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Published on April 12, 2024

Best 30 UX Communities and Groups to Join

If you’re interested, take a look at our list of top communities! We’re sure you’ll find a great match!

Here’s a handy table of all the UX communities mentioned in the article:

Sharing your views, ideas, events, and job offers.

Education and career advancement for designers.

Inspiration, tips and advice from industry members.

UX Research

Share your ideas, discuss the latest trends in UX design and support one another.

Design and development of websites and applications.

Latest UX trends

Space for exchanging ideas, best practices, and issues specific to UX industry.

UX resources and feedback.

The hows and whys of user experience research.

18,000 UX pros who discuss insights and support one another.

Discuss the operations and operationalization of user research and research.

A community dedicated to interaction design.

Place where you can discuss new products, look for employment, or get feedback on what you’re working on.

This is an active community for all design professionals working in the creative fields

High-quality curated content every day for everyone interested in UX.

Discuss problems, ask questions, get help, find a job, share research methodologies.

Helping professionals from other industries switch to the UX field.

Networking fro UX designers and researchers.

stories about UX Design, finding inspiration and sharing your latest Dribble posts.

Talk, ask questions, share stories, and view/post job offers.

This is a place to exchange tips as well as to get feedback from people who share your interests.

This group provides a place for learning, sharing, and improvement for designers.

Ask questions, receive help, find employment, share research methodologies or do other things along those lines

A place for beginners to learn and professionals to share.

UX challenges, videos and blogposts and also a lot of funny memes.

UX resources like blogs and books, design challenges and job openings!

A community for sharing and discussing UX research.

UX/IA/ID design resources.

UX design and research.

If you want to learn more about UX Research, check out our step-by-step guides !

Top 8 UX communities to join on LinkedIn

1. user experience (ux) / user interface (ui) / interaction design (ixd) / ia / discussions /jobs.

The group is for everyone that would like to have an informative and interactive discussion on User Experience. You can consult your design ideas and get a feedback from fellow like-minded people. You will feel welcomed if you are involved in designing and developing applications, Interaction design, Information Architecture…

You should join the group, if you are interested in sharing your views, ideas, events, and job offers.

Link for the group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4496205/

2. Interaction Design Foundation

Group of Design Foundation (IDF) specializes in education and career advancement for designers. They created a group and anyone is welcomed to join. It is great online community if you are seeking a career advice.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2529386/

3. UXPA – User Experience Professionals Association International

User Experience Professionals Association International helps out people who research, design and evaluate the user experience of products and services. UXPA is proud to promote UX concepts and techniques through their annual international conference and you can find a lot of valuable resources in their Linkedin group.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/717/

4. UX / HCI Researchers

Description: The UX community dedicated to UXtweaks specialty – UX research but do not hesitate to join as it is for all kinds of UXers. It will help you to expand our network of people and your ideas. You can even find UX legends such as Jared Spool, Jakob Nielsen, or Don Norman in the group as members!

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/126114/

5. UX Designer

UX Designer group is a great place to share your ideas, discuss the latest trends in UX design, newest design tools and support one another. Members are encouraged to ask questions about anything related to User Experience, User Interface, Web Design, and more. So, don’t be afraid to ask away, even if you are just a UX design beginner.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1854192/

6. Web Design and Development, UX/UI

This is a professional group dedicated to the design and development of websites and applications. They have active design community, where you can share and discover articles and news about web design and development. This group appreciates inspirational and educational content.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3704356/

7. User experience (UX) design, Product Design, Service Design | UXThisWeek

This group was created to study, analyze, and exchange ideas about User Experience and User Experience design. Latest trends in experience design for AI, machine learning, and conversations to IoT. They invite you to learn, think, and contribute to help, coach, or volunteer to mentor group members in need. become part of professional network

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1875717/

8. Remote UX Research & User Testing

The goal of this group is to establish a community of UX professionals, providing a space for exchanging concepts, best practices, and industry-related concerns.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2682245/

7 UX Slack communities you need to be a part of

1. ux mastery.

UX Mastery is a UX community that encourages members to join discussions in organized channels.

Our favorite channels within the community we recommend to join:

#resources – for tips, tricks, and questions for UX-related tools and processes + UX articles shared by other members.

#research-methods – for getting advice on research and discussion

#feedback – for getting feedback and post your research projects

You can join by clicking this link.

2. Mixedmethods

Mixed Methods is a slack community interested in the hows and whys of user experience research – and they do it well.

Our pick for channels to be a part of:

#general – for general UX Research topics

#tools – to discuss and learn about tools used by UX professionals

You can get your invite here: https://www.mixed-methods.org/

3. Designer Hangout

Designer Hangout invites-only community of UX pros who discuss insights and support one another. You can request an invite over at https://designerhangout.co/request if you pass vetting, you will get a chance to learn from over 18,000 skilled designers and researchers.

Recommended channels:

#help_designcritique – need help with a design or an idea? You can collaborate and debate here

#resources_links – for sharing resources that have been helpful in your UX work and would be useful to fellow designers.

#topic_userresearch – discussions on methodologies, data analysis, and all things related to UXR.

If you are looking for another good source of information on user research try visiting our User Research Blog.

4. ResearchOps

Group of people from all around the world who’ve come together to discuss the operations and operationalization of user research and design research You can join the community by filling out this form https://researchops.community/ .

IxDA or Interaction Design Association is dedicated to the discipline of interaction design. Channels you should take a look at are:

#questions-and-answers – you guessed it – it is about Q&As 😀

#conferences – if you love UX conferences this is the place you should be at

Link to join the workspace: https://ixda.slack.com/

6. Designer Talk

Designer Talk is a forum where creatives can talk about concepts and recent developments in graphic and web design. A place to collaborate, talk about new products, look for work, or get input on what you’re working on. That’s what this community is all about.

Our recommendation for channels to participate in:

#showandtell – here people share their works, interesting materials, and more

#ux-talk – if you need help with UX field or just want to find interesting articles on a similar topic, this is where you need to be

Join the workspace using this link: https://designertalk.slack.com/

7. Practical UX

Practical UX – an open community of professional designers where UX knowledge is shared. This is an active community for all design professionals working in the creative fields of UX, UI, digital, web design, web development.

#recources – articles, books, videos and podcasts that are definitely worth your attention

#ux-advices – having trouble figuring out how to handle a project’s UX challenge? Then here is where will try to help you!

#jobs – work opportunities for designers and more

Best 9 UX Facebook groups you shouldn’t overlook

1. the ux school.

