5 Essential UX Research Terms that Teams Should Know
Person writing on a sticky note posted on a wall
Whether you’re a user experience (UX) designer, content designer, front-end developer, or aspiring UX researcher, understanding UX research is essential to your work. You have to understand your users in order to help them meet their goal or accomplish their task.
If you’ve done any reading on UX research, you’ll notice there’s quite a bit of jargon. For those new to UX, I thought I’d list the 5 terms that I think are most essential for aspiring and new UX practitioners to know.
Generative research and evaluative research
One way to look at UX research is by phase of the product design process.
In the beginning, research may be more generative. That means you’ll be gathering information about your user, how they operate, and what’s important to them. These findings help you generate ideas (thus the name).
Once you have enough information for your team to design a concept, you can conduct evaluative research. This is where you put the design in front of users to see whether they can use it.
Keep in mind that the best evaluative research is task-based. You ask the user to reach a goal or accomplish an action. You ideally don’t put a design in front of them and say “what do you think?”
Qualitative research and quantitative research
Another way to divide up your research activities is not by when you do it, but how.
Qualitative research delivers findings that typically aren’t numerical. This type of research includes user interviews, ethnographic studies, diary studies, card sorts, and tree tests.
Quantitative research is just what it sounds like: research that gives you numerical data. Examples include A/B testing, surveys, and analyzing analytics.
Affinity mapping
Affinity mapping comes after qualitative research. You summarize your findings, sometimes collaboratively as a group, often writing each finding or theme on a sticky note. Then you arrange the stickies by larger themes or connections between the ideas.
Popular tools for virtual affinity mapping include Miro, Mural, Figjam, and Plectica.
What research concepts are the most important to you? Comment and let me know.