User Research MasterClass October 23rd 2020 (6AM PDT; 9AM EDT; 2pm UTC); 3 hours
To access the Masterclass, join Frank's www.uxinnercircle.com
Video transcript: Frank Spillers, CXO at Experience Dynamics explains the importance of User Research
User Research triggers learning by challenging assumptions
User Research, possibly one of the most important types of activities your organization carries that your organization carries out. Why? Because user research is where we gain the technique that brings us the insight that challenges assumptions. And anything that challenges our internal assumptions with our design, with our organization, with the product or service itself-- anything that challenges assumptions-- is an opportunity to be enlightened, and to be inspired and to gain confidence in your decision making.
Strong UX maturity = User Research is occurring
Now I've been doing user research for many many years with hundreds of organizations, and one of the things I've noticed and the research backs this up as well...is that organizations that are doing user research are the organizations that are able to do better UX, and to have better outcomes...and I've seen examples in my company at Experience Dynamics with projects we have worked on because we did the user research we were able to see improvements. In one case our clients made some adjustments to a website and within 30 days we had an increase of 83% in conversion. And that was just the start, that was just feeding in some Lean UX into the process within that first month-- they went on later to an extra couple of million dollars to that website which was underperforming.
User Research gives you UX Design super-powers
So I've seen the power of user research, I've seen how as a UX designer and UX researcher that I've been smarter. I've done projects where we didn't do user research and did projects where we did do user research. The contrast is intense! As a designer when you're making those interaction design decisions you know exactly what to do, you have that empathy, you have that insight, you understand the context, you understand the problem space thoroughly. I've seen organizations collapse the old way of thinking and to make decisions internally and with a know-it-all or self-confidence or over-confident approach, but to take the confidence from the users themselves. To really understand pain points, and journeys, and personas and to really discover the problem space and bring that into your design decision making. That's what good user research is and we've got to get better at it. So user research is critical and what the research shows those organizations that are doing user research have UX maturity.
What you will learn in this User Research Masterclass
So it's really important in terms of your excellence and your ability to pivot and to perform and to scale your UX efforts. User research is the topic of this Masterclass. In this Masterclass, we're going to learn all about user research with an emphasis on how to do it, more often and cheaply without spending a fortune, and without making it a big event. And we're gonna cover Ethnogpray, Diary Studies, User Interviews, Contextual research and I'm going to show you how to do those things based on the way we do them in our consulting work so that you can master them and use some shortcuts and techniques that we've learned along the way.
Ultimately doing user research, contacting your customers, being in touch with them, and having a process that's scalable that you can apply to any product or service or experience that you may be designing--that's the key and that's what we're going to dive into in this Masterclass. I've spent many thousands of hours in the field so in this Masterclass I am going to bring some of those tips and tricks and techniques to you, I'm going to demystify user research, I'm going to help you do it faster, more easily and more cheaply and just to take the frills away-- the thing is user research doesn't have to be a big event, a big drama, it can be as regularly as brushing your teeth in your organization or in your UX design.
Doing online user research online during COVID
Especially online user research which is going to be the main focus of this Masterclass because it's important in designing in pandemics, that we do user research and not wait for the pandemic to end etc. It is a very important topic and a really fun one too if you get to do this in your work. I hope to see you in this Masterclass.
To access the Masterclass, join Frank's www.uxinnercircle.com