What is user research?

In this video, user researchers give their definitions of user research.

What is user research?

User research is a research specialism.

User researchers help teams to learn about users so that they can build products and services that meet user needs. User research is not just gathering feedback! It helps us to understand the wide variety of people, the context of their lives and circumstances, and their behaviours and motivations.

User research is also not:

• predicting the future
• pitching ideas or solutions
• gathering opinions
• testing the knowledge of users

When we do research, we are striving to understand what the problems are, not just what the solutions might be – and we never guess. Guessing or assuming things means that we are not working with real insights, and if we pass those guesses or assumptions on to the rest of the team, it is unlikely that they will build a product or service that actually solves a problem.

We do not simply ask users what they want or like, because users may:

• not be aware of their own needs or motivations
• tell you what they think you want to hear
• have needs that differ based on context
• not be able to predict how they would use a service

We learn about people by looking at the big picture, but we test the service by looking at the detail and the interaction between the service and the users. This provides evidence that informs designs.

Research methods

Throughout the product or service life cycle, or the phases of its development, user researchers focus to varying degrees on what users are doing, thinking and feeling. We use multiple research methods and approaches to study and analyse the behaviour, motivations and needs of users.

Research methods can be described as either qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative research tries to understand peoples’ thoughts, feelings and beliefs – things that we cannot necessarily measure – while quantitative research is about numbers, or numerical data.

Some examples of qualitative research methods are:

• interviews
• focus group discussion
• user observation
• diary studies
• usability testing

Some examples of quantitative research methods are:

• eye-tracking
• A/B testing
• analytics

There are some methods that can be considered both qualitative and quantitative, such as:

• surveys
• questionnaires

This depends on the types of questions being asked.

A quantitative survey would ask questions such as “On a scale of 1-10, how often do you use a digital service?” and a qualitative survey would ask questions such as “How do you feel about your experience?”

Different research methods will give different types of information. It is important to use a variety of research methods and know how to interpret the different types of data. We will learn more about different research methods and how to plan research in Week 3.

We conduct this research in a variety of ways:

• visiting people in their homes
• visiting people at work
• running ‘pop up’ sessions out in public
• sessions in our ‘lab’, which just means a dedicated user research space
• remote sessions using video call software

These are some of the places we do our research: on the left, the Government Digital Service lab observation room and a testing room on the right.

Task

Have you ever been involved in research? Think about different types of research you may have engaged in, perhaps through academia or your current role.

Share your thoughts and experiences with fellow learners in the comments below.