11 Steps to do Deep UX Research

Conducting a UX research is a very tedious process design studios stumble upon sometimes because of the non linearity and the kind of absurdness what the problem statement is. Being there like even client will not give you proper understanding. Sometimes you will have to dig deep to even find the problem statement to verify whether it's correct or not. In that case, how do you really do a proper UX research? Okay, if you are in that thirst to this particular podcast is going to give you clarity on that. Just coming from my own experience of 8.5 years I've seen all the process of product development life cycle from end to end starting from digital products to physical products, doing over 60 plus projects in the field of mechanical engineering, in the field of design, field of industrial design, product design, UI UX design, system design, etc. Okay, so take a lot of notes. Let's jump into this topic. Welcome to this is Designed for Change podcast. Thank you for staying tuning in with me. There has been a very good response in Spotify. We are touching around 12 countries and a lot of international listeners from Australia UK. Thank you so much guys and if you need any kind of a information like more podcast to be recorded or more topics to be addressed, please feel free to reach out to me in the description of the podcast. What do you think about this podcast? Okay, you can write me a word or you can send an email if you have any kind of a support which is needed for your learning process in UI UX design. I won't be able to help all the people. I can select few listeners, consistent listeners and help them. Okay, with that being said today we are going to understand what is UX research and how to do it in a very deeper way. Okay, to tell about me first you need to get this understanding before going into the topic. I've did over 63 plus projects in a span of over eight years working in different different project like let's say new product development of physical products, digital products, UI UX projects, research based projects, systems projects, graphic design, editorial design. So I kind of seen all the process from end to end, how it works and how particularly small scale works and how design studios really work and how uncertain it is a really solved like let's say sometimes even client will not be sure what is really happening right? So I'm going to be giving you 11 exactly process how we can do it. Again there is a big caution I really stress upon this point again because it's not the only process. You need to always have that openness to adjust and Retune to your teeth. The very first part of this particular podcast is define your research goals and scope properly. So what are we trying to understand? What decisions will this research influence? You need to get this clarity until unless you get this, what happens is you won't be able to get the first step itself cleared. Right. So the journey of thousand miles starts with a single step. That's the philosophy. Right. So first step should be very clear and we should first define that without that we cannot jump to wireframes and solutions and seeing some fancy stuffs. So write down a goals, Smart, smart, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound goals. And what is your scope of the customer and the product and service. Then you can able to take decisions much better. Okay, I'm pasting you the link of a case study of Airbnb. You can read about their case study of how they are able to do it in a more successful way. Okay. And also I'm pasting you a research content of Nielsen Norman groups. Defining a research questions properly. You can do that. That's a very good content and material. Don't worry, I'll be pasting this description in the chat box as well. Okay, this is the first step. Second is identify your users. Who is your Persona? What are you really trying to solve? See, when you design for something which is for everyone, you are not really serving anyone. It's a simple thing. If you're serving for one people or one person or one particular user, addressing their needs, behaviors and goals, then it makes a lot of sense. Okay, you can go and understand user Persona article which I pasted in the podcast description. You can read about it. Okay, so this is a very good what you call material which you can read to understand how to define your Personas and identify your users. Who are your users and what are their goals, frustration, needs, behavior, etc. The third important thing is choosing right research methods. Are you going to do primary research or is it secondary research is enough? And what based on your timeline, how you can able to improve? And what is the method which you're choosing? Like let's say it's a qualitative study, quantitative, mixed approach. You can able to first do that. Okay, See, after choosing your audience only you can choose this research methodology. Don't do it otherwise. Otherwise a lot of people do this. They do the primary research and then they find the user. What happens? It's like completely ulta, right? You have a pizza to make and then you have all the ingredients ready and then you flip the Steps what happens? You won't get pizza, right? Simple. That's the pause. The fourth important point is recruit participants. So why should we really involve these people in research? How will we find them? See what you can do is you can go and understand who is your primary target audience and try to find out few people whom you can talk, interact, take survey and have a full questionnaire filled with them. Once you are able to do it properly, then your primary research or even secondary research could be correlated with this data. Recruiting participant is a very crucial thing. There could be lot of catch to it, right? Many times direct stakeholders you will not get. Sometimes only indirect stakeholders you will get like let's say if you're solving a problem of like let's say a very complex problem of water problem, okay? Like let's say there is no clean water coming in your particular panchayat or whatever, okay. So you might be thinking your user is something like your. Your ideal way to get this problem statement clarity data is your panchayat union leader. Yeah, he might give you some data. But the real point is the person who is really working on the water board who is having multiple other problems to not supply the cleanliness drinking water. Right? So you should find out who is your audience, what impact it will create with their answers. If you find the right audience, right person, recruit the right