People can share ideas and work on projects together in this group while also receiving feedback on their work. Since this group’s founding, admins have come to understand that there is tremendous potential for the community to expand, for brilliant minds to unite and truly improve one another’s lives, and for thought-leaders, professionals, and beginners to share knowledge, define best practices, and better the world one good design at a time.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheUXSchool/

2. User Research Collective

This collective is created for user researchers wanting to discuss problems, ask questions, get help, find a job, share research methodologies, and bounce ideas around.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/uxrcollective/

3. UX Beginner: Design Community

Facebook group acting as a resource dedicated to helping professionals switch to the UX field. Members are welcomed to share personal experiences, UX career questions and insights, job postings, and helpful UX design resources .

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/uxbeginner/

4. User Experience Professionals Association – UXPA

The group supporting those who promote the advancement of the development of usable products. Members come from across a broad range of disciplines that create the user experience. You are welcomed to network in this community.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/404691612915081/

5. UX Design World

For stories about UX Design, finding inspiration and sharing your latest Dribble post to get some feedback.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/378553219697416

6. UX Researchers Association

This group is for UX Designers, Interaction Designers, or User Researchers. It is a place where those who primarily do research can get together and talk, ask questions, share stories, and view/post job offers.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/160753414130590/

7. Women in UX

This is a place to engage in conversation, exchange advice, information, best practices, and opportunities, as well as to get feedback from like-minded individuals. Enjoy!

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/womenux

8. UI/UX designers

This group is intended for designers and serves as a place for learning, sharing, networking, and improvement. One of the main concepts in this group is that you give more than you take.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/205756059526207

9. UX & UI DESIGNER COMMUNITY

This group is for designers who want to talk about contexts, ask questions, get assistance, locate employment, share research methodologies, exchange ideas, and other things along those lines.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/uxdesignercommunity

Top 3 UX communities to join on Discord

Initially being a platform for gamers, Discord is a great place for designers to connect, learn and exchange experiences in 2024! And luckily, it has some of the best UX communities out there:

1. GSIUXD – Get Started in UX Design

A place for beginners to learn and professionals to share, GSIUXD is a perfect place for you to start your UX journey. It’s a dedicated design hub for UXers to grow, learn and exchange ideas.

Link: https://discords.com/servers/800793576157610064

A UX community with useful UX challenges, videos and blogposts and also a lot of funny industry stuff like UX memes and popular UX-related tweets!

Link: https://discord.com/invite/56VYjvm

3. Design Squad

A server with more than 6,000 members, Design Squad would be a great addition to your list of UX communities. They post UX resources like blogs andbooks, design challenges and job openings!

Link: https://discord.com/invite/gjeETK58kN

Bonus: 3 Leading UX subreddits

For our fellow Redditors out there:

A community for sharing and discussing UX research: https://www.reddit.com/r/UXResearch/

UX/IA/ID design resource s: https://www.reddit.com/r/UserExperienceDesign/

User Experience: https://www.reddit.com/r/userexperience/

Did we leave out your favorite UX Community? Let us know at Contact Us or tag us on social media.

Editor’s note: t his post was originally published on March 18, 2021 and was updated on December 25, 2023 to stay relevant and comprehensive.

People also ask (FAQ)

A UX community is a group of people who share mutual interest in the fields of UX design and UX research. These communities help UX lovers stay informed about the latest UX trends and share their own expertise, as well as connect for collaborations and networking with other professionals. 

Being in a UX group or community has several benefits. Just to name a few:

• Having easy access to valuable resources and information 
• Receiving regular updates on the best UX research tools to use 
• Having collaboration opportunities 
• Building a vast professional network 
• Getting support and advice from fellow UX professionals

Tadeas Adamjak is Marketing Lead at UXtweak. His love for marketing research, working with data, and analytical mind, brought him to UXtweak where he puts these experiences into use. He has been with the company since its public launch and is in charge of ensuring customer satisfaction and getting the word out about UXtweak's cutting-edge products and services.  In addition to his marketing expertise, Tadeas is also an advocate for all things UX. He holds a Design Thinking certificate from a Google program and is currently pursuing his Master's degree in Marketing. 

UXtweak is buzzing with expert UX research, making thousands of products more user friendly every day

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Even if you don’t currently use Google products, you can still sign up for a chance to participate in our research. If one of our studies is a good fit for you, we’ll get in touch with details and next steps. Most participants will get a thank-you gift.

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UX Research

What is ux research.

UX (user experience) research is the systematic study of target users and their requirements, to add realistic contexts and insights to design processes. UX researchers adopt various methods to uncover problems and design opportunities. Doing so, they reveal valuable information which can be fed into the design process.

See why UX research is a critical part of the UX design process.

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UX Research is about Finding Insights to Guide Successful Designs

When you do UX research, you’ll be better able to give users the best solutions—because you can discover exactly what they need. You can apply UX research at any stage of the design process. UX researchers often begin with qualitative measures, to determine users’ motivations and needs . Later, they might use quantitative measures to test their results . To do UX research well, you must take a structured approach when you gather data from your users. It’s vital to use methods that 1) are right for the purpose of your research and 2) will give you the clearest information. Then, you can interpret your findings so you can build valuable insights into your design .

“I get very uncomfortable when someone makes a design decision without customer contact.” – Dan Ritzenthaler, Senior Product Designer at HubSpot

We can divide UX research into two subsets:

Qualitative research – Using methods such as interviews and ethnographic field studies, you work to get an in-depth understanding of why users do what they do (e.g., why they missed a call to action, why they feel how they do about a website). For example, you can do user interviews with a small number of users and ask open-ended questions to get personal insights into their exercise habits. Another aspect of qualitative research is usability testing , to monitor (e.g.) users’ stress responses. You should do qualitative research carefully. As it involves collecting non-numerical data (e.g., opinions, motivations), there’s a risk that your personal opinions will influence findings.

Quantitative research – Using more-structured methods (e.g., surveys, analytics), you gather measurable data about what users do and test assumptions you drew from qualitative research. For example, you can give users an online survey to answer questions about their exercise habits (e.g., “How many hours do you work out per week?”). With this data, you can discover patterns among a large user group. If you have a large enough sample of representative test users, you’ll have a more statistically reliable way of assessing the population of target users. Whatever the method, with careful research design you can gather objective data that’s unbiased by your presence, personality or assumptions. However, quantitative data alone can’t reveal deeper human insights.

We can additionally divide UX research into two approaches:

Attitudinal – you listen to what users say—e.g., in interviews.

Behavioral – you see what users do through observational studies.

