User Research Types

What is it?

When talking about user research, it is obvious that the main character of these activities should be “users.” As researchers, our research goals usually focus on understanding users, such as their information needs or interaction behaviors. User research is valuable because it can tell us what problems exist in current services and products, or if there are any potential areas of opportunity that we can benefit from.

There are two general types of user research: qualitative research and quantitative research. We can obtain user subjective feedback or understand their own behavior through qualitative user research such as user interviews, usability testing, and diary study. For quantitative research, such as questionnaire surveys, website analytics, or card sorting, we can analyze the collected data to find potential patterns or verify our assumptions through those objective numbers.

Observation, as one of the most commonly used user research methods, is very helpful in understanding how people perform certain activities. Several observation methods are mentioned in last week’s readings, such as shadowing, contextual inquires, usability testing, etc. I think it is mainly classified according to the degree of interference, from going to the user’s environment to inviting them to the laboratory, from purely looking at people’s behaviors without letting them feel being observed to interviewing them with questions actively in the process. I think which observation method to use depends on the specific research goal. For example, if we want to understand what users think in an explicit way, we might ask them to think aloud when performing tasks. But if we are concerned that the user’s behavior will change because they know they are being observed, then silent observation would be more appropriate.

According to my understanding, ethnographic research is more inclined to observations that only include limited interference. For example, researchers go to fields where users usually perform certain tasks and record what they see. Then, we will make our own explanations based on observation notes or audio/videos recordings instead of asking for answers from the people we have observed. This is because people sometimes tell “lies,” no matter they are aware of it or not. So, in order to get the most honest feedback, we should look at what they actually do instead of just listening to what they said. Even if we have to interact with people, we should make this interference meaningful and limited. It’s very interesting to know about these, and I think that’s why ethnographic research is so important in the context of user experience.

Related posts:

Sometimes We need to live a life of 50 years to get experience and learnings but this is not necessary that someone needs a life of 50 years to get the expertise of 50 years. The same case happened…

Top 10 NFT Sales in 2021. In 2021, we witnessed the start of a revolution in the creative and financial industries. With NFTs getting a lot of attention on….

Let this blog guide you more about this high-tech, portable and multifunctional device. Watches have been there for decades in our world, but as humans evolved with time so did the watches. Here I am…