How to plan and facilitate user research

User research uncovers how people engage with services and systems in the real world. Whether you're revamping a public space or conducting academic studies, talking to actual users reveals those all-important insights.

But to get those insights, you need to plan the research and make sure it reaches the right people, which involves a series of deliberate steps. Here, we cover everything you need to know about planning and facilitating user research, from setting goals to choosing the right methods.

Why conduct user research?

Knowing what people think about something offers you a window into the needs and behaviors of your specific audience for all different types of research purposes.

You should conduct user research if you want to:

Guide product strategy

• Use insights to shape and refine the product roadmap.
• Validate or reconsider your product approach with tangible evidence.
• Determine if your product meets market needs so there’s a product or market fit.
• Create a shared understanding across teams with qualitative and quantitative data.

Identify and address user problems

• Discover user pain points early in the development process.
• Brainstorm solutions during exploratory phases to avoid costly mistakes.
• Learn from failed experiments to improve future iterations.

Gain a competitive edge

• Stay ahead of competitors by identifying users' unsolved challenges.
• Test new ideas with users to gauge interest and guide resource allocation.

4 typical user research methods

There are a range of research methods you can use to get the best possible outcomes.

1. User interviews

User interviews give you direct insights from the people who matter most. With friendly one-on-one communication, you’ll learn about their experiences and what drives them. These conversations help you figure out why users do what they do and what they really want.

By asking questions to pinpoint where a product shines or needs work, you can shape future improvements. The stories and opinions you gather paint a vivid picture of user needs, helping you make choices that boost satisfaction and make products better. The qualitative data gathered from these interviews helps you gain a richer understanding of user perspectives.

2. Surveys

Surveys are a popular research method that allow you to gather quantitative and qualitative data quickly and cost-effectively from a diverse range of users. Sending out questionnaires lets you collect a wide range of opinions and preferences. They're helpful for spotting trends, checking how happy users are, and backing up what you learn from other research.

Well-designed surveys give you the data to base decisions on. Plus, you can reach a wide range of people fast, making it easy to get a big-picture view of what users think. They offer flexibility with a wide-ranging audience, making them key to all types of research.

3. User testing

User testing lets you observe how people use a product or prototype to provide a clear picture of how it works in real life. You’re essentially evaluating the usefulness or value of something in its early stages, as well as general usability, functionality, and overall experience to verify if the product meets user expectations and needs.

In these sessions, you give people specific jobs to do and keep an eye on where there may be room for improvement. The feedback gathered from user testing means you can refine product features, enhance user satisfaction, and improve the chances of a successful launch. Adopting a user-centered approach in user testing helps build products that resonate with the intended audience while also fulfilling their requirements.

• Concept testing (high-level ideas or designs) via a moderated approach
• Usability testing (detailed designs) via moderated or unmoderated approach

4. A/B testing / analytics

A/B testing pits different versions of a product against each other to see which one is more effective. It lets you gather quantitative data on how users behave and what they like, showing which design components work best.

Using analytics tools, you can track metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and bounce rates. As a result, you can make data-driven decisions based on user interactions with the product. A/B testing is key for fine-tuning products and making sure they hit the mark with users. It's all about using data to make things better.

Choosing the right method

Each method has its own advantages and drawbacks. To give you an overview, the graph below details how each method compared in terms of two key research factors:

• Qualitative vs. quantitative: Qualitative research seeks to understand user experiences and behaviors while quantitative research gathers numerical data to identify broader patterns and trends.
• Attitudinal vs. behavioral: Attitudinal research explores users' beliefs and perceptions, whereas behavioral research observes what users do in practice.

User research in the product cycle

The Double Diamond design process is a framework for tackling complex problems. It has four stages: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. In the image below, you’ll see an overview of how the Double Diamond design process might be used to explore and solve a product problem and which user research methods may be used at each stage.

Finding the problem

Look for the when, what, and why for identifying problems during your research, whether you’re doing user interviews, surveys, or usability testing for existing products.

• When: At the early planning stage, before any development begins.
• What: Exploratory research (discovery of problem space).
• Why: Empathize with users and understand their needs. Define the problem space, identify potential risks, align your product with user needs, and avoid investing in the wrong features.

Top Tip: When your target user pool is large, validate qualitative insights from interviews with quantitative data from surveys, as qualitative findings might not be representative of the whole pool.

During ideation / low-fidelity design

• When: As you design the high-level solution (conceptualize).
• What: Evaluative research (testing of solutions).
• Why: Validate and sort your ideas, ensure the main concepts are intuitive, make informed high-level design choices, minimize the need for major changes later.
• Usual methods: Concept testing.

During high-fidelity design, iterations, and post-release

• When: As you iterate on high-fidelity prototypes, as well as on production pre and post-release.
• What: Evaluative research (testing of solutions).
• Outcome: Confirm the solution fit, validate the chosen solution, improve the chosen solution based on user feedback, quickly identify and fix usability issues, gauge user satisfaction, and collect insights for future product improvements.
• Usual methods: Usability testing, A/B tests, feedback surveys, analytics, user interviews.