When you use a mix of both quantitative and qualitative research as well as a mix of attitudinal and behavioral approaches, you can usually get the clearest view of a design problem.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Use UX Research Methods throughout Development

The Nielsen Norman Group—an industry-leading UX consulting organization—identifies appropriate UX research methods which you can use during a project’s four stages . Key methods are:

Discover – Determine what is relevant for users.

Contextual inquiries – Interview suitable users in their own environment to see how they perform the task/s in question.

Diary studies – Have users record their daily interactions with a design or log their performance of activities.

Explore – Examine how to address all users’ needs.

Card sorting – Write words and phrases on cards; then let participants organize them in the most meaningful way and label categories to ensure that your design is structured in a logical way.

Customer journey maps – Create user journeys to expose potential pitfalls and crucial moments.

Test – Evaluate your designs.

Usability testing – Ensure your design is easy to use.

Accessibility evaluations – Test your design to ensure it’s accessible to everyone.

Listen – Put issues in perspective, find any new problems and notice trends.

Surveys/Questionnaires – Use these to track how users’ feel about your product.

Analytics – Collect analytics/metrics to chart (e.g.) website traffic and build reports.

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Whichever UX research method you choose, you need to consider the pros and cons of the different techniques . For instance, card sorting is cheap and easy, but you may find it time-consuming when it comes to analysis. Also, it might not give you in-depth contextual meaning. Another constraint is your available resources , which will dictate when, how much and which type of UX research you can do. So, decide carefully on the most relevant method/s for your research . Moreover, involve stakeholders from your organization early on . They can reveal valuable UX insights and help keep your research in line with business goals. Remember, a design team values UX research as a way to validate its assumptions about users in the field , slash the cost of the best deliverables and keep products in high demand —ahead of competitors’.

User research methods have different pros and cons,and vary from observations of users in context to controlled experiments in lab settings.

Learn More about UX Research

For a thorough grasp of UX research, take our course here: User Research – Methods and Best Practices

Read an extensive range of UX research considerations, discussed in Smashing Magazine: A Comprehensive Guide To UX Research

See the Nielsen Norman Group’s list of UX research tips: UX Research Cheat Sheet

Here’s a handy, example-rich catalog of UX research tools: 43 UX research tools for optimizing your product

Questions related to UX Research

UX research is a good career for those who enjoy working with a team and have strong communication skills. As a researcher, you play a crucial role in helping your team understand users and deliver valuable and delightful experiences. You will find a UX research career appealing if you enjoy scientific and creative pursuits. 

Start exploring this career option; see the User Researcher Learning Path .

Studies suggest that companies are also willing to pay well for research roles. The average salary for a UX researcher ranges from $92,000 to $146,000 per year.

In smaller companies, user research may be one of the responsibilities of a generalist UX designer. How much can your salary vary based on your region? Find out in UI & UX Designer Salaries: How Much Can I Earn .

Research is one part of the overall UX design process. UX research helps inform the design strategy and decisions made at every step of the design process. In smaller teams, a generalist designer may end up conducting research.

A UX researcher aims to understand users and their needs. A UX designer seeks to create a product that meets those needs.

A UX researcher gathers information. A UX designer uses that information to create a user-friendly and visually appealing product.

Learn more about the relationship between UX research and UX design in the course:

User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide

If we consider a very broad definition of UX, then all user research is UX research.

However, in practice, there is a subtle difference between user research and UX research. While both involve understanding people, user research can involve users in any kind of research question, and some questions may not be that directly connected to user experience.

For example, you might do user research relating to a customer’s experience in relation to pricing, delivery or the experience across multiple channels.

Common UX research methods are usability testing, A/B testing, surveys, card sorting, user interviews, usage analytics and ethnographic research. Each method has its pros and cons and is useful in different scenarios. Hence, you must select the appropriate research method for the research question and target audience. Learn more about these methods in 7 Great, Tried and Tested UX Research Techniques .

Get started with user research. Download the User Research template bundle .

For a deep dive into usability testing—the most common research method, take the course Conducting Usability Testing .

Having a degree in a related field can give you an advantage. However, you don’t need a specific degree to become a UX researcher. A combination of relevant education, practical experience, and continuous learning can help you pursue a career in UX research. Many UX researchers come from diverse educational backgrounds, including psychology, statistics, human-computer interaction, information systems, design and anthropology.

Some employers may prefer candidates with at least a bachelor’s degree. However, it does not have to be in a UX-related field. There are relatively fewer degrees that focus solely on user research.

Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX

User Research – Methods and Best Practices

Every research project will vary. However, there are some common steps in conducting research, no matter which method or tool you decide to use: 

Define the research question

Select the appropriate research method

Recruit participants

Conduct the research

Analyze the data

Present the findings

You can choose from various UX research tools . Your choice depends on your research question, how you're researching, the size of your organization, and your project. For instance:

Survey tools such as Typeform and Google Forms.

Card sorting tools such as Maze and UXtweak.

Heatmap tools such as HotJar and CrazyEgg

Usability testing (through first-click testing and tree-testing) tools such as Optimal Workshop and Loop 11

Diagramming applications such as Miro and Whimsical to analyze qualitative data through affinity diagramming.

Spreadsheet tools such as Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel for quantitative data analysis

Interface design and prototyping tools like Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch and Marvel to conduct usability testing.

Presentation tools such as Keynote, Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Many of these tools offer additional features you can leverage for multiple purposes. To understand how you can make the most of these tools, we recommend these courses:

There are relatively fewer degrees that focus solely on user research.

While there are no universal research case study formats, here’s one suggested outline: 

An overview of the project: Include the problem statement, goals and objectives.

The research methods and methodology: For example, surveys, interviews, or usability testing).

Research findings

The design process: How the research findings led to design decisions.

Impact of design decisions on users and the business: Include metrics such as conversion and error rates to demonstrate the impact.

Optionally, include notes on what you learned and how you can improve the process in the future.

Learn how to showcase your portfolio to wow your future employer/client in the How to Create a UX Portfolio course.

While AI can help automate tasks and help UX researchers, it will not completely replace them. AI lacks the creativity and empathy that human designers bring to the table.

Human researchers are better at understanding the nuances of human behavior and emotions. They can also think outside the box and develop creative solutions that AI cannot. So, AI can help researchers be more efficient and effective through data analysis, smart suggestions and automation. But it cannot replace them.

Watch AI-Powered UX Design: How to Elevate Your UX Career to learn how you can work with AI.

Agile teams often struggle to incorporate user research in their workflows due to the time pressure of short sprints. However, that doesn’t mean agile teams can’t conduct research. Instead of seeing research as one big project, teams can break it into bite-sized chunks. Researchers regularly conduct research and share their findings in every sprint.

