Going Guerrilla: Affordable User Experience Research Tips And Alternatives

We are living in the Age of the Customer, and user experience (UX) is leading the charge in design of web and mobile software products. UX has become an integral part of software design, resulting in a paradigm shift in user research.

Therefore, modern business must move past the old advertising methods that scream corny slogans in big bold letters: “Try X. We are the Best!”

The obvious problem with this outdated approach is that there are too many comparable products out there that also claim to be “the Best” in their respective product categories. To survive in a market oversaturated with competition, companies must invest in developing their websites, apps, services, and other customer touch points around overall user experience.

The best way to assess your customer’s experience with company websites and apps is through UX user research.

The Case For Low Cost UX User Research

There are plenty of methods for conducting user research; however, many of these methods are resource-intensive and can be slow. In other words, they tend to be expensive and take a while to implement.

No money, no research? Not true. Developers and designers can employ multiple cost-effective methods to conduct user research on a dime.

For companies operating on limited budget, pushing out a working product may be more important than quality UX research, but not taking the time to do useful research may have negative effects on the success of your product or service.

This is what compelled me to tackle the problem in this blog post, and I am confident a lot of people in the UX field often face the same challenges:

• UX user research is no longer an exotic field, reserved for cutting-edge products and services, usually launched by big companies.
• UX research is a must, even for small companies and startups; but, these organizations often lack the financial and technical resources needed to conduct in-depth user research.
• These small players have to find innovative ways of levelling the playing field, allowing them to remain competitive in the face of strong competition from bigger companies.
• In this context, user research has to be cost-effective and time-effective.
• Lastly, a more down to earth reason: There simply aren’t that many quality UX research resources online, and there are even fewer resources covering UX research from the perspective of cash-strapped outfits.

Below, you’ll find a few methods that will help you conduct user research on a budget.

Desk Research

In the old days, in order to conduct adequate research, companies had to go out into the field to collect data. Now, there’s an entire world of research information available at your fingertips. If you want to get a head start on user research, bypass traditional primary research and look for secondary research.

A lot of user research can be conducted from the comfort of your office. Use secondary research methods to your advantage.

While there aren’t that many UX-related resources online, the psychology of user interactions with computers and digital content is a growing field of study. With a little creativity, it is possible to find good information about user behavior and decision-making from a variety of industries.

The key takeaway here is that you shouldn’t limit research to user behavior to your specific industry. Browsing data collected and used by other industries could answer some of the same questions you may have about your audience.

Usability Testing

The usability testing method is self-explanatory and involves inviting users to test product prototypes. This is one of the most common types of tests run by companies that conduct UX research.

Nowadays, usability testing is almost a requirement for web and mobile app designers. It involves watching users actually navigate your apps and recording their reactions and statements as raw data for the design team to analyze. Large companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on usability testing, but the process doesn’t have to be super expensive in order to yield useful results.

Usability testing and A/B testing can be conducted on a tight budget, provided you plan ahead.

Take a gander at Steve Krug’s book Rocket Surgery Made Easy on usability testing to learn more about the finer points of usability testing.

A/B Testing

A/B Testing involves showing users two different options and asking for feedback on each of them. Ask users for a list of pros and cons for both prototypes, ask them to gauge the overall experience, ask them to focus on certain aspects of your product that could benefit most from additional research.

UX designers will take this data and modify prototypes to eliminate flaws or use these pros and cons to make a new hybrid prototype for another round of user testing. The Handbook of Usability Testing does a great job of discussing usability testing and A/B Testing.

Online Questionnaires

Another inexpensive UX research method, commonly used by big and small business alike, involves online questionnaires. It is simple enough to disseminate questionnaires to hundreds or even thousands of participants with just a click of a button. However, a significant amount of time should be dedicated to preparing surveys, publishing them, and ultimately analyzing the findings.

Online questionnaires are cheap and potentially extremely useful tools for user research. However, you don’t want to spam your users.

There are a variety of awesome online survey tools available, and I would single out Wufoo and Typeformas effective tools for those who are just getting started. Make sure to write good screener questions to eliminate unwanted participants! Here are some starter tips for user research surveys.

Use social media, online networking platforms, and emails to scrounge up respondents for your questionnaires. Remember that the point of the survey is to dig into the user’s psychology. How are they finding information? What types of information do they find relevant and useful?

The right questions will uncover your customer’s needs, desires, and pains.

