Picture this: you have a crystal-clear view into the minds of consumers, and you understand their wants, their needs, their motivations. It would be easy to craft a product that suits them, right? And while mindreading isn’t an attainable skill, there’s always UX research.
Whether you call it “user experience research,” “UX research,” or just “UXR,” we’re taking about the practice of gathering insights about users’ behaviors, needs, and pain points through observation techniques and feedback methodologies. Put another way, UX research is asking the right questions at the right moment.
From an episode of Product Momentum, Jared Spool said: “I think the number one thing that a strategic UX team needs to do is make sure that the organization is the world’s foremost experts on who the users are and what the users need, what their current experience is like, and what their future experience could be like.”
This expertise is acquired through extensive research. With it, teams are empowered to make well-informed decisions. Even in scenarios where the first thought isn’t to lean on UX research, there are at least two major pain points that this practice can help alleviate.
“I don’t know what the problem is.”
This is typically the first problem for companies that are witnessing a lagging performance in their products. They understand that their product is not as performant as it might be, but don’t know where exactly the problem lies. The key to delivering the right solution is solving the right problem, but when you can’t put your finger on the problem, identifying a solution feels out of reach.
This includes wide-sweeping statements from those far removed from the product that may declare, for example, the need to refresh your website or overhaul the product’s interface to make up for a lack of interaction. When these declarations are made, these folks are working in the solution space, bypassing the problem space. However, UX Research needs to begin in the problem space so that researchers can accurately craft a workable solution.
This problem can plague any organization regardless of size or goals. Take, for example, Measures for Justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to the United States criminal justice system. MFJ delivers high-quality data for defense attorneys, public defenders, judges, and legislators to help them make smarter data-driven decisions in their work.
Given how their work contributes to policy reforms that lead to society reform, it’s crucial that their message reaches the right people. But they were struggling to get their message and mission to resonate with that audience. Beyond communicating how their work could make a significant impact in the communities they serve, their message may have been missing the mark with those who could truly benefit. Measures for Justice faced an unknown adversary; they needed someone to help them understand what that challenge was – and how to solve it.
Measures for Justice contacted ITX’s team of experienced UX researchers to partner again with their team to uncover the disconnect between their message and their internal and external stakeholders. After close consultancy and deep discovery, clues were leaning towards issues with the website’s usability. However, it wasn’t only due to the UI of their site – it came down to an incomplete understanding of who Measures for Justice’s audience is. Without knowing who those people are, the website messaging failed to resonate with their audiences. The next steps became clearer, and the teams knew which tests and research methods to deploy to begin crafting a solution.
This deep digging to identify the real core problem is where UX research pays off. Instead of preparing various mockups and drafts that could maybe make the website easier to use, UX researchers went further with their discovery to unearth the core problem. This thoroughness provides the information to address the correct problem and save time and resources later. With the various tests and knowledge at their fingertips, they’re ready to gather insights that will provide a long-lasting solution that better addresses the core problem.
“We know what we need to find out, but we don’t know how.”
Let’s take the problem from above and go one step further; common indicators point to a product’s poor performance, but until it’s been responsibly explored, our sense of what might be wrong remains just a feeling. In the absence of research, we have little data to back it up. There is a myriad of quantitative and qualitative research techniques to deploy that can provide insights into a solution. Enough to overwhelm someone who isn’t well-versed in UX research.
That’s a problem that another client was facing. For the S&P 500 company with a large and global workforce, they understood the importance of keeping teams connected. When they discovered unfavorable user experiences within their intranet, leadership had to get to the bottom of it.
They discovered the issues plaguing their team members – struggles with tedious site navigation, an intranet structure missing key features, a diverse userbase feeling unrepresented. These problems were brought to them, but what to do with them was less clear.
After reaching out to ITX, the team of UX Researchers deployed a series of UXR techniques to uncover the details surrounding the larger problem. Interviews, surveys, focus groups, card sorting; the right tasks needed to get the right information. They took their findings and identified key user themes, needs, and niche pain points. With this information, our UX Researchers shined light on the precise challenges our client was facing.
UX Research Goes Further
This blog highlights how UX Research can help solve two product problems, but the practice brings much more to the table. It’s one thing to realize the financial benefits of UXR, but we need to look beyond the bottom line to understand its full impact.
UX Researchers take time to help clients uncover real problems. Instead of blindly accepting “the website needs a refresh” as the underlying problem, they seek clarity on why the problem exists. Uncovering specific issues helps us to find the root cause of the problem. From there, they label issues if they fall under certain categories, such as qualitative, quantitative, behavioral, or attitudinal. Walking through this level of analysis with UX Researchers will serve as a guide in selecting which future research techniques to apply.
Through UX Research methods, which included stakeholder interviews and competitive analysis, UX Researchers presented Measures for Justice with new user personas and a sound product vision. Taking these new anchor points, Measures for Justice adopted a new website that helped users navigate the page and encouraged engagement. Additionally, these changes came with new internal efficiencies so content managers at Measures for Justice would have an easier time making necessary updates.
With a reinvigorated outpost and sophisticated means to maintain it, Measures for Justice continues its work to push for data transparency. A beacon of information in a vast ecosystem deserved more than “a website refresh.” And UX Research aided in finding the solution that organizations like Measures for Justice, and their audience, deserve.
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Megan Lawson is a Marketing Content Specialist at ITX. She focuses on creating content that solves problems and engages audiences. Megan received her BA in Communication from the State University of New York at Geneseo.