Researchers can involve engineers and other stakeholders in decision-making to give everyone the context they need to make better decisions. When engineers participate in the decision-making process, they can ensure that the design will be technically feasible. There will also be lower chances of errors when the team actually builds the feature. Here’s more on how to make research a team effort .

For more on bite-sized research, see this Master Class: Continuous Product Discovery: The What and Why

For more practical tips and methods to work in an agile environment, take our Agile Methods for UX Design course.

User research is very important in designing products people will want and use. It helps us avoid designing based on what we think instead of what users actually want.

UX research helps designers understand their users’ needs, behaviors, attitudes and how they interact with a product or service. Research helps identify usability problems, gather feedback on design concepts, and validate design decisions. This ultimately benefits businesses by improving the product, brand reputation and loyalty. A good user experience provides a competitive edge and reduces the risk of product failure.

Learn more about the importance of user research in the design process in these courses:

Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide

Literature on UX Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on UX Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about UX Research

Take a deep dive into UX Research with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love , if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design .

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’ .

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world . You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

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The Complete Guide to UX Research Methods

UX research provides invaluable insight into product users and what they need and value. Not only will research reduce the risk of a miscalculated guess, it will uncover new opportunities for innovation.

By Miklos Philips

Miklos is a UX designer, product design strategist, author, and speaker with more than 18 years of experience in the design field.

PREVIOUSLY AT

“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

User experience (UX) design is the process of designing products that are useful, easy to use, and a pleasure to engage. It’s about enhancing the entire experience people have while interacting with a product and making sure they find value, satisfaction, and delight. If a mountain peak represents that goal, employing various types of UX research is the path UX designers use to get to the top of the mountain.

User experience research is one of the most misunderstood yet critical steps in UX design. Sometimes treated as an afterthought or an unaffordable luxury, UX research, and user testing should inform every design decision.

Every product, service, or user interface designers create in the safety and comfort of their workplaces has to survive and prosper in the real world. Countless people will engage our creations in an unpredictable environment over which designers have no control. UX research is the key to grounding ideas in reality and improving the odds of success, but research can be a scary word. It may sound like money we don’t have, time we can’t spare, and expertise we have to seek.

In order to do UX research effectively—to get a clear picture of what users think and why they do what they do—e.g., to “walk a mile in the user’s shoes” as a favorite UX maxim goes, it is essential that user experience designers and product teams conduct user research often and regularly. Contingent upon time, resources, and budget, the deeper they can dive the better.

What Is UX Research?

There is a long, comprehensive list of UX design research methods employed by user researchers , but at its center is the user and how they think and behave —their needs and motivations. Typically, UX research does this through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.

There are two main types of user research: quantitative (statistics: can be calculated and computed; focuses on numbers and mathematical calculations) and qualitative (insights: concerned with descriptions, which can be observed but cannot be computed).

Quantitative research is primarily exploratory research and is used to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into usable statistics. Some common data collection methods include various forms of surveys – online surveys , paper surveys , mobile surveys and kiosk surveys , longitudinal studies, website interceptors, online polls, and systematic observations.

This user research method may also include analytics, such as Google Analytics .

Google Analytics is part of a suite of interconnected tools that help interpret data on your site’s visitors including Data Studio , a powerful data-visualization tool, and Google Optimize, for running and analyzing dynamic A/B testing.

Quantitative data from analytics platforms should ideally be balanced with qualitative insights gathered from other UX testing methods , such as focus groups or usability testing. The analytical data will show patterns that may be useful for deciding what assumptions to test further.

Qualitative user research is a direct assessment of behavior based on observation. It’s about understanding people’s beliefs and practices on their terms. It can involve several different methods including contextual observation, ethnographic studies, interviews, field studies, and moderated usability tests.

Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group feels that in the case of UX research, it is better to emphasize insights (qualitative research) and that although quant has some advantages, qualitative research breaks down complicated information so it’s easy to understand, and overall delivers better results more cost effectively—in other words, it is much cheaper to find and fix problems during the design phase before you start to build. Often the most important information is not quantifiable, and he goes on to suggest that “quantitative studies are often too narrow to be useful and are sometimes directly misleading.”

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. William Bruce Cameron

Design research is not typical of traditional science with ethnography being its closest equivalent—effective usability is contextual and depends on a broad understanding of human behavior if it is going to work.

Nevertheless, the types of user research you can or should perform will depend on the type of site, system or app you are developing, your timeline, and your environment.

Top UX Research Methods and When to Use Them

Here are some examples of the types of user research performed at each phase of a project.

Card Sorting : Allows users to group and sort a site’s information into a logical structure that will typically drive navigation and the site’s information architecture. This helps ensure that the site structure matches the way users think.

Contextual Interviews : Enables the observation of users in their natural environment, giving you a better understanding of the way users work.

First Click Testing : A testing method focused on navigation, which can be performed on a functioning website, a prototype, or a wireframe.

Focus Groups : Moderated discussion with a group of users, allowing insight into user attitudes, ideas, and desires.

Heuristic Evaluation/Expert Review : A group of usability experts evaluating a website against a list of established guidelines .

Interviews : One-on-one discussions with users show how a particular user works. They enable you to get detailed information about a user’s attitudes, desires, and experiences.

Parallel Design : A design methodology that involves several designers pursuing the same effort simultaneously but independently, with the intention to combine the best aspects of each for the ultimate solution.

Personas : The creation of a representative user based on available data and user interviews. Though the personal details of the persona may be fictional, the information used to create the user type is not.

Prototyping : Allows the design team to explore ideas before implementing them by creating a mock-up of the site. A prototype can range from a paper mock-up to interactive HTML pages.

Surveys : A series of questions asked to multiple users of your website that help you learn about the people who visit your site.

System Usability Scale (SUS) : SUS is a technology-independent ten-item scale for subjective evaluation of the usability.

Task Analysis : Involves learning about user goals, including what users want to do on your website, and helps you understand the tasks that users will perform on your site.

Usability Testing : Identifies user frustrations and problems with a site through one-on-one sessions where a “real-life” user performs tasks on the site being studied.

Use Cases : Provide a description of how users use a particular feature of your website. They provide a detailed look at how users interact with the site, including the steps users take to accomplish each task.

You can do user research at all stages or whatever stage you are in currently. However, the Nielsen Norman Group advises that most of it be done during the earlier phases when it will have the biggest impact. They also suggest it’s a good idea to save some of your budget for additional research that may become necessary (or helpful) later in the project.

Here is a diagram listing recommended options that can be done as a project moves through the design stages. The process will vary, and may only include a few things on the list during each phase. The most frequently used methods are shown in bold.

