Getting data about your product and understanding customers´ needs are vital to achieve a project with a successful user experience. UX Research methods are many and very different from each other. Depending on the project phase and the type of information we want to extract, we can use one method or another.

Today we are going to focus on the most common research methods used in the initial phases of a project, where our main objective is to discover any type of relevant information about the product and the users that use it, which allows us to design a product that satisfies the users´ needs and desires and to achieve business objectives.

In-depth interviews

This technique consists of conducting interviews with the target audience of the product or service that we want to investigate in order to obtain qualitative information about it. Several interviews are carried out separately, that is, with a single user in each session, and trying to contemplate a representative sample of all types of users of the product or service. During the interview, the user is asked a series of questions related to the product or service about the reason why he uses it, when and how he does it, what his assessment is about it, if he would change or include something else, etc.

Focus Group

Focus Groups are similar to interviews as users are asked a series of questions about the product or service in order to extract information about their needs, expectations or behaviors. The main difference is that several users participate in Focus Groups at the same time.

A group of users that represent the different profiles that use the product or service is selected and questions are asked for everyone to give their opinion and debate among themselves. In this way, we can obtain valuable insights about the product or service, taking into account different points of view at the same time.

Online or face-to-face surveys

Surveys are very useful when we want to obtain quantitative information on certain aspects of the product or service under analysis and its users. The main advantage of surveys is that they allow us to collect and analyze data from many more users in less time. In addition, we can carry out surveys online or face-to-face, or even combine the two formats to target different profiles. And we can send the online survey in multiple ways: by sending an email or showing it on the website that we are investigating, for example.

Field studies

Ethnographic observation and field studies consist of observing a group of users while they interact in a real way with the product or service, in such a way that they allow obtaining much more realistic data and detecting the behaviors and problems of the different types of users.

Heuristic analysis

Heuristic analysis is used to detect the main usability problems of a digital product, in order to propose improvements for each detected weakness. During this analysis, special attention must be paid to a series of key aspects such as the language used, the structure and navigation or the search system.

UX Benchmarking

This technique consists of observing other digital products in order to detect good practices to apply in our project. We can analyze the product´s main competitors or any other product within the sector. It is also useful to look at other digital products that have some kind of relationship with the product we are working on, even if they are from different sectors, as it can give us very interesting and innovative ideas.

Digital data analytics

Digital analytics consists of collecting quantitative data with a tool, such as Google Analytics, to be able to measure and analyze the interactions made by users with the digital product. The purpose of this technique is to draw conclusions about the use of the digital product, considering aspects such as: which are the most visited pages, from which devices are most accessed, which are the most searched terms, etc.

Heat maps

Heat maps allow you to detect the digital product areas with which users interact the most. They offer information about the number of clicks or taps made in each area of the page, where users move the mouse the most or how far most users scroll, for example. So that they allow detecting which are the most attractive areas for users and, on the contrary, which ones go unnoticed.

Navigation recordings

This last technique consists of recording the users' actual browsing sessions using a digital tool to observe how they navigate through the digital product: which pages each user visits, which path they follow, which elements they interact with, which sections they stop at, which problems find, etc.

In conclusion, these are some of the user research methods that we can use in a project. Of course, we do not have to carry out all of them in every project, but rather, depending on the needs and requirements of each project, we must decide which ones can be most useful.