participant, your research will become like a butter. It will become very easy and you can able to do it. Okay, I am pasting you a link. Also in user testing and recruiting the right participants guide, you can read that. The fifth important part is conducting research sessions. You can interact with these people. Now once you've chosen the right audience, you can have an open ended question, you can have a closed questions, you can engage them in a conversational way, you can have a lunch or dinner with them, you can able to travel with them, you can able to see how they're working in real time. So what happens is you get to really see what is happening. Many times people send a questionnaire, Google form, get the data. What's the point? First of all, people will not be very engaged to fill the Google form or online sheets. Many times it happens. But still for the sake of ease, lot of designers do this. Few designers really take a step to do it. You won't believe. For my project for medical product design, I interviewed over close to 100 people for the project which I did it in five to six months. Hundred plus stakeholders in my project. So because that particular problem is a very complex problem and I needed to really talk to the people I could have got it in online, but the data what I got, even that company whom I worked did not get that before. So that level of deep you can go once you find the right stakeholder and talk to them and engage them. Sometimes we used to stay night, early mornings, because my case is a medical product design. I design for babies. So at that point of time babies will be coming On a day in the midnight or early morning when some emergency comes, then only I can go and watch the real scene, how the product really behaves and how the user really behaves with the product. And then I can find the problem and solve it. So you need to do that kind of a research then. And only you will be able to differentiate your product or service over your competitor, right? I'm pasting you a resource of Nielsen Norman Group Usability testing essential book. You can read that. The sixth important thing is analyze and synthesize your data. Once you get all this data, you need to be very sure and mapping those, you need to make a mind map, you need to make a brainstorming out of all this data, whatever you got with cross functional teams as well as your own team. Once you are able to do this research and synthesis, you will get more actionable points, actionable insights, which is going to drive your project into next step. Many people are completely missing the sixth step, analyzing and synthesizing data they do for a purpose of doing research just for the sake of completing. And they directly do one solution. There is absolutely no correlation between design and the research what they did. I have recorded a specific podcast on how we can bridge this in a more deeper way. But to cut short, people are really facing the struggle because they don't know how to really translate this particular data into synthesis of a proper informational insight. That's why there is something called YY analysis. There is something called Fishbone diagram, There is something called root cause analysis. You can able to find out what is the real root cause and with that you can able to start defining your problem statements in a redefined way. You can do it. Okay. You can read a material called UX Collective's Data analytics for UX Design. I pasted the article. You can read much more. See, this podcast is going to give you clarity, definitely. But if you want to dig deeper into one area which you feel that you are lacking, you can go into that particular description and read that material. Okay. And the seventh important thing is present your findings and recommendation. So you need to communicate your findings right then and only your team or your own Management will be able to take a decision based on the data. If you present it poorly or if you don't document it, what happens is people will not get what you're trying to say. The story in what you are telling with the data makes all the difference. I stress this point again. If you are not able to tell the story properly and present it, a lot of people really get confused what they wanted to do. That's the big problem. Okay? So you can take care of that. You can have a proper story narrative. You can tell about what is the problem statement you're solving. You tell about your goal, you tell about the impact. You tell about what is your key 10 insights, research findings, what you got. You don't have to confuse much or you can even present three. Until this is what are the action points which you're taking forward? That's it. Team will be able to clearly see this is really a big problem and how much impact it's creating. And management will plan the resources accordingly. Lot of time. Management takes design very lightly. It's not the problem of management, it's a problem of a designer who is not presenting with the proper actionable items. So that even I won't be able to take decision if nobody is telling me a proper story, right? How I will be spending money if I am owning a design studio for this work, for that work, for this work, for this software, that. So I need to get a proper justification, proper story, proper impact. Oh my God. This much impact this particular problem is creating. So why don't we bring a solution? Why don't we do an extensive solving process? Yeah. Then industry will invest money and resources and timeline for it. Okay? It's a very important thing. People are struggling already in industry. 80 to 90% of the people really struggle this phase, guys, they don't know how to present. They don't know how to get the money and resource and people and time from the management. They miserably fail. They ask them, hey, do it with the normal free software, whatever you have and deliver it tomorrow and close the project. That's it. What impact you will create. You will be thinking, hey, I am making the best design in the world. What's the point? Right? So you can read about a material called interaction design, foundations, storytelling with data. You can read that article. It's a short article. You can read that and you can read a case study of ideo storytelling to present research findings of stakeholders. A beautiful toolkit, guys. You can able to use that. The eighth important element is develop user Persona Scenario. This we have already discussed. You can find a defined Persona and you can now define it and define some scenarios better. Okay, so what a scenario like let's say if you're solving a