Reasons for Doing UX Research

Here are three great reasons for doing user research :

To create a product that is truly relevant to users

• If you don’t have a clear understanding of your users and their mental models, 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.

To create a product that is easy and pleasurable to use

• A favorite quote from Steve Jobs: “ If the user is having a problem, it’s our problem .” If your user experience is not optimal, chances are that people will move on to another product.

To have the return on investment (ROI) of user experience design validated and be able to show:

• An improvement in performance and credibility
• Increased exposure and sales—growth in customer base
• A reduced burden on resources—more efficient work processes

Aside from the reasons mentioned above, doing user research gives insight into which features to prioritize, and in general, helps develop clarity around a project.

What Results Can I Expect from UX Research?

In the words of Mike Kuniaysky, user research is “ the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience. ”

User research has been essential to the success of behemoths like USAA and Amazon ; Joe Gebbia, CEO of Airbnb is an enthusiastic proponent, testifying that its implementation helped turn things around for the company when it was floundering as an early startup.

Some of the results generated through UX research confirm that improving the usability of a site or app will:

• Increase conversion rates
• Increase sign-ups
• Increase NPS (net promoter score)
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Increase purchase rates
• Boost loyalty to the brand
• Reduce customer service calls

Additionally, and aside from benefiting the overall user experience, the integration of UX research into the development process can:

• Minimize development time
• Reduce production costs
• Uncover valuable insights about your audience
• Give an in-depth view into users’ mental models, pain points, and goals

User research is at the core of every exceptional user experience. As the name suggests, UX is subjective—the experience that a person goes through while using a product. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the needs and goals of potential users, the context, and their tasks which are unique for each product. By selecting appropriate UX research methods and applying them rigorously, designers can shape a product’s design and can come up with products that serve both customers and businesses more effectively.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• How to Conduct Effective UX Research: A Guide
• The Value of User Research
• UX Research Methods and the Path to User Empathy
• Design Talks: Research in Action with UX Researcher Caitria O'Neill
• Swipe Right: 3 Ways to Boost Safety in Dating App Design
• How to Avoid 5 Types of Cognitive Bias in User Research

Understanding the basics

How do you do user research in ux.

UX research includes two main types: quantitative (statistical data) and qualitative (insights that can be observed but not computed), done through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. The UX research methods used depend on the type of site, system, or app being developed.

What are UX methods?

There is a long list of methods employed by user research, but at its center is the user and how they think, behave—their needs and motivations. Typically, UX research does this through observation techniques, task analysis, and other UX methodologies.

What is the best research methodology for user experience design?

The type of UX methodology depends on the type of site, system or app being developed, its timeline, and environment. There are 2 main types: quantitative (statistics) and qualitative (insights).

What does a UX researcher do?

A user researcher removes the need for false assumptions and guesswork by using observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies to understand a user’s motivation, behavior, and needs.

Why is UX research important?

UX research will help create a product that is relevant to users and is easy and pleasurable to use while boosting a product’s ROI. Aside from these reasons, user research gives insight into which features to prioritize, and in general, helps develop clarity around a project.

• UserResearch

Miklos Philips

London, United Kingdom

Member since May 20, 2016

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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.

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What are Focus Groups in User Experience Research?

A focus group is a qualitative research method that aims to gather quick user insights from a variety of people in a short period of time.

Focus groups are designed to gain an understanding of customer opinions and perceptions of new concepts or ideas. They are typically used during the design and early stages of the research phase to gain consensus on customer perception. Focus groups are also useful after the product has been implemented since it helps to gather user insights on a functioning product.

The goal of a focus group is to get many participants in a room to gather as many different ideas and perspectives as possible. However, having too many people can limit the ability to gather feedback from all participants. After all, there isn’t a linear relationship between the number of participants and the number of insights. We found that the ideal group size for a focus group is 8 – 10 people.

It is also recommended to facilitate three or four different focus groups to ensure a good mix of perspectives and ideas.

Preparing for your Focus Group

Focus groups require the researcher to create a list of questions, or a discussion guide, to structure the group conversation. However, feel free to let conversations evolve as they will without researcher intervention. The session should generally last from 60 to 90 minutes.

Once you have the objectives for your focus group, you should start recruiting for it. If you’d like to learn more about recruiting participants for high-quality user insights, read this post.

Also, you should select a location that is convenient for your participants. If you don’t have space in your office, you can find conference rooms on sites like Breather .

Once you’ve done that, send a follow-up invitation with the proposed agenda, topics for discussion, and location details. It’s a good idea to send over the topic ahead of time so participants can opt out, especially if it’s a sensitive topic.  

Conducting the Focus Group

While conducting the focus group, ask permission to record the session so you can reference it in the future. It will be helpful to refer to the recording in the synthesis phase in case there are any gaps in your notes. 

If co-workers want to join, have them sit on the outskirts of the room, quietly taking notes. As a facilitator, it’s difficult to take notes while conducting the focus group so leave room for breaks so your co-workers can ask questions . 

During the session, encourage equal participation among the group. If a few people dominate the conversation, call on others to participate. Also, consider a round-table approach in which you go around the table, giving each person a chance to answer each question.

Lastly, avoid abrupt topic changes. Even though you created a discussion guide, allow the conversation to naturally unfold. This is how you will gain the most valuable user insights.

Following the Session

After the focus group, review any notes and recordings. Write down any points of group consensus, surprises or unexpected topics and review with your co-workers.

Advantages of Conducting a Focus Group 

As a socially-oriented research method, focus groups capture real-life data in a social setting. The research team will be able to see how participants speak about a particular topic. Typically, points of consensus will be highlighted during the focus group.

Focus groups generate quick results. Unlike moderated sessions, where you’ll spend hours and hours gathering user insights from 6-8 individual participants, focus groups yield similar insights in an hour or two. Focus groups produce a large amount of data on a topic in a short period of time.  

Group conversations often bring out aspects of a topic or reveal information about a subject that may not have been anticipated by the researcher or emerged from individual interviews.

Lastly, it provides access to comparisons that participants make between personal experiences. This can be very valuable and provide access to consensus and diversity of experiences on a topic.

Limitations of Conducting a Focus Group 

Focus groups are a poor method for evaluating interface usability. Instead, they should be used to evaluate concepts, ideas, and brand perception. In order to conduct a usability study to test prototypes and websites, opt for a moderated or unmoderated session. You’ll be able to easily conduct both types of studies with a comprehensive user testing software.

Another downside of conducting a focus group is that group dynamics can be swayed with strong opinions. Participants may not want to disagree with the larger group but they would be more willing to share their opinion in a one-on-one setting.

