provide. Tools should ask for information that most users are ready to share. Work with subject-matter experts to determine how to best utilize these inputs to create legitimately personalized outputs.

Sometimes, users approach a calculator like they would approach a fortune teller: they enter what they know and wait to see what comes out. For example, a user looking for a mortgage might enter their down payment, their current credit score, and the total loan amount they can afford to see their monthly payment. Using the calculator in this “forward” manner seems to be how most such tools are designed to be used.

Sometimes, users approach calculators as if they were tuning a guitar: they decide on the output they want and iteratively change the inputs to get the desired result. For example, the same mortgage-seeker already knows what monthly payment they can afford (output), so they test different down payment amounts (input) until they achieve their desired monthly payment. Calculators should be built to facilitate this “backward” usage.

Users use calculators in both ways to learn about the relationship between the inputs and outputs. They might even enter fake inputs to explore the space — another reason they are not necessarily committed to the outputs they receive.

Users engage with calculators in a casual, exploratory way. They are not necessarily committed to the calculator outputs, nor do they want to commit to the organization to receive them. Allow users to engage with calculators on their own terms to build user trust in your content and offerings.

Related Courses

Persuasive and emotional design.

Create delightful experiences that touch, convince, or excite your audience

Interaction

Information Architecture

Organize and structure information to improve findability and discoverability

Related Topics

• Search Search
• Design Patterns

Learn More:

Error Messages 101

Tim Neusesser · 3 min

Transactional Notification 101

Feifei Liu · 4 min

STEEPLE: Building Contextual Knowledge

Therese Fessenden · 5 min

Related Articles:

Comparison Tables for Products, Services, and Features

Kate Moran and Taylor Dykes · 12 min

Personas Are Living Documents: Design Them to Evolve

Maddie Brown · 4 min

Five Questions for University UX Professionals

Tanner Kohler · 10 min

10 Usability Heuristics Applied to Complex Applications

Kate Kaplan · 12 min

Designing for Long Waits and Interruptions: Mitigating Breaks in Workflow in Complex Application Design

Kate Kaplan · 9 min

Polyhierarchies Improve Findability for Ambiguous IA Categories

Page Laubheimer · 5 min