problem of traffic of a particular individual, you need to define some scenario. Your individual is, let's say office going people. So what are the scenario? Office going people typically travel in the morning and evening. That's one scenario. Office going people take some weekend vacations. That's their second scenario. Office going people take family to big vacations in summer. That's the third scenario. So how does the traffic really affect these three scenarios? So define the user personnel scenario is very important. A lot of people don't know the scenario situation. Right. I did a project with Centroid Design Studios years back where the founder, Ramesh. What do you call Ramesh Manikam, he's a great designer. He did over 400 plus products in the market. So he taught me the scenario mapping. It's a beautiful tool which I've learned from him. So you will have to do scenarios whenever you're doing some problem statement and analyzing and solving it. Try to think about user. Normally people do think about user, but what they don't do is they don't think about the scenario, how the user will react in that particular scenario. Like let's say if your vehicle is completely broken down, how does the user really react as a designer, how your product can really solve the problem. So you need to put yourself in that shoe and think, okay, what I'll do. Okay, I'll have to keep an emergency switch to call somebody. Okay, I'll have to call the nearest service station for repair. Okay, can I trigger some automatic response in my mobile? Okay, so this kind of a solutions and thinking will come once if you really go to that scenario. You can read a tool of hardjar in User Persona Creation and Creator Tool. It's a beautiful tool, guys. You can create a free account in hardjar and you can create a user Persona very easily. You can do it manually also, but you can do it in a tool as well. Okay. Yeah. So the ninth step is create user journey. So once if this steps is really done, guys, creating a journey is not a big problem. What, what steps do the user really take to achieve their goal with your product and service? Whatever you're delivering, what are all their pain points, what are all the steps, what are all the map, what they are guiding through in reaching that goal. Once you're able to do that, then you will be able to have more clarity. Let's say if you're designing some solution for emergency based what you call services. So how the user will be able to start the operation, how the user will be able to navigate the process, how the user will be able to reach the emergency center and how the user will get the feedback and how the user will be rescued. This is the journey, right? If you are able to map it. Done. Now the tenth step is building wireframes and prototypes. How you can able to translate your inputs into building some good wireframes process and prototypes. So creating prototypes wireframes is a very deep subject. But to cut short wireframes is to create basic understanding of how your solution is going to navigate for the user. Connecting different frames in a digital way. Mock up and then you can build a mock up or a prototype for testing with the user. And then the last step is conducting usability testing. Once you are able to do a usability testing then you will know. Then you will able to be correlate all the research insights, all the research work, all the information, whatever you collected, is it really comprehending and going together? If any problem is there, you will have to go back to step one. You will have to go back to step two. You will have to even sometimes redefine your problem statement. You will have to find a different user. If your research data is not proper, you will have to recruit a different participant. Then I will tell you in real case scenario. When I did a ventilator project for Phoenix Medical system. The point what happened is many Times we thought Dr. Is the ultimate guy who is able to give the data of the ventilator. But the scene is different. Doctor has only a small knowledge in the ventilator device. Where the people who are operating in that ICU room are more specialized than this. But they are not very well educated or they are not really doctors or they don't know any big stuff. They know only the ventilator. In a very deeper way. Even your ventilator is not working. Somehow they will find a way to operate and save the patient. Because it is a life saving device, right? So these people were the ideal target market. And I came to know after doing a lot of mistakes, right? So go back to that research. Don't hesitate. Think like timeline is gone. That's not a justice. If you are a designer, honesty is the first first element which you need to keep. And then if you need, if you are honest, automatically your answers and the data and the findings will be very genuine. And people will be able to respect and take decision and action. Or else if any one doubt is coming in, your research people will not really trust your entire process. They will take it like let's say a study, that's it. And they will do something solution and your concept will no way be related to them. So be very careful, just genuine, honest and then try to do one more time also if it requires. This is a way in which a UX research needs to be done. Okay, so iteration is the end of the point. What I'm telling you to recollect on the particular 11 points. The first point is defining research goals and scope. The second is identifying your users. Third is choosing the research method primary, secondary mix it quantitative, qualitative, recruit right participant, which I've talked to you and conducting research sessions with different different users and analyzing and synthesizing this data and presenting and finding and getting recommendations from even seniors and management to take decision further and developing user Persona and scenario based mapping and then map your journey of the user. Once you're able to do it, then you build solutions in wireframes and prototype and now test it with the user how it is going to solve their problem in real time. Okay, you can use the user testing tool called uxpin usability testing for conducting more usability testing free trial kind of a testing method. Okay. Because in free version itself you will be able to get lot of benefits. Okay, so consider this 11 points. Write it down in a paper, write it down in your particular desk and keep it as a checkpoint whenever you're doing a UX research. Sometimes it can go a little non linear, it can go iterative. But do not forget this basic. Okay, so with that being said.