Common Research Methods:
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Interviews
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Surveys
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Usability Studies
Interviews:
A research method used to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions, thoughts, experiences and feelings.
Interviews are usually conducted in person and include a series of open-ended questions. Where the researcher asks the user about their experience. use interviews when your questions require a detailed response.
Benefits:
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Allow you to understand what users think and why
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Opportunity to ask follow-up questions and really understand the user’s experience
Drawback:
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Interviews take a lot of time and money this means you’ll end up with a
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Small sample size which can be risky
Surveys:
An activity where many people are asked the same questions in order to understand what most people think about a product.
Surveys allow us to hear from a larger number of users than we can during interviews. surveys include a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions.
Research Benefits:
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Surveys allow us to get feedback from a larger sample size of users
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Fast and inexpensive you can hear perspectives from a lot of users very quickly
Research Drawback:
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That feedback from users is limited survey questions don’t allow for in-depth feedback
Usability Studies:
They are a technique that helps us evaluate a product by testing it on users. The goal of a usability study is to identify pain points that the user experiences with different prototypes, so the issues can be fixed before the final product launches.
During a usability study you get a chance to see how your end users interact with your new product or feature and afterwards you can interview the users to learn more about their experience.
Research Benefits:
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Usability studies allow us to observe first-hand user interaction with our product
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Keep our assumptions from getting in the way of acknowledging the user’s actual experience
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In-depth feedback
Research Drawbacks:
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Only measure one thing how easy the product is to use.
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Usability studies are expensive because you have to bring users into a lab and reimburse them for their time.
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How a user interacts with your product in a lab environment is different than how they will actually use it in real life.
Post-launch Usability Study:
might include data like success metrics and key performance indicators which are commonly known as kpis
Key Performance Indicators:
are critical measures of progress toward an end goal. The kpis for an app or new product launch might include things like how much time the user spent on a task or the number of clicks they used to make a purchase.
Check out my behnace or my portfolio for examples.