Research Methods Articles & Videos

  • Intentional Silence as a Moderation Technique

    When conducting user interviews or running usability studies, don't rush to talk as soon as the user stops speaking. Deliberately staying silent for longer than it feels comfortable will often prod users into saying more.

  • How to Maximize Insights in User Testing: Stepped User Tasks

    You can learn the right kind of things and much more in user tests if you start with broad tasks instead of immediately leading to areas of interest. Prepare additional, focused tasks that can be used to direct users.

  • Qualitative vs. Quantitative UX Research

    Qualitative and quantitative methods both have their place in user research, but they address different issues in the UX design process. Understand the differences to pick the right method to learn what you need.

  • Don't Report Numbers from Small UX Studies

    Testing a small number of participants gives qualitative insights, which are great. But if 4 out of 5 test users do something, don't conclude that 80% of all users will do the same.

  • Survey Response Biases in User Research

    Users' answers to survey questions are often biased and not the literal truth. Examples include acquiescence bias, social desirability bias, and recency bias. Knowing about response biases will help you interpret survey data with more validity for any design decisions based on the findings.

  • The Critical Incident Technique in UX

    The CIT is a research method for systematically obtaining recalled observations of significant events or behaviors from people who have first-hand experience.

  • Don't Listen to the Customers

    The first rule of user experience design is: don't base the product on what customers *say* they want. You must watch what people actually *do* when using your design.

  • UX Research Cheat Sheet

    Different user research methods are suited for different stages of the UX design process. Here's an overview of the best methods to discover, explore, test, and listen.

  • Open vs. Closed Questions in User Research

    When doing user research for a UX design project, we can ask questions in two ways: open-ended (no fixed set of response options) and close-ended (users are restricted to picking from a few answers). Both work well, but only for those research questions they are suited to answer.

  • Ethical Maturity in User Research

    How ethically mature are your user-research practices? Assess your current state of ethical maturity by answering these simple questions.

  • Tracking Research Questions, Assumptions, and Facts in Agile

    User-related questions and assumptions are not tracked throughout a product’s lifecycle, causing misalignment and overconfidence. Documenting these questions and assumptions in a knowledge board differentiates them from real facts.

  • Usability (User) Testing 101

    UX researchers use this popular observational methodology to uncover problems and opportunities in designs.

  • Between-Subject vs. Within-Subject Study Design in User Research

    There are two ways to structure a UX research study when we're testing two (or more) designs: we can have each design tested by different people, or we can reuse the same users for all conditions. Each approach has some advantages and problems.

  • Tree Testing to Evaluate Information Architecture Categories

    Tree testing is a supplement to card sorting as a user research method for assessing the categories in an information architecture (especially a website IA and its proposed or existing navigation menu structure).

  • Unmoderated User Tests: How and Why to Do Them

    The 6 steps for running unmoderated usability testing are: define study goals, select testing software, write task descriptions, pilot the test, recruit participants, and analyze the results.

  • Thematic Analysis of Qualitative User Research Data

    User research generates masses of qualitative data in the form of transcripts and observations that can be summarized and made actionable through thematic analysis to identify the main findings.

  • Iterative Design of a Survey Question: A Case Study

    Through 4 rounds of revisions, we made a survey more specific and usable. Running pilot studies before conducting a full-scale survey ensures you’ll reach your research goal.

  • ResearchOps 101

    How to amplify the value and impact of user research at scale (when doing lots of UX work and the associated research).

  • 3 Powerful Visual Mapping Strategies in UX Design

    Cognitive maps, mind maps, and concept maps are different ways of visualizing mental models. They each have a role in the UX design process.

  • Discount Usability 30 Years

    For 30 years, the recommendations have remained the same for improving usability in a UX design project on a tight budget: simplified user testing with 5 users, early test of paper prototypes, and heuristic evaluation.