You must be diligent with the participants you select since they must be comfortable interacting openly. If they are shy and don’t speak their mind, you won’t be able to surface those valuable user insights that you’re looking for.  

As with most facilitated research, moderators can inadvertently influence the data, since they have the ability to sway comments and take the conversation in a different direction.

Lastly, groups can be difficult to pull together since you have to coordinate and schedule participants so that they are in the same room at the same time.  

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6 User Research Methods & When To Use Them

Learn more about 6 common user research methods and how they can be used to strengthen your UX design process.

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User research is the process of understanding user needs and desires through observation and feedback. 

It's one of the most important aspects of UX design, and it's used to inform all aspects of the design process, from initial sketches to the final product. Through user research, we can answer important questions about our design, such as Who are our users? and What do they need?

In this blog post, we will discuss six common user research methods, what they are, when to use them, and some common challenges associated with each one.

Let’s get started …

What is User Research?

Why is user research integral to the ux process, 6 common user research methods, how to get started with user research in ux design projects, key takeaways.

User research is a process of gathering data about users in order to design better products that meet their needs . 

It's used in every part of the design process, from the initial market research and concepting stages, through the final interface design testing and iteration stages.

The goal: to gather data that will allow you to make informed decisions as you create design solutions.

Term Check: User Research vs. UX Research

Depending on what you read, you might come across the terms user research , UX research , or simply design research —all used interchangeably. 

While they all tend to refer to the process of collecting user-centric data, there is some distinction that can be applied:

The term user research is often used when you want to learn more about the target audience for a product or service; who they are, how they think, what their goals are, etc.

UX research , on the other hand, tends to be used when you’re conducting research that focuses on how users interact with a product or service. 

In this article, we’ll be looking at user research holistically, whether specifically talking about the users themselves, or learning more about how they interact with and experience your design work.

User research is an integral part of the design process: it ensures you have enough data and insights to make informed decisions about the design work you produce, reducing the risk of making assumptions and creating something no one truly wants.

Successful UX design requires a deep understanding of the people who will be using your product and how they interact with it. No matter how experienced you are as a designer, there is no way to validate your assumptions about design solutions without data. And the only way to acquire this understanding is by collecting data from the users themselves.

There are a variety of user research methods, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Here are 6 common methodologies that are easy to incorporate into your UX design process.

1. User Interviews

Interviews are a type of user research method in which the researcher talks with participants to collect data. This method is used to gather insights about people's attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences. Interviews are a great way to gather in-depth, qualitative data from users. 

Interviews are best conducted in a live conversation, whether that takes place in person, on a video call, or even on the phone. They can be structured or unstructured, depending on what best fits your research needs:

• Structured interviews follow a set list of questions
• Unstructured interviews are intended for more open-ended conversation

Challenges:

When deciding whether to use interviews as a user research method, it is important to consider the goals of the research, the target audience, and the availability of resources. Interviews are extremely time-consuming, both for the interviewer and the interviewee. However, if the goal of the research is to observe behavior in a natural setting, or if the target audience is not available to participate in interviews, then another user research method may be more appropriate.

Surveys are a user research method in which participants are asked to answer a series of questions, usually about a specific topic. Surveys are well suited for collecting data that can be quantified, but they are not as well suited for collecting qualitative data, since answers are often nuanced and lack appropriate context.

Surveys are best used when …

Since surveys can be easily distributed to a large number of people, they’re often a good choice for gathering information from people who might not be able—or willing—to participate in other types of user research (such as usability testing). 

Since surveys rely on self-reported data, it’s important to avoid phrases or words that might influence the users’ answers. Furthermore, this type of user research often provides data without context, since you aren’t able to follow up and understand some of the nuances of the responses.

3. Focus Groups

Focus groups are a type of user research method in which a group of people are brought together to discuss a product, service, or experience. Focus groups provide an opportunity for users to discuss their experiences and opinions with each other in a guided setting. When done correctly, focus groups can provide valuable insights that can help shape both product design and marketing strategies.

Focus groups are best used when … 

Focus groups can help uncover user needs and perspectives that may not be apparent through individual interviews or surveys.

Tips to make it work:

To get the most out of a focus group, it is important to carefully select participants that are representative of the target audience, as well as those who represent various accessibility needs, which might otherwise be overlooked or receive less consideration. The moderator should also be skilled in leading discussions and facilitating group dynamics to avoid participants from influencing each other.

4. A/B Testing

A/B testing is a user research method in which two versions of a design are created, then tested against each other to determine which is more effective. 

These versions can be identical except for one small change, or they can be completely different. Once the two versions have been created, they are then assigned to users at random. The results of the test are then analyzed to see which version was more successful. 

A/B testing is best used when …

You can incorporate A/B testing at any stage of the design process, but you might find you get the most helpful insights when you’re in a state of refinement, or are at a crossroads and need some data to help you decide which route to take. 

Once you have your design variations ready to test, it’s up to the developers (or an A/B testing software program) to make the test live to users. It’s important to let the test run long enough so that any statistical significance is steady and repeatable. (If the test does not provide statistically significant results, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and try out a different variation.)

5. Card Sorting

Card sorting is a user research method that can be used to help understand how people think about the items in a given category. Card sorting involves providing users with a set of cards, each of which contains an item from the category, and asking them to sort the cards into groups. The groups can be based on any criteria that the users choose, and the sorted cards can then be analyzed to identify patterns in the way that the users think about the items. Card sorting can be used with both small and large sets of items, making it a versatile tool for user research.

Card sorting is best used when …

You are looking for insight into categorical questions like how to structure the information architecture of a website.

For example, if you were designing a website for a library, you might use card sorting to understand how users would expect the website's content to be organized.

Like the other research methods mentioned so far, a successful card sorting exercise requires a significant amount of thought and setup ahead of time. You might use an open sorting session , where the users create their own categories, if you want insight into the grouping logic of your users. In a closed sorting session , the categories are already defined, but it’s up to the participants to decide where to file each card. 

6. Tree Test

Tree testing is a user research method that helps evaluate the findability and usability of website content. It is often used as a follow-up to card sorting, or when there are large amounts of website content, multiple website navigation structures, or changes to an existing website.

To conduct a tree test, participants are asked to find specific items on a website, starting from the home page. They are not told what the navigation options are, but are given hints if they get stuck. This helps researchers understand how users find and interact with the website content.

Tree testing is best used when ...

This method is most effective when combined with other user research methods, such as interviews, surveys, and focus groups. This is because it’s really a way to finesse the user’s experience at the end of the design process, rather than a method of collecting the preliminary data that’s needed to arrive at this point.

