Despite being the cornerstone of UX and product design, conducting user research is probably the most challenging part of the entire process. As UX practitioners, we talk a lot about empathizing with our users, but the reality is that finding people who fit your user profile is hard. And getting them to take time out of their busy day to talk to you, a complete stranger, is even harder. To put it in perspective, think about the last time you received a survey asking you about your experience with an online retailer you recently purchased from. Did you fill it out? Did you even open the email? Or did you immediately send it to your Trash folder? (đď¸ Guilty.) This is the great challenge of user research.
If youâre in the discovery phase, you may be looking for people to interview. If youâre in the testing phase, youâll be looking for people to test your design with. And if youâre lucky enough to be working on an existing product or a new product within an established organization, you might have the resources to provide incentives for research participants, such as a gift card or voucher. If youâre very lucky, your org might already have a pool of users that you can trawl for research participants. However, if youâre like me and many hundreds of other junior designers out there working on personal or bootcamp projects, you likely wonât be able to come up with a monetary incentive, and you wonât necessarily know of an existing group of users eager to share their thoughts.
In addition to the inherent complexity of user research, certain user groups pose additional challenges in terms of contact and accessibility. Vulnerable populations (e.g., children, the elderly, and people with disabilities) are notoriously difficult to reach. Similarly, some groups have limited availability due to time constraints. For instance, in a recent nonprofit project, my user base consisted of high-profile investors accustomed to constant demands on their time. Despite repeated attempts, my interview requests seemed to fall into a black hole.
While this post so far has been a lot of doom and gloom, Iâm here to tell you that there are actually a lot of avenues through which to gather the information you need to inform your design. When you find yourself in a less-than-ideal user research situation (and they happen a lot more often than you think), you have to do two things: be bold and creative.
Be Bold
The first step in solving this conundrum is to be bold. (Sorry, introverts.) This means being shameless about approaching people and trying to score some engagement, whether it be recruiting for interviews or usability testing.
LinkedIn can be a great resource if you know exactly who you are looking for. For example, I needed to interview board members of local anchor institutions for a clientâs website redesign. So, I went on those institutionsâ websites, found the list of their board members, located them on LinkedIn, and reached out. LinkedIn also allows you to search for people by job title. So, if you are designing a product for freelancers, for example, youâll quickly be able to find people who fit that role â and they might even be in your network! Of course, one MAJOR drawback to using LinkedIn is that cold messages have an extremely low response rate. Some estimate this rate to be as low as 1%, meaning that youâll need to send at least 100 messages to get even one response. Itâs not particularly efficient. Thatâs why itâs best if you can find a connection with the people you want to talk to. Leverage your network to score an introduction, and then broach the subject of your design project.
Social Media
Find communities of the user youâre looking for on Reddit or Facebook. You can post a screener survey, but these often suffer from the same issues as cold messages in that they rarely get responses. The best way to leverage this resource is to get involved in the conversation. Comment on peopleâs posts. Ask questions. Start a dialogue. From there, you might be able to segue into a request for an interview. Or, you can use the insights you gather from these discussions in the comments to help inform your research. If youâre going to post a survey, I recommend reaching out to the group moderators first to make sure it follows the rules of the group. In general, itâs best to have approval from group moderators secured first to ensure that your post doesnât get flagged as spam and deleted.
Networking Events
If you find yourself with more time on your hands, try finding Meetups in your area of the people you want to talk to. Reach out to the organizer and explain what youâre trying to accomplish. They might be able to help you present your project at the event and recruit participants. Or, theyâll participate in your research themselves! Of course, networking events are timely, and they may not fit into your projectâs schedule. Iâd only recommend this if youâre able to plan well in advance to have your research participants locked in when it comes time for interviewing and testing.
Be Creative
If your bold social advances donât pay off (and donât worry if they donât â this is pretty common) youâre going to have to start thinking creatively about how to get the information you need to inform your design.
Adjacent Groups
Think about your target user. Now think about the people who orbit them within the context of your product. Who else can you talk to who is adjacent to your user? For example, letâs say youâre developing a scheduling app for busy moms. Note the key word: busy. No one seems to have time to participate in your research. Are there any moms out there whose kids are off at college? Theyâll probably have more time on their hands and be able to provide similar feedback to your target user group. Or perhaps these moms you want to talk to have partners, grandparents, nannies, or other people who help with childcare who, while not directly involved in the scheduling process, work closely with them to execute that schedule and can provide insights from their observations of the target user (mom).
Use Your Stakeholders
Stakeholders can be an incredible resource, so donât forget about them! A lot of times, stakeholders have already spent a lot of time talking to their customers and gathering feedback, and can pass those insights along to you in a discovery workshop. While I wonât go into the nitty-gritty of holding workshops with your stakeholders (workshops deserve their own article), here are two great resources to get your started if you want to learn more: How to Facilitate UX Design Workshops With Stakeholders and 5 UX Workshops, both from Nielsen Norman Group.
âBetter Than Nothingâ Methods
While thereâs nothing wrong with these research methods per se, itâs important to note that they alone are insufficient for a comprehensive design. They are valid but should be complemented by other methods to gain a complete understanding of your user and the problem your design will solve for.
Friends and Family
Interviewing friends and family if they fit in your user group is always a fallback option. Sometimes, you really donât have a choice. And for your first project ever, this might be preferable as you can focus on sharpening your interviewing and research skills without the added stress of navigating an awkward conversation with a stranger. However, as you get further into your UX career and start working on projects with real clients, talking to your friends and family becomes less acceptable. Itâs too easy for people in your social circle to bring their bias to your research, and you wonât get the brutally honest feedback you need to improve your design. The same goes for using other designers in your research. Theyâre going to have too much inside knowledge about design that will bias them in a way that makes their feedback pretty different from an end userâs.
Site Analytics
Utilizing services like Google Analytics will give you a broad idea of whoâs visiting a site and what they do there. It can be useful in certain situations, but itâs not great if you want to get clarification or ask users why theyâre doing something. While it definitely has its place in the design process, looking just at analytics to inform your product design process is not a thorough enough method to base your design decisions off of.
Customer Reviews
Though itâs not as direct as sitting down and having a conversation with your user, there are valuable insights to be found in customer reviews of your product or service. Reading reviews on the App Store or other review websites such as Trustpilot can give you insights into whether your customers are generally happy or unhappy, and what they like and dislike about the product. It can help you identify pain points that you can then validate through deeper research and testing.
Heuristic Evaluations
If youâre having trouble getting feedback from users about your design, you can always do an in-house analysis against the 10 usability heuristics laid out by Nielsen Norman Group. Itâs not going to give you data about the practical application of your design and you wonât get feedback about how it functions âin the wild,â but itâs always worth a shot to try and identify any small areas for improvement.
Conclusion
Conducting user research in the field of UX and product design is inherently challenging. Finding suitable participants, gaining their engagement, and overcoming limitations in time and resources are common hurdles. However, by being bold and creative in our approach, we can navigate through imperfect research situations. Ultimately, itâs important to adapt and leverage available resources to gain a deeper understanding of users and their needs, informing better design decisions.