When to use different types of research

The type of research method you choose will largely depend on the different stages and goals. Choosing the right approach helps gather the most useful insights. Here's a guide to when each method works best:

Interviews

User interviews are a qualitative research method that involve having open-ended and guided discussions with users. They’re effective because they gather in-depth insights about the users’ experiences, needs, motivations, and behaviors.

When you might use interviews

You’ll likely use interviews when you:

✔️ Know about a general area we want to solve but are unsure how users are affected.

✔️ Have many questions but also don’t know exactly what questions you need to ask. Your research is broad and you don’t yet know which topics will be most relevant or which questions will be most useful.

✔️ Want firsthand accounts of experiences, perceived strengths, and potential areas for refinement.

✔️ Know the subject is complicated, will require some explanation and users are likely to give you long and detailed answers.

✔️ Want the chance to ask follow-up questions to explore and better understand what users tell you fully.

When you might not

Interviews might not be the best route forward when you:

❌ Have a reasonably clear idea of the problem, but you’re not sure if your ideas will solve it.

❌ Have a fairly clear idea of the problem, but you’re not sure how many people it affects as compared to other problems.

User testing

User testing is when you put something in front of users to stress-test your ideas or solutions. It can be a high-level (concept) or detailed (usability). You typically give users some context and ask them to try to complete a task or a series of tasks, which can be in the form of a moderated test where we are present or unmoderated, where the user completes the process independently.

There are different types of user testing, with each one offering its own pros and cons.

When to use concept testing

Concept testing can be helpful when you:

✔️ Understand the problem but want to test several ideas for solutions on a high level without getting into detailed design decisions, eg. by using wireframes.

✔️ Want to know whether your mental model of a potential solution matches that of your user, whether you use the right language for concepts you want to introduce, and whether those concepts are in the right general hierarchy.

✔️ Want to evaluate your designs but don’t yet have a high-fidelity prototype or working service that people can try out for real. Or you want to explore several alternative concepts or ideas.

When not to use concept testing

Concept testing might not be the best approach when you:

❌ Have a fairly clear idea of the problem, but you’re not sure how many people it affects as compared to other problems.

❌ Need feedback on the details of the visual design.

When usability testing can help

Usability testing can be the right solution when you:

✔️ Have an existing service, a high-fidelity prototype, or a newly built service and want to know how well it works for likely users.

✔️ Want to test design details, components of visual design or accessibility (eg. shapes, components, colors, fonts, copy etc.).

When usability testing might not work

Usability testing might not be the right choice when you:

❌ Have a reasonably clear idea of the problem, but you’re not sure how many people it affects as compared to other problems.

❌ Want to compare several high-level ideas or concepts (in this case it is preferable not to use high fidelity prototypes because the detail will distract from the core).

User testing approaches

As well as different usability testing approaches, there’s also the option of unmoderated and moderated. Here’s when they might be applicable.

An unmoderated approach …

✔️ Is helpful for making sure that users are acting entirely of their own volition.

✔️ Has a lower cost and quicker turnaround than moderated research, enabling higher volume.

✔️ Requires more planning and preparation so users can navigate the tasks unaided.

✔️ Is suited for usability testing or late stage testing (less so for early concept testing).

A moderated approach …

✔️ Is helpful to ask clarification questions.

✔️ Hears the thought process behind the actions.

✔️ Provides instruction to users where needed or allows you to amend a task if it’s unclear.

✔️ Ensures users are acting entirely independently.

Surveys

With surveys, you ask a set of questions to a defined group of people and analyze their answers to produce findings.

When are surveys helpful?

Surveys might be helpful when you:

✔️ Have a pretty clear idea of the problem, but you’re not sure how many people it affects as compared to other problems.

✔️ Don’t understand the problem space well, but your target groups is very large. Or you want to make sure you can understand the lay of the land to help you choose who to interview.

✔️ Know which questions you want to ask and who you want to ask.

✔️ Have simple questions that don’t need much clarification.

✔️ Need quantitative data (numbers) or a larger number qualitative responses that can only be obtained with an interview.

✔️ Want to find out the most common opinions or problems.

When to potentially avoid using a survey

Surveys might not be the best approach when you:

❌ Know about a general area that needs solving but you’re unsure how users are affected.

❌  Have many questions but also don’t know exactly what questions need asking.

❌ Want to be able to clarify responses and dig deeper.

❌ Need to understand what people do rather than what they say.

Summing up: It’s all in the planning

Effective user research is central to creating products and services that truly meet people's needs. And choosing the right methods at the right time means you can uncover valuable insights throughout the development process. If you understand your users better, you’ll achieve more successful and user-friendly outcomes.

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