Tree testing can be a challenging method to conduct, as it requires specific instructions and data collection methods for each test. In addition, participants may not use the same navigation paths that you intended, making it difficult to analyze the results. To account for this, it’s important to have a large enough sample size to be able to differentiate between outliers and general trends.

User research is a critical part of any project or product development process. It helps you to understand the needs and expectations of your target users, and ensures that your final product meets their requirements. 

There are many different ways to conduct user research, but the most important thing is to start early and to continually iterate throughout the development process.

For this, you’ll need to make sure that you have enough resources to incorporate the research successfully, which includes:

• A budget that accounts for the various expenses incurred during the research process, whether that’s subscribing to a user research tool or compensating participants for their time.
• An awareness of your own personal biases, and how they might affect the data you collect and the interpretation of results.
• Time for research and analysis , since you might need to adjust the research method, or number of participants, that you were initially planning on including.
• Buy-in from stakeholders , since the results might be jarring and contradict some of the assumptions that the project was built on.

Finally, it is important to be aware of your own personal biases. Despite these challenges, user research is an essential tool for designers, as it provides insights into how people interact with products and what their needs and wants are. 

• User research is essential for designing products that meet the needs of your target audience.
• By understanding your users, you can design better products that meet user needs and improve the overall user experience.
• Getting started with user research can be daunting, but there are a few common methods that are easy to learn and incorporate into your design process.
• By being aware of the challenges involved in conducting user research, you can create a research plan that minimizes potential problems and maximizes the chances of obtaining valuable insights.
• Once you have collected your data, it is important to analyze and interpret it so that you can use it to improve your product or design process. 
• User research can be challenging, but by following best practices and being prepared for common challenges, you can conduct successful user research studies that will help you create better products.

To learn more about establishing a UX design practice rooted in research and user-centered data, check out UX Academy Foundations , an introductory course that teaches design fundamentals with practical, hands-on projects and 1:1 mentorship with a professional designer.

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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.

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User & Design Research

Focus groups.

A Focus group refers to a group of 10 or fewer individuals who gather in a room to discuss a product, service, concept or merely an idea. A focus group is a qualitative research method to find out different attitudes, responses about a subject. The Focus group can either react or discuss a series of survey questions or are given statements on which they share opinions.

Quick details: Focus Groups

Structure: Structured, Semi-structured

Preparation: Questions/ Topics, Participant recruitment

Deliverables: Recordings, Transcripts, Documentation

More about Focus groups

A focus group may also be given a product or service to try and then elicit reactions, feelings and general attitude towards that product or service in a group.

Focus groups are usually conducted by or on behalf of a business or organization, for market research. An experienced and skilled design research company who specializes in focus groups, can prove to be extremely valuable in planning, conducting, recruiting and evaluating data collected from focus group sessions and further translating them into insights for the business or organization to use.

Focus groups are traditionally carried out face-to-face, but online focus groups through web chat and forums are becoming increasingly popular. They are also more cost effective for organizations. 

Focus groups are most helpful in situations where an immediate response can be used to improve a product, service offering, a campaign or even a simple concept.

Advantages of Focus groups

1. firsthand customer interaction.

Businesses can interact with their customers firsthand through focus groups. Working face-to-face with real customers and not an imaginary character can reveal deeper insights into the opinion as well as the behavior of their customers.

2. Deep Insights

An observant researcher can interpret the participant’s mood from their body language as well as tone of voice.

3. Time and Cost effective

Interviewing large groups of people together is more time and cost effective than interviewing people individually. Focus groups are quite useful in quick data collection from the group.

4. Simulated Customer Experience

In order to test a product, idea or service, customer experience can be simulated within a focus group and feedback can be collected on that experience for improvement even before the new product, service or concept is launched in the market. Of course, some elements must be controlled during the simulation but this approach can lead to data that can help tweak the offering .

5. Adaptive Conversation

The facilitator can steer the conversation or discussion on the idea under considered in the desired direction .

6. Variety of thoughts

Depending on the diversity of your focus group, the thoughts or opinions could be just as diverse .

Disadvantages of Focus groups

1. very situation specific.

Unlike most other design research methods, focus groups are applicable in all cases .

2. Not in-depth

Compared to in-depth interviews, focus groups do not allow the facilitator to dig deeper with every participant in the limited time allotted for the focused discussion.

3. Peer pressure

A few participants of a focus group may not express their opinions openly, get influenced by the opinions of other participants or sometimes not express themselves at all in a focus group discussion.

4. Relatively costly

Compared to surveys, focus group discussions are more expensive to execute as they also involve paying a fee to the participants of the focus group .

Think Design's recommendation

Focus groups is a very effective method when you need to get opinions of respondents in a group. Usually, users’ opinions about a product, service or a brand are influenced by several people and in real life, users do discuss these among peers. Focus group is a way of capturing those dynamics and is usually used for validating something.

Focus groups as a technique has recently been criticized due to an inherent issue: that generally, one of the participants is much more dominating than the others and tends to influence the entire group. In such a case, the outcome may be representative of such participant and not the entire group. However, we do believe that focus group is still one of the most widely used research methods and continue to be so. It does need an experienced moderator so that any challenges while conducting it are mitigated.

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Related methods.

• Card Sorting
• Concurrent Probing
• Contextual Inquiry
• Dyads & Triads
• Extreme User Interviews
• Fly On The Wall
• In-depth Interviews
• Personal Inventory
• Retrospective Probing
• Unfocus Group
• User Testing/ Validation
• Word Concept Association

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The Office of Data Science Strategy is pleased to announce the Advancing Health Research through Ethical, Multimodal AI Initiative Research Opportunity Announcement (ROA) is now live! We invite applications from eligible organizations to apply.

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The Advancing Health Research through Ethical, Multimodal AI Initiative aims to develop ethically focused and data-driven multimodal AI approaches to more closely model, interpret, and predict complex biological, behavioural, and health systems and enhance our understanding of health and the ability to detect and treat human diseases. Administered from the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS), the program will establish a portfolio of innovative projects that address systems level biomedical challenges using collaborative and participatory approaches for multimodal AI that will elucidate unique opportunities, risks, and challenges.

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Ai ux-design tools are not ready for primetime: status update.

April 12, 2024 2024-04-12

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AI tools won’t be replacing UX designers any time soon. Currently available LLM-based tools are not shortcutting steps in the design process just yet.

In This Article:

Designers use ai, just not for design, existing ai tools for ux design are lacking, examples of ai tools for ux design, advice for ux designers using ai.

There’s so much marketing hype around AI that it’s hard to know what tools and strategies can help UX right now.