Time for some caveats; the value and quality of results generated by online questionnaires and surveys varies depending on the type of questions asked, and the quality of your audience targeting. This is why it’s crucial to develop a set of well thought out screener questions, and to properly analyze the data once it is collected. Also, let’s not forget that many users disregard such surveys, so don’t expect a huge response rate. If you are faced with this problem, and if the response rate is too low, it doesn’t mean you’ll do any better if you keep spamming people with your questionnaires.

That’s why it’s important to get the questions right and direct them at the right audience the first time around.

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Guerilla Research

Guerilla research (a phrase popularized by Steve Blank) is essentially a neologism for field research, although there are some differences. In any case, it all boils down to the same problem: Companies sometimes need answers on short notice.

While surveys are useful, the quickest way to get specific information is to take your questions straight to the people most likely to use your product. To find the best data for your research efforts, target the areas where your particular audience likes to congregate. Go to places where your audience will have the time to help you, like in a cafe, park, or sports venue.

Guerrilla research does not have to cost anything, provided you have time to spare and don’t mind approaching people for advice.

This type of research can be fun and enlightening, as people usually love to share their technological experiences with professionals who are in a position to improve them. You can also use this method to test your prototypes in the field. Just take your prototypes on your laptop, smartphone, or tablet and ask people for their feedback.

You’ll be surprised at the usability issues strangers point out. It’s also important to note that you are likely to get data from people who might otherwise not be interested in your product. This is not a bad thing. On the contrary, expanding your target demographic and getting comments from casual users can prove quite useful. They might point out some issues you never thought about, since you did not view the product from their perspective. Don’t ignore such seemingly uninterested people; they can provide useful feedback too, and they can help you make your product more appealing to other casual users.

Focus Groups

Gather users together in an informal setting to discuss your products and services. Researchers have been using this method for eons, but it has been criticized for its propensity to encourage “groupthink” and ignore unmet needs.

Focus groups and remote interviews allow you to source targeted and in-depth user information and to receive instant feedback.

Check out this article on how to effectively utilize focus groups for UX research.

Let’s point out the obvious: You need to take your time and ensure your focus group demographic is diverse. Prepare for the meeting, identify key areas you would like to discuss, make sure you have adequate background info and resources so you can answer any questions your group may direct back at you.

Remote Interviews

Interviews can be a bear to schedule, and many researchers lose participants due to scheduling conflicts.

Luckily nowadays, we can use online tools like Doodle to sync schedules,and Google Hangouts or Skype to conduct remote interviews. This drastically reduces the time it takes to organize multiple in-person interviews.

Remote interviews won’t give you the volume of data that other types of research methods will, but remote interviews can be useful in terms of uncovering major usability issues and analyzing various reactions to them.

The obvious advantage of one-on-one interviews is that you can focus on certain issues and get detailed information and targeted feedback. This may be problematic when dealing with groups of people. Plus, you also eliminate the risk of “groupthink”.

Analytics

A lot of research methods can fall under this category. If you are working on a tight budget, use free tools like Google Analytics as a starting point for the collection of quantitative data.

Alternatively, simple tools, such as Betaloop, are available for collecting specific product insights from users. Betaloop’s software collects data from a set of users on the performance of product features. Data is then organized and displayed in a collaborative environment that allows designers and developers to create action items for their team on the fly without leaving the app.

A lot of analytics tools are free to use and can be a vital asset in user research. Structure your data properly so you don’t waste too much time tidying up.

Analytics tools usually answer questions like these:

• How long does it take for users to complete a task?
• What features are most popular?
• What paths do people usually take?

Once you’ve got the raw data, be sure to pair it with real qualitative research for insight. Plan ahead and make sure that you collect useful, properly structured raw data that can be analyzed with as little effort as possible.

User Research On A Budget: Money Is Not Everything

Conducting useful user research doesn’t have to take a ton of money and a lot of time. By utilizing the power of digital tools, inexpensive research methods, and taking a closer look at customer interactions, your company will get the raw data and insights it needs to improve the user experience for its audience, without breaking the budget. UX research is an invaluable process that can have a major impact on product success and, ultimately, your sales and revenue.

