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In many companies, decisions are driven by guesses, hunches and assumptions. Sometimes research activities are dismissed because decisions are already made and approved by senior stakeholders. And sometimes researchers are perceived either as disruptors or blockers of big visionary ideas.
Yet no business can be successful without successful customers. So while big ambitious goals and ideas are worth exploring, they must root in user’s needs — and uncovering them is the primary task of UX research.
In this newsletter, we dive into all the fine details of how to get going with just that. With plenty of useful pointers, guides, resources and templates to get started and boost UX research.
On Thursday, Dec 5, we’ll also run Meets Product Design, a friendly online get-together with sessions on scaling UX research, product design and better UX. Get a free seat!
Ah, you can also still bundle up and save on 3 or more Smashing Books or Online Workshops — just add 3 products to the cart, and get a friendly pricing right away!
Happy reading, everyone!
— Vitaly
1. A Simpler Approach To UX Research
You don’t need a perfect setup with fancy tools and processes to conduct user research. Often, a simpler system can be the more efficient option to gain valuable insights and ensure your team knows what users need. Ed Orozco explains what such a simpler approach to strategic UX research can look like.
Relying on email, Google Meet, Google Calendar, Notion, and Slack, Ed’s approach is not only simple but also easy to teach and maintain. He recommends booking regular check-ins with customers, writing down your notes in a simple Notion database, and sharing the recurring themes via Slack and product discussions to keep team members updated.
By using the tools everyone is already familiar with, you can keep the organization effort low and invest your time and energy in the things that really matter: Cultivating a relationship with your customers to learn about their needs and current experience with your product. (cm)
2. User Research Needs Expertise
The idea that anyone can do user research has become quite common in the last few years, particularly with the rise of AI and tools that democratize the research process. Dr Lesley Crane argues that this is a bad idea and that specialized skills and experience are needed to do user research well. Assuming everyone can do user research, on the other hand, can lead to unreliable results and, in effect, bad decisions.
To illustrate the decision process that user researchers should go when planning and implementing research — and the hard skills involved — Lesley created the Research Onion. With each layer building upon the previous one, it helps maintain research precision and discipline through each step of the study.
Depending on your level of research expertise, it can be pretty difficult to fully make sense of the Research Onion. That’s why you might also want to check out the post that the Helio team posted on Linkedin, which explains the key ideas of the Research Onion in more detail. (cm)
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3. Field Guide To UX Research
You’re entirely new to user research? Or maybe you want to brush up on a couple of topics? Then the User Experience Research Field Guide is for you.
Created by the team at User Interviews, the field guide takes you from zero to UX research pro in ten modules. It covers everything from planning UX research to conducting sessions to analyzing and reporting your findings.
Over the course of the field guide, you’ll dive deeper into the various research methods, as well as the foundational knowledge and research skills you’ll need to make your user research efforts successful. A fantastic resource to get you familiar with the complete user research process. (cm)
4. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences
That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.
With online workshops, we aim to give you the same experience and access to experts as in an in-person workshop from wherever you are.
As always, here’s a quick overview:
5. Measuring UX Research Impact
How can you make sure your UX research makes a real impact and doesn’t collect dust in someone’s drawer? Karin den Bouwmeester proposes a multi-level framework for defining and measuring UX research impact, taking into account all the different angles that need to be considered.
Karin defines three levels for measuring UX research impact: the impact on the customer and business outcome, the impact on the organization, and the impact on the user research practice. Her “Defining & Measuring UX Research Impact” cheatsheet (PDF) makes it easy to ask the right questions and track the right metrics for each level. (cm)
6. UX Research Methods Cheat Sheet
Qualitative research helps us understand human behavior. But how to choose the right research method for a project? Allison Grayce Marshall takes you through the process step by step — from aligning on the time and scale of research to synthesizing your data into insights.
In her post, Allison discusses when to do qualitative research, the difference between generative and evaluative research methods, and tips for choosing the research method that best fits your project. If you need a short and sweet guide you can refer to during the research phase, Allison also summarized all the considerations in a handy cheat sheet. (cm)
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7. UX Research Templates
A template can be a good starting point when doing UX research. Of course, you might need to refine it to fit the needs of your project, but it can provide the necessary structure to get you up and running quickly.
Odette Jansen created a helpful Notion hub where she publishes templates for workshops and setting up research plans, methods, and outcomes. They cover everything from card sorting and gap analysis to jobs to be done, stakeholder walkthrough, and tree testing. One for the bookmarks.
For more templates, also be sure to check out Vitaly’s collections. He compiled useful Notion Templates For UX Designers, UX Research Report Templates to communicate your research findings, and a series of First 90 Days Plans For Designers with templates to get you started in a new role as a UX designer or UX researcher. (cm)
8. Recently Published Books 📚
Promoting best practices and providing you with practical tips to master your daily coding and design challenges has always been at the core of everything we do at Smashing.
In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. Have you checked them out already?
Meet our newest book: Success At Scale by Addy Osmani. Get the book or browse the complete library.
9. Recent Smashing Articles
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf) and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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We sincerely appreciate your kind support. You rock.
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