Designing your product without doing research is a bit like buying an expensive gift for someone you’ve never met. I help you stop the guess work and convert user insights into higher converting intuitive digital experiences.
What is user research?
User research is the process of uncovering your target users’ needs, pain points, and motivations. It’s the foundation of a successful UX project. By understanding your users more fully, the more successful your product is likely to be.
There are many different forms that user research can take, from interviews and surveys to analytics and user testing. I’ll help you decide on the best type of research for your project.
What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things
Margaret Mead, Anthropologist
How user research will benefit your product
User research helps you to design and build your product with confidence. By uncovering the real needs of your audience, you ensure every design decision directly maximises your return on investment.
- Eliminates guesswork
- Boosts conversion rates
- Validates ideas
- Uncovers user friction
- Gives you confidence
- Lowers development costs
- Allows decisions based on data
- Saves investment costs
User research services
Here are a few of the main user research services I offer. Every project is different though, so I make sure I suggest and use the right tools for every project.
User interviews
I sit down one-on-one with your actual or target users to dive deep into their behaviours, mindsets, and daily routines. By asking the right questions and observing how they interact with your industry landscape, I uncover the underlying motivations, frustrations and needs that quantitative data on its own can’t show you.
Competitor benchmarking
Luckily, we don’t need to invent the wheel to create a successful experience. By looking at your competitors and the digital landscape, we can learn a great deal about what works, what doesn’t and how we can emulate and improve upon what’s out there already.
Heuristic evaluation
By measuring your current interface against established industry standard usability principles (as well as my own experience), I can highlight major UX issues and provide recommendations for addressing these. Heuristic evaluation is a quick, cost efficient way to uncover potential pain points for users and can be carried out remotely too, which makes it convenient.
Surveys & Quantitative Research
Surveys and analytics allow us to gather potentially large scale data which can uncover hidden trends and user patterns across your website or app. This can provide good evidence of user behaviour and potential pain points, which we can work to improve as the project evolves.
Information Architecture
Good information architecture ensures your users can find what they are looking for quickly. I deliver user research which allows us to organise, structure and label content in a way that aligns with users’ mental models.
User testing
User testing is regarded as the ‘gold standard’ of research. Nothing really compares to putting your prototypes or product in front of real users and observing their real behaviour. I can carry out moderated or un-moderated user testing and ready data for later analysis to gather key insights.
Project example
Uncovering user problems through research
“A headteacher hit the back button. And accidentally showed me exactly what was wrong.”
The Headteacher’s Report’s software had FOUR save buttons – Save and go to the previous section, Save and go to next section, Save and continue, and Save and download the report.
During user testing with a headteacher, we observed that she ignored all four of these buttons, and instead clicked on her browser’s back button (at the same time, losing the data she’d added to her report!).
Four save options. She ignored all of them.
And she wasn’t a one-off. This was happening constantly, to teachers who were already stretched, already tired, trying to get reports done.
The fix? We removed all four save buttons and replaced them with autosave.
One observation, many hours of lost data saved, and a dramatic saving in user support queries.
User research steps
Define your research goals
We work together to define the most important questions and success criteria that will define success for your project.
Choose your research methods
With clear goals in place, we select the right mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to uncover the answers. Whether it’s in-depth user interviews, moderated usability testing, or competitive analysis, we choose the methods that align with your needs, budget and timeline..
Conduct the research and gather data
This is where we dive into the field to observe and listen to real users. Often surprising, but always enlightening, this process allows us to truly discover authentic behaviours, pain points, and motivations. I can handle the heavy lifting of participant recruitment, moderation, and data collection, leaving you to focus on your core business.
Analyse and synthesise
The reality is that raw data is messy without out analysis. I help sort this data into organised affinities, working out where the biggest user problems exist and helping you work out a prioritised roadmap of improvements for your product or service.
Why should I hire a freelance UX UI designer for user research instead of just starting the design?
Building a digital product without research could be a costly gamble. Engaging a freelance UX UI designer like me to conduct research upfront removes assumptions, potentially saving you weeks of expensive development revisions down the line. User research ensures that we build the right features for your actual audience from day one, significantly increasing your product’s conversion rates, user retention, and overall return on investment (ROI).
What is your standard UX UI design and research process?
My process is individually tailored to the needs of each project, but typically it follows a proven ux design process as follows: We start with a kick off meeting, establishing the key goals, stakeholders and timeframes of the project. From there we often examine any existing products through UX reviews, competitor benchmarking, analytics and user testing. We then analyse this data through affinity diagramming sessions and prioritise improvements. Interaction designs are sketched and designed, user flows produced, information architecture defined, before creating prototypes which can be fully validated. This process can be iterated until we have a strong high-fidelity prototype ready to hand over to the development team for build and release.
I already have a live product. Can a freelance UX consultant help improve it?
Absolutely. If your website or app is experiencing high bounce rates or low conversions, I can perform a comprehensive UX audit or heuristic evaluation. By analysing your platform against established usability principles and reviewing your user analytics, I can quickly pinpoint potential friction points and deliver a prioritised roadmap of actionable design fixes to improve your user experience.
How do you find participants for user interviews and usability testing?
Sourcing the right participants is critical to getting accurate data. Depending on your project’s scope and budget, we can recruit participants from your existing customer base, utilise targeted screening surveys, or partner with specialised user recruitment platforms. I will handle the entire screening, scheduling, and incentive process to ensure we gather insights from your exact target demographic.