UX Research in-demand Future Skill
Written by Prerna Bhardwaj
UX researcher, designer, architect, interface designer, and some other similar job titles have been floating in the web-design industry a lot lately. Sometimes it gets difficult to decide which of these is a perfect fit for you. In my view anything that works with your SOFT SKILLS is perfect for you. These skills have been emphasized more than hard skills because the latter can be learned from someone or you can gain them with experience. However, soft skills (or interpersonal skills) define you better and if you work under a title that is aligned with your personal self, then you tend to be happier and satisfied with your work life.
Without getting distracted anymore, coming back to the UX job titles. While I was searching for a career in UX, I was overwhelmed by the work expected from a UX designer. The goal of a UX designer is simply defined as to create the best experience possible for users which in return would help the client to convert the maximum number of interactions into some kind of gain. This translates itself into a really broad spectrum of responsibilities.
With a closer look at the aspects of UX, I found that for different companies UX designer tends to have different roles. In a middle to small-sized company, the designer has to be a combination of researcher, designer, information architect, interaction designer, UI, and motion designer. In some profiles having a bit of knowledge about coding is also expected. In these cases, your knowledge and experience matter the most.
This concept is not so true in the case of colossal size companies like Google, Amazon, Bosch, and other big brands. Here, there is an individual team for each specific task. This is because of two main reasons. First, it is obvious they can afford to hire a large number of people and the second is the enormous amount of work they have for each discipline cannot be handled by one individual. So in such cases, rational thinking, collaboration, and communication are the key skills needed.
UX Research: The Foundation
Creating a seamless, flawless, intuitive, and interactive experience for a user is a long stepwise process. It is a combination of different stages to give the final product its free-flowing wave nature. In this article, I have only discussed UX Research as a future skill but all the stages are equally important and play a vital role in product success.
The concept of designing a product by keeping in mind the needs of the user has always been there but there was no specific term for it. In 1995, Donald Norman joined the team at Apple as their User Experience Architect and came up with the label “User eXperience design” to encircle all that it represents as UX. He was not a designer, on the contrary, he was a cognitive scientist, so his analytical viewpoint as a researcher was more valuable to Apple rather than his design techniques. In 1988, Norman published The Psychology of Everyday Things (later updated to The Design of Everyday Things) — which continues to be a UX design staple to this day.
The UX design process in general starts with understanding the goals of the client and identifying their focus group. This is followed by designing research around it, here comes into play our UX research.
UX research: The position
In today’s world of competition, research is a vital and foremost requirement to have a successful product. It is one of the in-demand skills of the Future. The average salaries of UX researchers with average company size have been reported by user interviews to be $89,700. It is an emerging field and is growing exponentially. It shows how neuroscience combined with data analytics and AI can mold the design for the betterment of both users and companies.
The education requirements for this position are in general wrapped around the study of human psychology and have nothing to do with design. Here is one example:
The most important thing to keep in mind is that companies are not looking for highly visual designs in a portfolio for this position. They are looking for someone who can foster an understanding of their customers’ needs and craft end-to-end research projects that can help the entire team. The findings of good research could be useful gems in translating into business impact.
UX research: The Job
“UX researcher” is like a scientist or an engineer who inspects the ground before building any structure on that ground. Gathering all the information which is important for the client, conducting surveys about the requirements of users, using analytics to get to know the demographics and interests of their users are the key responsibilities of a UX researcher.
After getting a clear perspective about the needs of users; personas, user stories, and empathy maps are created. These steps are meticulously prioritized and executed using various tools available in the market for research.
Research Tools
There are a number of UX research tools available in the market. Some are free and some can be used with a subscription fee. Each of these applications is designed with a specific target. I have gathered some of these and explained their purpose.
User- survey tools
Creating a survey form to know the views, requirements, expectations, and pain points of the user is the very first step in the journey of UX research. This task has been simplified because of applications like Typeform, Google forms, Survey monkey, Google Survey, and many others. There is a wide range of question types to pick from like multiple-choice, short answers, long answers, or creating a poll. This gives a lot of flexibility to the researcher to frame a particular question. Along with this, pictures and patterns can be added to make the questionnaires interesting.
In general, surveys are designed in a way that they are not offensive to anyone, have a friendly tone to them, and consist of indirect questions. Each question is designed to know a particular target problem, so multiple-choice questions are preferred wherever possible.
Analytics tools
In order to get insight into the present demographics and usability of a product or website, researchers use really powerful apps and services like Google analytics, Heaps, Kissmetrics, mixpanel, and several others. They provide a detailed view of the performance of each page in a website that includes: engagement time, bounce rate, source of website traffic, session duration, behavior, and conversions. They also help in administering the demographics of the users which include; age, gender, interests, geographic location, and type of device used.
These tools are also used in market research, i.e., determining the most used feature of the products or services (similar to the planned product) already present in the market.
The information gathered can be very useful in determining the target audience, and render their interest to converge them in favor of the client.
User Interviews
A video interview can give far more information as compared to the questionnaires. They are efficient when quality weighs more than quantity in particular research. Applications like UserTesting, UXcam, Content Square, Eyequant, and Smartlook provide a platform to conduct one-to-one user interviews which can be recorded and be used for research purposes. They cater a choice in demographics, i.e., age group, gender, location, and interest of the interviewee can be predefined.
Apart from this, Eyeuant and Smartlook also supply the heat mapping of the users. This can help to understand the eye movements of the user, attract their attention, predict design perception and quantify gaze patterns.
Data Compilation
Once all the data is collected, these feedbacks and data points are sorted into different categories, processed according to priority requirements, and compiled into an understandable report. Miro is one of the applications which is a very proficient tool for sorting, managing, and streamlining large quantities of data. It is widely used for collaborating with team members, brainstorming with them, drawing out sitemaps, and probable user flow.
Presentation of data in the form of tables, charts, and graphs makes it understandable for everyone in a team. Data visualization applications like Tableau, Fusioncharts, Infogram, and Chartblocks are there just to do that. The inbuilt infographics, colored charts, and graphs make it easier on the eyes and cater as an effective way of communicating.
To summarize it may be said that good research is designed by prioritizing across numerous work streams, evaluating the moment, scope, and scale of potential studies. Thereby giving an insight into present scenarios, customer demands and presenting them in the form of understandable data.
A UX researcher handovers this blueprint for building a successful product to the UX designer, who can start designing the wireframes, sitemaps, and user-flow. I would discuss the role and scope of a UX designer in a separate article.
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