Regardless of what your organization does, you will always find opportunities to improve it. Many times, the way to find them is to ask your end users directly. Although it is true that this can be complex (since there are many intangible factors that affect the way in which the user lives his experience at a given moment), user experience research or UX research can be your great ally.

Essentially, UX research studies target users to find out their needs and pain points. The ultimate goal is for managers to have an overview of the organization from the customer’s point of view. This helps to focus on those issues that are (or are not) working from the user’s perspective. In conclusion, it allows managers to identify key points for improvement, as well as processes that have become irrelevant, outdated, or obsolete.

There are several ways to conduct user research: face-to-face interviews, offline and online surveys, task observation and analysis, or other types of feedback.

Why is UX research relevant? As we said, in the UX world it is essential to constantly receive the opinions of the final users to know how to improve designs. For example, observing how users of a software platform struggle to complete a certain task can help show designers whether an icon should be larger, a color would be lighter, or a hyperlink is too hidden.

Similarly, UX research can be used more broadly to find pain points that have to be overcome in order to improve user experience. You should be able to know if users are overwhelmed, if they have been able to complete certain tasks, if they feel they have been adequately assisted by the help desk or if they need a completely new service platform. Ultimately, if you want your users to be as happy as possible, you need to find out how and in what condition they are currently.

To do this, you will need to choose the methods that best suit your research goal and provide you with the right data (figuring out which ones can also be tricky). Then, to convert the data into information, you will have to interpret the results. And that is complex, since people sometimes have a hard time understanding why they feel that way.

In this sense, it won’t benefit you to know if an employee finds a task overwhelming or frustrating if you don’t understand why. And even more: it is possible that, at the time of collecting the data, you do not know certain elements that are influencing the emotions of the people surveyed. In fact, there are many factors that come into play when we talk about turning human emotions into data and useful ideas.

These are some of the most relevant benefits of UX research:

  • User Benefits – By getting feedback directly from end users through direct feedback, you will be able to identify areas for improvement that will significantly improve user experience.
  • Product benefits – Focusing your UX research on a specific product will help you identify areas for improvement in the design of that product and its overall functionality.
  • Business Benefits – Having unhappy customers is bad for business. Rather, you need to make sure that your users get value from the solutions you provide.

In this sense, through user experience research you will be able to:

  • Better understand how your users experience the products and platforms you offer.
  • Discover new needs of your customers, as well as opportunities for your business.
  • Optimize internal processes based on direct user feedback.
  • Apply the knowledge learned to offer user experiences that outperform your competitors.

What are the most common methods of UX research? There are two main subgroups of user research: qualitative and quantitative research.

Qualitative research involves interviews and field studies, which will provide you with a better understanding of what guides user behavior. Carrying them out requires you to ask a small number of people open-ended questions about their experience and habits. Thus, you will obtain a clear vision of what needs to be improved or changed in the organization.

Quantitative research refers to more structured methods, such as surveys and digital experience monitoring. It is about collecting quantifiable data about what users do, as well as testing hypotheses developed from qualitative research.