User Experience Research Methods: How to Figure Out What Your Users Actually Want

User research is an imperative part of designing effective and user-centric digital products. By systematically gathering insights directly from your target audience with the help of user experience research methods, you’ll understand their behaviour, needs and pain points. And this can help you set up a strategy on how to implement those findings into your product or service.

User research provides the business with insights on how to align their business goals with user needs. Also, it informs the designers how to shape the user experience in order to meet both user and client expectations. If we’re able to find solutions to the existing problems and offer value, then we’re on a great way to create a positive experience and a successful product.

In this blog post, we’ll explore what user research is, when to use it, how to plan it, and review different research methods with real-world examples.

It’s all about understanding the challenges and solving the problems of the people who will use your product.

What is User Research?

Simply put, user research is a systematic gathering of various types of data directly from users, which impacts design decisions and shapes the overall user experience. Why? Because that data offers great insight into how your target audience thinks, what they want and expect and their pain points.

There are two main types of user research: qualitative and quantitative. The first one deals with definitive, numerical values, while the other one is a bit harder to express in a simple equation as it deals with user behaviour and subjective experience.

You’ll use one of the two or a combination of both based on what stage of the product development you’re in, but more on that in the following sections.

We’ll also cover two other important aspects of user research: attitudinal vs behavioural research, as well as generative vs evaluative research. Let’s dive in.

Qualitative vs Quantitative

Quantitative research answers 3 questions:

• How many?


• How often?


• How much?

It’s unbiased, numerical data gathered from a large group of users in strict testing environments. Think of different statistics which can be measured and analyzed: page visits, bounce rates, conversion rates etc.

Quantitative user research is best used when you have an existing product or a product that’s in its discovery phase or the final design phase.

Quantitative methods include surveys and questionnaires, usability testing, A/B testing, web analytics, funnel analysis, card sorting, click tests, tree testing, desirability research and eye.tracking testing.

Not one of these methods is better than the other. Each research method is chosen based on what you want to measure and what results you want to achieve. When choosing a method, think about which one will give you the most precise results taking into consideration the resources you have available.

Also worth noting is that hybrid methods are used very often. Combining two, three or more methods yield more precise results.

Qualitative methods give insights into user behaviours, trying to understand how they think and feel. It tries to answer the Why?: what are the user’s motivations, problems, why those problems are affecting them and how. This type of research is best used at the early stages of product development. That is to say, in the discovery phase, where we try to determine the problems and offer solutions and value to the product.

There are 8 types of methods: grounded theory, focus groups, interviews, diary studies, surveys, participant observation, card sorting and qualitative data analysis (also called thematic analysis).

Attitudinal vs Behavioural

The easiest way to to distinguish between these two methods is to rename them as: What users SAY vs What users actually DO.

Attitudinal methods rely on self-reported data meaning the outcome is a reflection of people’s perceptions, expectations and experience. Gathering this type of data involves asking questions about their experience of the product: feelings, thoughts and opinions, something that can’t be directly observed.

Behavioural methods are based on the user’s observed interaction with a product or a service. This way we get more objective and reliable information.

Source: NNgroup

Generative vs Evaluative

Generative methods (sometimes called foundational or exploratory) gain insights into what a typical target persona would look like. It’s typically done at the beginning of the product cycle as it explores the way users do things, why they do it and how they act in certain situations.

Main methods of this type of research are interviews, surveys, concept testing, diary studies, and card sorting.

Evaluative research is used for validating design concepts and making sure the design is headed in the right direction. Methods include qualitative usability testing, preference testing, surveys, tree testing, first click testing, task analysis, and A/B testing.

When to Use User Research?

User research isn’t reserved only for the brainstorming, workshops or the discovery phase of the project. Continuous use of research methods throughout the product cycle ensures we’re on the right track and that we deliver the best product possible.

In the discovery phase research helps us define product goals, user needs and pain points and user personas. Throughout the design phase research is used to validate design decisions. The post-launch phase matters as much as the aforementioned ones because we have the opportunity to collect insights from users who started using our product.

This direct feedback will tell us if we have created a successful product (with room to improve, of course) or have we completely dropped the ball.

Most Commonly Used User Experience Research Methods

As you may have noticed, there are some methods that fall into more than one category of user research. Since there are so many, we’ve chosen to present the most commonly used ones.

Most UX researchers use multiple methods in order to get the best possible data and, as the ultimate goal, the best possible end product.

1) In-depth/User Interviews (Qualitative, Attitudinal)

User interviews are a qualitative and attitudinal method and one of the oldest ones when it comes to UX research. Here at Q, we use interviews during the discovery phase to understand our users’ needs and expectations. Getting in-depth feedback straight from the target audience helps us gain valuable insights that shape our product and improve existing features.

So, how is this user experience research method performed? The key is to ask open-style questions such as ‘How do you use this app feature’, ‘How would you enhance this feature?’ or ‘What would you use this app for?’. It may seem simple, but be careful when writing down the questions: Don’t use wording that can lead the user’s answer in any specific direction otherwise you won’t get true, honest feedback.

