UX research methods: Which one should you use and when?

Every successful product has a great user experience (UX).

As Kat Holmes, former Director of Inclusive Design at Microsoft, explains, “Inclusive design starts with understanding people who use technology in unexpected ways. UX research helps us uncover those stories and build products for everyone.”

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Microsoft uses UX research, and you should, too. But first, you need to know how to conduct UX research and the top research methods. 

We’ve got you covered — we’ll guide you through why UX research is essential, the 9 most used UX research methods, and how to pick the one that fits your needs most.

Let’s dive in!

TL;DR - UX research methods and techniques

Here's a quick rundown of the top UX research methods we will explore further in the blog:

1. User interviews
2. Usability testing
3. Prototype testing
4. Tree testing
5. Card sorting
6. Diary studies
7. Eye tracking
8. Surveys
9. System Usability Scale (SUS Scores)

Once you use these research methods to collect data, what’s next? You should turn that raw data into meaningful insights to create and improve designs that satisfy your users.

HeyMarvin makes that possible.

HeyMarvin is an AI research tool for note-taking and qualitative data analysis. It is a centralized repository that allows you to quickly share data with your stakeholders, identify sentiments and themes, and collaborate with your team effortlessly.

So, don’t just collect data; transform it into actionable insights with HeyMarvin. Sign up for a free account today!

What are UX research methods?

UX research methods are the techniques you use to understand how users think, behave, and interact with a product. Instead of making assumptions, you apply specific research methods to gather evidence and support your decisions.

These methods involve collecting data either from what users say or from how they behave. They support the entire product lifecycle, from early discovery, when you identify problems, to post-launch optimization, when you refine the experience.

Ultimately, UX research methods help you build useful, usable products that align with real user needs.

Types of user research methods

User research methods explore how people think, feel, and behave across contexts. When you narrow that focus to user experience, the foundation stays the same. That’s why the main user research methods also apply directly to UX research.

Here’s how that classification looks at a high level:

How to choose the right UX research methods for your project

UX research is the backbone of designs that appeal to users, but with many methods available, which is the right one for your study?

Here are the steps to choosing the best research methods:

1. Define Your Research Goals: What must you learn from your research?

If you’re figuring out what your users want or their challenges, use methods like interviews and field studies to gain deep insights. If you have your design ready and want to optimize it further, opt for A/B testing and surveys.

2. Identify Your Project Stage: Each stage of the design process calls for a different research method.

For example, in the early design stages, opt for card sorting and diary studies. In the late stages, choose usability testing and analytics to validate and optimize user flows.

3. Consider Your Time and Budget: Ask yourself, ‘How much time do you have, and what’s your realistic budget?’

Choose fast and affordable usability testing and surveys if you’re on a budget or have a tight schedule. Alternatively, if you have more time and flexibility, opt for longer interviews and field studies that offer deeper insights.

4. Match the Method to the Users: A big part of deciding your method of choice is shaped by your group of participants.

For example, diary studies might work best for a specialized group to get a detailed look into the users' lives. If your audience is diverse, surveys can be great for capturing broad data and spotting patterns.

Note: One method might not be enough. Consider mixing UX research methods, such as interviews, surveys, and heatmaps, to gather insights from different angles.

You’ll also gain a broader perspective on attitudes and user behaviors and enhance the accuracy of your findings.

Common UX research methods and when to use them

We’ve seen how to choose the right UX research method depending on your objectives and project phase.

Now, let's explore the UX research methods mainly used today and their ideal use cases:

1. User interviews

This research method is the most popular among UX designers because it’s relatively quick and easy to gather information through conversations. You can hold one-on-one discussions with participants and learn about their desires, needs, pain points, motivations, and wants.

When to Use: It’s best when you want to collect as much detailed information as possible, which can help you create accurate user personas and journey maps.

2. Usability testing

This method refers to a researcher observing the users as they perform and complete a particular task.

When to Use: You can use it later in the design process to evaluate fully functioning prototypes. It will help you create a report with the usability issues and review each situation.

3. Prototype testing

Creating a prototype, a website mock-up, or interactive HTML pages allows you to explore ideas before implementing them.

When to Use: Use it early to save time and effort. Before full development, you can test how well a product design works, whether it meets the user's needs, and catch errors.

4. Tree testing

You can involve your testers in assessing whether the architecture of a website or an app is intuitive. Primarily, the users interact with the prototype menu.

