Category:User experience -> UX strategy -> User research

Conduct user research

Once those questions are answered completely and integrated into a signed project charter, you can move on to the tricky bit of user research. Here you assemble small groups of representatives of each of your audience groups and ask them three questions that are even more deceptively complex than those posed to the decision makers. And here’s a hint: The answers of representative members of each audience group will almost never match the answers provided by the decision makers. The purpose of the exercise with the decision makers is to simply ascertain who the audience(s) are; the purpose of the exercise with actual members of the audience is to really find out. The questions for which you want answers are:

What information do you want or expect from this website?
How do you want that information presented?
How do you want that information labeled?

Here’s a handful of user goal examples:

Comparing multiple products and purchasing with confidence
Finding information that will help complete a specific task
Reading what other customers have to say about products and services to inform a decision about whether to do business
Contacting customer service
Learning about how changes to products or services will have personal impact
Making changes to customer profile or account

An important aspect of user research is conducting stakeholder research.

At each point of the user research cycle, it’s imperative to be mindful of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs