What is the goal of UX Research?

Everyone has certainly entered a website that was absolutely confusing. Poor usability not only annoys the user, but in the worst case also causes the page to be closed immediately.

UX design has established itself in order to adapt digital products as well as possible to the intuitive operation of the user community . The central goal is to make the user experience as pleasant as possible and thus ensure a high level of customer satisfaction.

In this blog post you can find out which different UX research methods are used and why a positive user experience is decisive for the success of a product.

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What is the goal of UX Research?

User experience research is the strategic research to plan the customer's application experience with a digital product. The needs and behavior of the target group are considered. The requirements can vary depending on the product and must always be considered in a strong context with the target group.

Why the user experience is crucial for your success

Regardless of whether a customer enters a store or clicks through an online shop: the experience that customers have with your product depends on several factors and has a significant impact on the satisfaction of the experience .

User experience is a term that has appeared primarily with digital products. First of all, it is about nothing other than the experience that the customer has with a company, an application, a product or a service. What matters, however, is how the customer experience is perceived.

For example, if a customer is positively impressed because she finds her way around your website and gets all the information she was looking for, this will create a positive feeling. The situation is different if a person is not forwarded to the payment provider during the ordering process in your online shop, but is constantly thrown back into the shopping cart.

These two scenarios describe why the user experience is so important: it is a decisive factor for high (or low) customer satisfaction . If a product is particularly intuitive or a shop is set up very clearly and also offers friendly staff, there is a high chance that the customer will recommend the shop to others.

UX design is essential for digital products. It deals with different aspects of the user experience such as needs, feelings and thoughts. The goal is to reduce complexity and make the user experience as pleasant as possible.

Digital Customer Experience: UX design is a must for digital products

As digitization progresses, more and more products and services are being created that provide digital offers in addition to the physical product world. Online games, websites, apps and other digital assets must be intuitive and user-friendly to use. The crux is that a good UX is hardly noticeable .

If the user experience is integrated into the natural course of use, then it fulfills a particularly high degree of usability (operability). On the other hand, if a website visitor searches for several minutes for the button that leads them to a promised offer, this has a negative impact on the user experience .

Unlike user interface design (UI), which ensures that a product looks aesthetic, UX design is responsible for making an application usable. However, one area cannot be considered completely detached from the other.

UX design therefore includes:

• Visual Design,
• Content (substantive) design as well
• Interactive design.

The information architecture initially forms the foundation. It ensures that the structure and navigation of the product is easy for the user to use.

Interaction design also deals with visual elements and functions that facilitate the course of action - such as buttons, forms or drag-and-drop editors . Both elements must always have a high level of usability, as they determine customer satisfaction as a central criterion of the user experience.

UX Design Research: Search for knowledge for successful designs

The UX design research is the most important step before you want to launch a digital product . During the research, you examine patterns of action, requirements and the motivation of your target group in order to be able to derive a UX strategy from the findings.

This serves as a guide during the entire development process and ensures that errors are avoided after the product has been launched.

The methods of UX design research are divided into quantitative and qualitative as well as behavior-based measurements. The analyzes are correlated with each other in order to obtain meaningful data. To get a solid understanding of user experience, you need to follow the steps below:

• Discover – What is relevant for the user base?
• Explore – How to address all customer needs?
• Test - Assess your designs
• Lists - Spot new trends, challenges, and feedback

Each step is accompanied by methods that provide you with the necessary data on the target group and also on their behavior and attitudes.

Which UX design research methods you use depends on both the type of product and the resources provided. The research methods are roughly divided into the following two categories.

Quantitative und qualitative Consumer Research

Similar to market research, quantitative and qualitative research on consumers is carried out for UX design research. Quantitative research deals with number-based evaluations to quantify the problem.

Statistics are used that are either carried out in-house or obtained from the relevant market research companies. A large number of participants ensures representative results. In order to collect the data, surveys or analyzes can be carried out.

Qualitative research , on the other hand, deals with observations and allows an assessment of behavior. The main aim is to understand the motivation and practices of the observed target group. Qualitative methods such as interviews, usability tests or context-related observations can be used to collect the data.

Purpose-driven user research: attitudes and behavior

Furthermore, UX design research is also about understanding the attitude and behavior of the focus groups . This can be thought from the perspective of the user.

Only when the development team knows how the users think can it be worked out what the purpose of the product should be.

In order to understand the attitude of the user community, one must actively listen to what is actually wanted . More detailed knowledge can be obtained through observations such as eye tracking or A/B testing.

Use cases can also provide insights into how users interact (e.g. with a website).

Conclusion: Sustainably increase customer satisfaction with UX Research

UX design research helps designers of digital products to understand the needs and behavior of the target group. Based on the various analyzes and evaluations, products can be designed that are characterized by a high degree of user-friendliness and usability.

A positive user experience is the most important factor for customer satisfaction . Therefore, various methods of UX design research should always be used in order to get a comprehensive view of the user community.