UX Research is only meaningful if it :
Uncovers all the impactful data
Identifies/validates value,
Empowers the functional architecture phase
Is a consistent, dependable process
And critically, if it actually ends.
How often do you find a project trying to minimise, if not avoid altogether, proper UX research?
How often have you been told that research is holding everyone up?
How many projects have you worked on where there was no research (unless you call the strongly held opinions of the business 'research')?
On the opposite side of this experience is the project team and leadership, who see research as (and I quote):
An object in motion that will never change and never end unless acted upon by another force
That 'force' implicitly being the business saying "stop the research" or simply avoiding research altogether. And it's a fair point. I've worked with many acedemic researchers who will research everything, seemingly without focus or end. Worse, without any form of consistent, actionable deliverables for leadership or the project team to rely upon. It's no wonder UX research is treated so contemptfully or dismissed as a waste of valuable time.
This is suicide for UX. Without UX research there is no real UX, just assumptions and, if you're really lucky, a solution that's easy to use that solves a problem that doesn't exist and no-one will use.
And I want to return to the industry wide issue that UX Research doesn't seem to come with a standard set of deliverables that deliver consistent, actionable insights, marking the end of research and empowering the beginning of functional architecture.
Except there is. My team carry out a standard, reliable, quantifiable set of research activities and deliver specific UX Research artefacts, enabling the functional architecture phase. But more on that in a minute.
What Meaningful UX Research Must Do
Meaningful UX research must uncover and deliver valuable insights via defined research activities and deliverable artefacts.
It must identify and communicate what is important and impactful, not only to the user but to the business and the project teams.
Meaningful UX Research gathers and validates impactful qualitative and quantitative data from the Business, technology and user domains of the project and turns them into actionable insights. We do not gather this data because it is data, we gathers it because we have validated that it is:
Impactful for the user, business and challenge
Required to allow us to functionally architect the most valuable solution for the business and the user
Technically and financially feasible
What Meaningful UX Research Must Gather
In the diagram above you will see the types of data that are largely required from the three domains. This isn't designed to confir the UX methodologies we use to gather them, only to highlight the meaningful and important data that we require in order to make the functional architecture phase of UX successful and optimal.
TAKE-AWAYs
Once you have all this information you can confidently say that UX research is complete and UX Functional Architecture can begin.
Equally importantly, you will have the information you need to accurately estimate the time it will take to carry out this next phase of UX
The other project teams (devs etc) will have access to data critical to them being able to estimate the time and effort required to carry out their roles. Data that was not available before UX Research was done and data that allows them to deliver right first time, saving a lot of wasted time recoding and adding additional features. Another massive value of good UX Research.
Have a defined, consistent process of gathering this information - it guarantees you can do your job and builds confidence in project leadership that UX Research is an important part of the project.
UX Reseach does not belong in Agile - it helps define the stories that feed Agile
Log anything that impacts your ability to carry out efficacious UX Research in a Risk Log
This data should be delivered in a consistent set of UX Research artefacts that all have a defined purpose that is clearly communicated. More on those artefacts in another post.
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