To find specific, useful ways in which practitioners integrate AI into their work, we conducted in-depth interviews in early 2024 with UX practitioners (researchers, designers, and managers).

We asked our participants to describe and show us how they currently use AI in their work. We focused on the uses of generative AI and of other tools branded as AI for the study. Our study participants were early adopters, were big proponents of AI, and had been using a variety of AI tools in their work for a while.

Among the practitioners we spoke with, UX designers were most limited in their use of AI in their work. While many AI-based design products exist, we did not identify any design-specific AI tools in active use by UX designers — or any that our participants would recommend to others.

UX designers actively engaged with text-based AI tools such as ChatGPT for brainstorming and ideation tasks, but we found zero design-specific AI tools in serious use by the professional UX designers we spoke with .

AI tools are capable of filling skill gaps, allowing practitioners to continue their work without needing to engage with a specialized team member or stakeholder. For example, a UX designer may turn to a text-based AI tool to generate UX copy for a prototype instead of reaching out to a copywriter and waiting for a response.

AI tools are also helpful as a brainstorming partner, providing suggestions for feature names, research approaches, or anything else that doesn’t require absolute precision or trust. We found that UX designers turn to AI for many nondesign tasks: writing emails, structuring communication, organizing and breaking down difficult tasks into manageable pieces.

We combined our findings from interviews with UX designers with our own evaluations of current AI-based UX-design tools. Our evaluation agreed with the impressions of the UX practitioners we interviewed: existing AI tools that are advertised for design are lacking, and the vast majority are not ready to be used in design workflows.

The UX designers we spoke with said they were not actively using design-specific AI tools (such as Figma Plugins). Our expert review of popular plugins and AI tools (examples included below) also found that they didn’t add much value to the design process.

Issues around these new tools often became magnified when deployed across medium-to-large scale organizations. One participant was particularly disappointed by the lack of customer support and guidance for use when he attempted to set up his agency in Midjourney. He also worried about ethical and legal risk if his team used AI-generated content in designs, due to potential copyright issues.

“There are folks over the past few decades have generated content that these tools are piggybacking on. Is it right to use that without attribution without licensing and royalty fees? We're thinking about the ethical use of it.”

Right now, AI tools, especially in the context of UX design, are a solution in search of a problem. There are many problems and points of friction that cause UX designers to be inefficient and unproductive in their work, but working to develop solutions to those problems wouldn’t necessarily lead you to AI.

AI developers hope to insert AI into the design process, applying it to existing design challenges and inefficiencies. But, for a tool to be useful enough to integrate into a workflow consistently, the interaction with that tool must be consistent.

Unfortunately, AI-based tools are not deterministic at this point. For example, a single ChatGPT 4 prompt for an example of front-end design featuring Google’s Material Design components resulted in three drastically different designs. While this variety in output is valuable for ideation, it isn’t so helpful for the end-to-end, replicable AI-powered design solutions that some products promise.

It remains to be seen whether AI’s opaque and unreliable nature is an inherent characteristic of the technology or could be overcome with future products. Current AI chatbots based on large language models are probabilistic, relying on a statistical dice roll to determine the sequence of words that make up the response to a prompt.

The current state of AI tools, text-based or otherwise, presents an inconsistent, unreliable, and low-value attempt to solve existing design problems. As prompt engineering, community knowledge, and implementation of AI tools progresses, we may see an improvement in the control and precision that these tools allow, potentially crossing the threshold in reliability and trustworthiness for professional workflows.

In our assessment of various AI-based tools for design, we found that most produced basic results that don't add much value to the design process in their current states.

Below we discuss three such tools. These were frequently mentioned by our study participants or in design communities.

Wireframe Designer: A Figma Plugin

AI-based wireframing tools often generated generic layouts that weren’t helpful or creative even with very specific prompts.

The free version of the Figma plugin Wireframe Designer by Chenmu Wu generates low-fidelity wireframes when the design needs and context are met. To test the limits of this tool, we generated screens using a variety of prompts varying in length and detail.

We noted that, even when ample contextual information was provided about design needs and target users, the plugin generated generic, seemingly templatized outputs.

Even when we tried a variety of prompts corresponding to different contexts and business needs, the generated outputs were fairly similar, with the main difference being the placeholder text pulled from the prompt. The Wireframe Designer plugin also didn’t offer a straightforward method for generating several variations from a single prompt, making it harder to get a variety of ideas.

Uizard: An AI-Assisted Design Tool

Uizard is an AI-assisted design tool that integrates AI wireframing, image generation, theme generation, and UI-copy assistance.

Unlike the Wireframe Designer plugin, Uizard requires text prompts to be 300 characters or less. While still basic in its output, Uizard’s screen generator offered more variety and options in comparison to the Wireframe Designer Figma plugin.

When using Uizard’s Autodesigner , the generated screens aligned better with our prompts than those created by the Wireframe Designer. However, the AI-based outputs still varied significantly in quality. Even though Uizard seemed more promising as an AI-assisted prototyping-and-design application, its interface was clunkier than that of more-popular design tools like Figma.

UX Pilot: AI-Driven Toolkit

UX Pilot is a subscription-based, AI-driven toolkit designed to help designers create color schemes, wireframes, and questions for user and stakeholder interviews, as well as plan and analyze workshops.

WHile this toolkit shows some promise for aiding in UX research, it is less helpful for design-specific tasks. For instance, its Color & Gradient AI Figma plugin generated color schemes that didn’t work well together for interface design.

This plugin was good for ideating color schemes quickly, but it did require that the designer understand some color theory when narrowing down color choices.

While our study did not yield specific tool recommendations for designers, it did generate plenty of good advice for UX designers trying to navigate emerging AI tools.

Familiarize yourself with the potential benefits of AI for ideation, brainstorming, and copywriting tasks. Artificial-intelligence tools are currently most effective with text-related tasks and, with effective prompts, can serve as beneficial partners in ideation and brainstorming exercises. UX writing and copywriting are also strong opportunities for AI to streamline work.

Lean on existing methods for design tasks. Current AI offerings cannot meaningfully enhance those visual and design-heavy workflows. Currently, the work necessary to get a high-quality result from an AI design tool is too time-consuming to justify its use. Stick to tried and true methods for visual design, wireframing, and prototyping.

Do not use AI to generate user data, user-research findings, or user personas. Using AI to generate artificial research data is unethical, deceitful, and potentially harmful to a final product and your professional reputation.

Don’t panic about missing the boat on AI. Developers and companies are still figuring out whether AI can meaningfully improve the experience of being a UX designer, and there aren’t any “killer apps” right now. Take time to play and tinker with AI tools to stay current, but don’t expect them to return much value at the moment.

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