This brings us to the financial aspect of user research. What’s it really worth? What’s the ROI of UX research? How do you convince your clients they need UX research, even if they think they can’t afford it? How can you compete with huge companies and their seemingly unlimited human and financial resources?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to these questions. It all depends on the type of product you’re working on, the target audience, and client needs. However, this does not mean you can’t do anything to promote budget UX user research as an alternative. Quite the opposite, it merely means you have to streamline the research process, making it cost-effective and time-effective. You have to do more with less.

Communicating the value of user research to your clients is another vital step in this process. If you are dealing with clients who don’t think they can afford proper UX research, make it your responsibility to change their minds. Try not to throw numbers around, don’t make ROI promises you can’t keep, don’t tell them they’ll get top notch research for the price of a hotdog. Be realistic and straightforward, argue your position and emphasise the merits of your low-cost approach.

Remember, conducting UX user research on a limited budget usually means you won’t get all the data you need, and your efforts may even appear futile in the face of overwhelming competition from businesses that can afford to burn heaps of money on research. However, you are not trying to compete with them. This is what you need to bear in mind: The alternative to conducting budget user research is doing no research at all, and basing crucial design decisions on past experiences, best practices, or educated guesses.

Bottom line? Even a limited amount of cost-effective user research easily trumps these alternatives.

This article was written by IVAN ANNIKOV, a Toptal UX designer.

How To Communicate The Value Of User Research

The beginning of a new project: Your client needs help with a redesign of its website or application.

“We want to improve the user experience, it has to be jaw-dropping for our customers, we want them to fall in love with our product.”

Here is the good news: Your client is aware of User Experience (UX), cares about customers’ needs and sees the value in investing in a great user experience. They asked for an expert with UX skills to help, but do theyreally understand what it means to deliver an exceptional user experience?

User research is a vital component of UX design. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

UX is more than a bunch of rules and heuristics that you follow in your product design process. UX is subjective, as the name suggests. It is the (subjective) experience that a user gets while using a product. Therefore, we have to understand the needs and goals of potential users (and those are unique for each product), their tasks, and context.

As a UX expert you should already be familiar with the maxim, It all starts with knowing the user.

Now for some bad news; this is the point when you discover your client’s misconceptions about UX.

UX expert: “Ok, let’s start with your users: Who are they? What do they do? What do they want? What are some of their pain points? I would like to talk to them, observe them, learn from them…”

Client: “Oh, we don’t need user research, that’s a waste of time.”

Wrong!

In this post I will try to explain why, and hopefully, help fellow UX specialists in their efforts to convince clients that good UX is next to impossible if it is not preceded by good user research.

No Need For User Research? There Is Always A Need For User Research

You cannot create a great user experience if you don’t know your users or their needs.

Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Don’t simply accept the common argument that there is no time or money to do any user research for your project.

User research should shape your product design and define guidelines that will enable you to make the right UX decisions.

User research will shape your product; it will define the guidelines for creating a product with a good experience. Not spending any time on research, and basing all of your design decisions on best guesses and assumptions, puts you at risk of not meeting your user needs.

This is how senior UX architect Jim Ross UXmatters sees it:

“Creating something without knowing users and their needs is a huge risk that often leads to a poorly designed solution and, ultimately, results in far higher costs and sometimes negative consequences.”

Lack Of User Research Can Lead To Negative Consequences

Skipping user research will often result in “featurities,” decisions that are driven by technical possibilities and not filtered by user goals.

“My wife would really enjoy this feature! Oh, and I heard from this person that they would like to be able to xyz, so let’s add it in there too.”

This leads to things such as overly complex dashboards in cars, where the user’s focus should be on driving, not on figuring out how to navigate an elaborate infotainment system.

Many users find automotive infotainment systems overly complex and distracting. Identifying the target audience is crucial to good UX design.

Tesla’s cutting edge infotainment system, based on Nvidia Tegra hardware, employs two oversized displays, one of which replaces traditional dials, while the other one replaces the center console. Yes, it looks good, but it was designed with tech savvy users in mind. In other words, geeks will love it, but it’s clearly not for everyone. It works for Tesla and its target audience, but don’t expect to see such solutions in low-cost vehicles designed with different people in mind.

Poorly designed remote controls are not intuitive, so casual users tend find them overwhelming, resulting in a frustrating user experience.

Old remote controls are another example of hit and miss UX. There is little in the way of standardization, so each one takes time getting used to.

But what about the purely digital user experience? Too many fields in a form, or too much information may overwhelm and drive your users away.

Poorly designed digital interfaces can drive users away. Even if they don’t, they will annoy users and feel like a waste time.