The ‘downside’ of this method is that it’s not mathematically exact and it cannot represent the entire target audience, but if performed on a large number of participants, we can extract patterns and shape a user persona which will represent the ideal user.

2) Surveys (Qualitative/Quantitative, Attitudinal)

Surveys are another great way for doing UX research if you need to test a larger sample of users quickly. They can be both qualitative and quantitative, depending on the questions you ask. If the questions are based on collecting numerical data, they fall into the quantitative type of research, meanwhile, open-ended questions fall into the qualitative research.

Since it all comes down to how the questions are set, this method can sometimes lead to potentially getting wrong insights, which eventually leads to making wrong decisions regarding your software in development. So the key here is to ask the precise questions and aim for real users’ experience.

3) Usability Testing (Qualitative, Behavioural)

Usability testing is the golden standard when it comes to user experience research methods, especially in the early phases of the product design. This user-centred approach involves giving users a task to do — or a number of them — while being moderated. While the task is being performed, moderators observe the user’s behaviour as well as listen for their feedback.

A big plus of this method is that it doesn’t require a large number of participants. Here, only several of them are enough, and they alone can try and find faults in the tested software with no further need for a large user base explaining how something should actually work.

4) A/B Testing (Quantitative, Behavioural)

A/B testing is a widespread method where you need to test two versions of — whatever you need to test.

The benefit of this quantitative and behavioural method is that it gives concrete, precise data. It gives numbers and lets us know how users behave while using our product, showing us what works better and what doesn’t. However, this method lacks the ‘why’ a certain user decision’s made, not the reasons behind it.

5) Analytics and tracking user behaviour (Quantitative, Behavioural)

Now, something rather data-oriented — analytics and tracking user behaviour. This is where tools such as Google Analytics and Hotjar come into play. With these methods, we can quantify insights and get real-life data on our software.

For example, with Hotjar, you can see ‘heatmaps’, where it’s clearly seen which parts of the, e.g., app users click on the most, in which places their cursor stays the longest, etc.

The same goes for Google Analytics, a mega powerful tool that enables us to see which webpages users spend the most time on, what the bounce rate of a certain webpage is, and so forth. However, just like with A/B testing, this UX research method doesn’t provide answers for the reasons behind the behaviour. But it’s a great way for detecting flaws in a larger sample of users.

6) Card sorting (Qualitative/Quantitative, Behavioural)

Card sorting is a qualitative and behavioural method that aims to understand how users organise and perceive information. This method is used to define the information architecture of a product. The way we do it is giving users labeled cards, and they sort information and ideas into groups in a way that makes sense to them — and see if our product matches their expectations.

7) Diary Studies (Qualitative, Attitudinal/Behavioural)

Diary studies are yet another useful method because they track users’ interactions and their experience with our software by writing it in their diary. This method is good for long-term tracking of the user experience and gives us information about the satisfaction (or on the contrary, dissatisfaction) as well as their habits concerning our product.

8) Eye-tracking (Quantitative, Behavioural)

A quantitative and behavioural method of using eye-tracking technology is extremely useful as it shows exactly where exactly users are looking when testing the new software, and analyses the way they’re looking at it. With this method, it’s possible to determine which elements or features get the most traction, but also those which are not overly interesting to users.

Afectiva, Lumen, and Tobii are some of the most popular tools for the eye-tracking method, offering solutions for getting insights into what captures attention, what doesn’t, what drives engagement, and so forth.

Optimisation of a software product or service is the key goal of this method as it quantifies and analyses actual user behaviour and helps improve the final product.

User research is all about teamwork.

How do we do it?

After giving you a brief overview of user research (believe us, there’s a lot more to talk about), we’d like to show you how we at Q utilize these methods to deliver successful and lasting solutions.

As a software and design agency, we start working on user research from the very beginning of the project. This discovery phase serves as a playground and a testing arena to figure out the objectives of the product (the business side) and the real-world expectations and problems the users come across when looking at this product (the users’ side).

One of the main things we need to determine is — is there a real need for this product? If there is, we try to determine what problems it’ll solve and how to solve them successfully, based on user behaviour related to similar products and of course, user research.

If someone wants to create a similar product in an existing niche (the needs of the users are somewhat met), then we determine how this product can perform better than those already on the market.

We conduct user research to see how we can provide value to our clients and users. A product that isn’t useful will become obsolete in a short period of time, because no one will use it. That’s another reason why user research is invaluable. You get to plan your resources (time, money and participants) accordingly.

So, How to Choose the Right Method?

At Q, the use of multiple methods, depending on the specifics of our software — be it a mobile app, website, web app, and so on, is our way to go. Why? Because it helps us gather the largest sample and largest array of insights. From utilising methods that include only several people to even thousands of users, the use of different methods can bring the clearest picture of how to improve our end product.

Given our experience in using multiple UX research methods, don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’d like to build a successful and high-performing software product or service.