Santa’s little UX helpers

While Santa may have many helpers at this time of year, we also have many little helpers that assist us in making wonderful, well wrapped UX findings. Our research methods are of course what help us to get the results we and our clients want! Here at System Concepts we like to use a variety of research methods dependent on the brief and client needs so we thought we would share some our favourite methods and how they help us with our UX research.

As a brief introduction to research and its many methods, there are 3 different types of research categories that the methods fall into:

• Attitudinal vs behavioural: What people say vs what people actually do
• Qualitative vs quantitative: In depth research vs large numbers of more numerical data
• The context of product use: Is it natural use of the product, a guided use of the product, a limited use of a product or no use of the product at all

Research methods can then also be categorised by their purpose:

• Generative research to help with the generation of ideas and opportunities
• Formative research to inform and improve the user experience of a product
• Evaluative research to measure a product’s usability

So, depending on your research’s purpose and the type of data you are trying to collect, it will all dictate the methods you choose to use. Now in no particular order, let’s dive into the research methods we use and how we like to use them…

Moderated sessions

Now this might just be one of our most popular methods with both us and clients. This method can be done either in person or remotely and will involve one of our researchers facilitating a one-to one session with a participant. Generally, our clients prefer remote testing due to its lower costs, flexibility and more natural results as participants are more relaxed in their own homes and feel less like they are being watched. However, when done in a lab-based setting, in-person testing can provide a more controlled environment and allow researchers to see behaviours and interactions first hand.

Moderated sessions can be used for a variety of purposes. Whether you wish to do generative, formative or evaluative research, this method can be wonderfully flexible; however we would say due to the time needed to conduct such sessions, this method would perhaps best suit more qualitative data requirements so that user behaviours and thoughts can be best captured.

Focus groups

Focus groups are somewhat similar to moderated testing in that they can be remote or in person, as well as the fact that there is a facilitator guiding the session. However, as the name suggests, there is often a group of participants (3-8 typically) and instead of doing tasks and being asked questions, the participants are guided through different topics of conversation and asked questions to provoke thought amongst the group. We like to use focus groups to gain qualitative data that can provide clients with overall feedback about particular services, features or concepts. This can often be a time-efficient way of getting many people’s feedback and opinions and can inspire some deeper thoughts that may not have crossed a participant’s mind if it wasn’t for the wider group.

Field studies

This ethnographic approach allows us to observe participants in their natural environment interacting naturally with the product or service of interest. Field studies tend to lend themselves better towards qualitative research, gathering in-depth insight into how a product or service fits into the ecosystem of a user’s life. Being able to watch natural interactions with a product/service live can be hugely beneficial to understand the true context and usage. When used as part of a generative research programme, field studies can identify where potential opportunities lie and can feed innovation and idea generation.

Diary studies

Another way we can understand people’s natural behaviours is by asking them to take part in a diary study. Here at System Concepts, we like using this method as either a starting piece of background research, or a follow-up piece of research post-one-on-one session to further understand the users’ behaviours in more depth. Typically, diary studies will consist of participants documenting their behaviours around a certain product, topic or service and reporting back to the researchers via email, WhatsApp, or specially designed online portals. Diary studies are ideal for understanding behaviours and context on a deeper more natural level than perhaps one-to-ones can achieve.

Surveys

A great way of gathering quantitative data is by sending out surveys for many participants to fill in. This method can produce some great statistics and an overall perception on attitudes across a large segment of the user group. Surveys can be conducted online which is perhaps the most efficient and cost-effective method, but also they can be done via postal methods or telephone calls for those harder to reach user groups.

When conducting surveys we will try to include more interactive elements to help encourage participants to engage. This might include tasks like users prioritising their favourite 3 attributes of a product/service, moving sliders on a scale of 1-5 on where they would position themselves or even card categorising of aspects like features they use often, barely or never for example. After collecting such a large amount of data it can be much easier to identify patterns and generate actionable statistical findings for the client.

Stakeholder workshops

And finally, if it’s generative research you need to inform and inspire ideas from within the team, then stakeholder workshops are for you. At System Concepts, we can help to design and facilitate the workshop and guide all stakeholders through participatory design methods and activities to help align the team’s thinking and allow them to focus on ideation. Examples of these methods include card categorisation and prioritisation methods in smaller groups (e.g. sailboat retrospective and top 3 likes/dislikes/improvements) which are then fed back to the wider group until common themes and principles are identified. These workshops will leave your team with a clearer focus and more unified plan of action going forward with your product/service.

So, ‘In summary, these are a few of our favourite research methods at System Concepts, yet there are lots more that we use to get exactly the kind of insights our client is after, with our little UX helpers. We can also tailor, adapt and combine methods to best suit a client’s brief and needs. No matter what the project, there’s many a great method to choose from – thank you to our little UX helpers!