Introduction to UX Research at Scale

About UX Research at Scale

Weeks 6 to 9 are about understanding user needs across large populations, conducting usability experiments with large numbers of people, and the practice of UX research with larger teams.

The field of UX research is now experiencing a significant evolution. The growth of new technologies and measurement systems enables researchers to understand what people are thinking, feeling, and doing across cultures, geographies, and populations. This means that it is now possible to conduct an experiment with thousands of people in days – or maybe even hours. You can test prototypes with someone in their living room thousands of miles away. You can track the paths of thousands of people across entire years. All of this information can be used to make choices about how to create products or experiences that people use millions of times a day, around the world.

At the same time, more organizations are understanding that awareness of UX research and design is no longer enough – everyone must be user- or customer-oriented in order to align business processes and experiences to make interactions more seamless and intuitive. However, the tension between scale and resources sometimes means that this is a difficult balance to strike. Figuring out what the organization needs to know- and more importantly, how much information it can use – is critical to success. Doing research that is not actionable because there is no one to take action is wasteful.

Some organizations remain behind the curve with regard to the resources they are using to understand the user experience or to take action on what they do learn. Even in this case, there are best practices that UX designers and researchers can leverage to create templates and learn about user needs and experiences that adapt well to smaller-scale organizations or experiences.

With all of this access to data, it becomes even more important to create solid research goals and questions; even though you have the data, it means nothing if you do not have a solid plan or specific need for answers.

You do not have to be a huge organization with millions of users to practice UX research at scale. This module focuses on ideas and strategies that are scalable across organizational levels of maturity and numbers of users.