When to Use: If you want to assess the findability and labeling of information in a website or app, it's often ideal to use tree testing in the early design stages or when redesigning. If the tree fails, you can fix the problem without going back to the beginning or spending too much.

5. Card sorting

In this qualitative research technique, a designer creates a set of cards, each with a piece of content or an idea. Then, you can ask users to organize the cards into groups and categorize each group according to what makes sense to them.

When to Use: Use card sorting in the early phases of designing to organize and label your website information in a logical structure that matches your users' needs.

6. Diary studies

This method can uncover user behaviors and experiences over a set period. Depending on your specific area of interest, you can ask the participants to keep a log (diary) of their experiences and thoughts about how they use a product daily.

When to Use: It’s ideal when you want to learn the process users take to solve a problem, observe the products you want to replace, and identify the current pain points you’re trying to solve.

7. Eye tracking

If you want to see how users interact with your product design, website, advertisement, videos, or physical objects, you can track how long and where people look.

When to Use: This method can help you understand how people understand and respond to visual designs at different stages of the design process. It can help you identify areas of interest, evaluate usability, and test different visual design variations.

8. Surveys

Usually, quantitative surveys are used during the initial phase or after a product's release to collect data on its overall performance. Multiple participants tick from a list of answers, such as scales, ratings, or yes/no answers.

When to Use: You can use surveys to collect data on user satisfaction and gain valuable insights into the product experience.

9. System usability scale (SUS scores)

SUS is a standardized ten-item scale used to measure user satisfaction and subjectively evaluate usability.

When to Use: It is an excellent method to incorporate with other research methods. You can also use it to benchmark and improve certain features of a digital product.

Key UX research steps you must follow

Next, let’s look at how to conduct UX research step-by-step.

1. Define the Objectives of Your Research: You should start with clear goals and objectives to help you choose the proper research methods, align your team, and recruit the right users. For example, your objective might be to identify why users drop off in the user journey or how new features could improve the onboarding process.
2. Identify Your Target Audience: Your entire user base will likely not face the same pain points and will not provide the insights you want. Instead, you should look for common characteristics, such as specific demographics, that face your focus issue. Let customer feedback and analytics tools guide you to zero in on the right target audience.
3. Select the Right UX Research Method: We touched on the research methods earlier, and you should use them at the ideal stage of your project. 

For example, pick surveys when you want closed-ended questions to gauge your users’ sentiments.

4. Choose a Tool for Conducting Your User Research: Choose the right tool for your study based on your chosen research method. The following section will discuss the best research tools.
5. Conduct the Research: It’s time to involve your users in your research in a neutral and unbiased environment. You should make your participants feel comfortable and heard. 

Remember to record your observations using notes, videos, and heat maps.

6. Analyze the Data and Gather Insights: To understand user behavior, you must analyze customer feedback. You can also track the adoption of specific features, satisfaction scores, or changes in user behavior over time.

Qualitative analysis can be challenging, but not anymore.

Thanks to our AI assistant tool, HeyMarvin, you can now analyze many user responses in minutes. Our software can automatically create transcripts, identify patterns, and tag the notes to improve searchability.

Book your free demo today and see HeyMarvin in action.

7. Share Research Insights with Key Stakeholders: The next step is to share your research findings with key decision-makers. This will allow collaboration between everyone involved and ensure your decisions align with your business goals.
8. Implement the Findings: There’s no point in conducting your UX research if you don’t implement the insights. Let’s say your users don’t find the cart because your menu is too cluttered. A solution here would be to simplify and personalize the menu for the users. 
9. Track and Improve Key Metrics: As you start moving the needle in the right direction and users engage with the design, you should track their behavior. Collect feedback and interview them to identify areas for further improvement. Then, implement the UX design changes and test again.

How to use AI for UX research methods

Automation aside, the real value of using AI for UX research is the ability to make better decisions. As AI removes the time and scale constraints, you can run more studies, analyze more data in-depth, and spot patterns you’d likely miss manually.

To gain all these benefits and stay in control of the most important decisions, consider using AI when you:

• Plan and prepare your UX studies: Have the AI generate interview questions, draft surveys, or write you some usability test scripts.
• Collect data at scale: Use AI to cover some parts of data collection (take notes from human-moderated interviews) or to entirely moderate them (an AI interviewer can lead the conversation and handle the note-taking).
• Transcribe and organize research: Automatically transcribe interviews, label speakers, and structure conversations for easier analysis.
• Analyze and look for patterns: Detect recurring themes, tag insights, and group similar responses across big datasets.
• Share insights with your teammates: Generate summaries, highlight key quotes, and link insights to evidence so stakeholders will understand what matters.

HeyMarvin as your UX research methods tool

The goal of UX research is to generate usable insights. The challenge is that most research workflows are still fragmented. As you collect more data from different channels, it becomes harder to manage it and even harder to uncover deep, important insights.

HeyMarvin supports you to overcome this challenge. Our AI-native qualitative research platform acts as a repository that connects key parts of your UX research process. It’s the best AI tool for UX research, supplying features that improve note-taking, theme recognition, analysis, and reporting.

Microsoft used our tool to analyze data from 80 hours of conversations, automate transcription of the interviews, and boost collaboration among team members. The company used data insights to create a responsible AI maturity model.

HeyMarvin doesn’t replace your researchers, but it acts as an AI-powered assistant that will:

• Automatically capture time-stamped notes: When recording sessions, you can stay present in the conversation without worrying about note-taking.
• Help you scale user interviews: While you control the research design and validation, AI-moderated interviews gather consistent data for you.
• Prepare the data for analysis: Generates transcripts in 40+ languages, identifies speakers, and gets summaries ready for analysis.
• Speed up pattern recognition: Identifies themes across your notes, linking insights to quotes, clips, and supporting evidence.
• Detect sentiment in your research data: Helps you become aware of the users’ emotions and attitudes; not just what they say, but how they feel.
• Act as a centralized research repository: Helps you organize, search, and reuse insights across projects in a single platform.
• Enable real-time collaboration: Project members can review insights together without relying on static reports.
• Allow you to sync insights across platforms: Integrates with tools like Figma, Notion, Asana, and Google Drive, so research stays connected to your product workflow instead of sitting in silos.

Book a demo today to see how HeyMarvin helps you get to the insights that matter, faster and with less effort.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Below, we’ve compiled the common questions researchers ask about types of UX research:

What UX research method works best for a new product?

Check out the UX research methods that are great for a new product:

• Interviews to validate your ideas and give you early insights.
• Field studies are conducted to uncover unspoken needs or see how users use the tools in their everyday lives.
• Surveys to understand which features you should prioritize.

How often should you conduct UX research?

The short answer: it depends on your goals, product lifecycle, and available resources.

For example, you might conduct UX research bi-weekly during the discovery design stage to validate your ideas, while the ideal frequency for the development stage might be after the launch of each feature.

Can UX research improve conversion rates?

Absolutely! UX research can improve conversion rates in these ways:

1. Through usability testing and interviews, you can understand where users struggle with issues like confusing carts and unclear CTAs. Fixing these issues can reduce abandonment, increasing the conversion rate.
2. A/B and prototype testing can help you validate changes before rolling them out. The compelling copy and CTAs ultimately improve conversion.
3. Task analysis helps you understand the inefficient paths. Streamlining these steps can directly boost your conversions.

Is quantitative or qualitative UX research more effective?

Regarding qualitative vs. quantitative research, both are effective because they answer different questions.

Qualitative research is ideal for answering ‘why’ users behave a certain way. It helps you gain deep insights into the audience's pain points, motivations, and behaviors.

Quantitative research is used to answer ‘how many’ experience an issue. It helps you validate patterns and make data-driven decisions.

Can UX research methods be combined in a single study?

Yes, you can combine different UX research methods into a single study, and this approach actually helps you obtain a very detailed, complete picture of user behavior. A common mix includes interviews (to help reveal user motivations) and usability tests (to point out how interview insights play out in real interactions). By combining methods, you’ll not only validate findings but also make them more reliable as you confirm them through multiple approaches.

What UX research methods work best for product validation?

The best UX research methods depend on what exactly you’re trying to validate about a product. You might need to assess if it truly meets user needs, what the friction points are, or what satisfaction scores you’re getting pre/post launch. Methods such as usability testing, prototype testing, and surveying work best because they are evaluative. Especially when you match them with quantitative metrics or SUS scores, they give you measurable validation.

Conclusion

Here you are at the end!

Take a moment to consider the proper research method for your project. Then, stay practical and follow the steps to guide your next UX research process. Lastly, embrace the tools we have compiled to streamline the process.

Speaking of tools, if you’re looking for an AI-powered research assistant, you should definitely add HeyMarvin to your tool stack.

Our software will automatically capture your live notes during interviews and create accurate transcripts. It can also detect sentiments within notes and group recurring ones.

So why wait? Try HeyMarvin for free today and ensure your research workflow is centralized, shareable, and insightful.