Instead of creating the opposite behaviour, poorly designed and implemented interfaces are more likely to scare off potential users.

Start User Research With Sources For Existing Information

Yes, user research will expand the timeline and it won’t come cheap, but both time and costs can be minimized. You can start with existing, and easy accessible, sources of information about user behaviour to gain a better understanding of user needs. These are:

• Data Analytics
• User Reviews and Ratings
• Customer Support
• Market Research
• Usability Testing

Quality user research requires time and resources. However, you can start by using existing information to get a sense of what your users need.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these sources.

Data Analytics

If you are working with an existing product, your client might have some data and insights about its use. Data analytics assist with getting a good overview about general usage: How many visitors are coming to the website, what pages are most visited, where do visitors come from, when do they leave, how much time do they spend where, and so on.

But here is what this data is not telling you: How does the experience feel? What do users think about your service, and why are they spending time on your website? Why do they leave?

For example, your data indicates that users are spending a lot of time on a specific page. What it doesn’t tell you is why. It might be because the content is so interesting, which means users found what they were looking for. On the other hand, it could be an indication that users are looking for something they cannot find.

Data Analytics is a good starting point, but it needs further qualitative data to support the interpretation of the statistics.

User Reviews And Ratings

Your client’s product might have received some user feedback, already. There might be a section for feedback or ratings on the website itself, but external sources may be available as well. People might have talked about it in blog posts or discussion boards, users may have given app reviews in an app store. Check different sources to see what users are saying.

However, be aware of limitations. People tend to leave reviews and ratings about negative experiences. Don’t take this as a reason to shy away from user reviews or to ignore feedback!

“All these complainers… These aren’t the users we want, anyway!”

Instead, try to look for patterns and repetitive comments. Here are a few tips for making the most from user input:

• Check whether any action has been taken on negative comments.
• Compare the timing of negative comments to releases and changelogs. Even great apps can suffer from poor updates, leading to a lot of negative comments in the days following the update.
• Do your best to weed out baseless comments posted by trolls.
• What are users saying about the competition? Identify positive and negative differentiators.
• Don’t place too much trust in “professional and independent” reviews because they can be anything but professional and independent.

User reviews are a good source for collecting information on recurrent problems and frustrations, but they won’t give you an entirely objective view of what users think about your product.

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Customer Support

Your client might have a customer support hotline or salespeople who are in touch with the user base. This is a good resource to get a better understanding of what customers are struggling with, what kind of questions they have, what features/functionality they are missing.

Setting up a couple of quick interviews with call center agents, and even shadowing some of their calls, will allow you to collect helpful data without investing too much time or money.

Customer support provides you with a good opportunity to learn about potential areas for improvement, but you will have to dive in deeper to get detailed information about problems.

Market Research

Your client may have some basic information about the customer base, such as accurate demographic information, or a good understanding of different market segments. This information is valuable to understand some of the factors behind the buying decision.

It does not offer any information about the usage of the product, though.

Market research is a good source of information if you need a better understanding of how your client thinks, what their marketing goals are, and what their market looks like. However, it won’t reveal all relevant details about user goals or needs.

Usability Testing

If you are lucky, your client might have done some usability tests and gained insights about what users like or dislike about the product. This data will help you understand how people are using the product and what the current experience looks like.

It is not quantitative research, and therefore you won’t get any numbers and statistics, but it helps you identify major problems, and gives you a better understanding about how your user group thinks.

There is also the option to do some quick remote testing session by using services such as usertesting.com.

Usability tests are another good way of identifying key problem areas in a product.

How To Educate Your Client About The Value Of User Research

The budget might be small and the timeline tight, but ignoring user research will eventually bite you. Help your clients avoid pitfalls by making them aware of the benefits of user research.

What’s the ROI of good user experience? Knowledgeable UX experts must be able to communicate the value of user research to clients.

Here are some common arguments against user research and how to deal with them:

• We don’t need user research. We trust in your skills as a UX expert

As a UX designer, you need to view user research as part of your toolkit, just like a hammer or saw for a craftsman. It helps you to apply your expertise in practice. No matter how much expertise you have as a designer, there is no generic solution for every problem. The solutions always depend on the user group and the environment, so they need to be defined and understood for every product.

User research will help get an unbiased view, to learn about users’ natural language, their knowledge and mental models, their life context.

You are the UX design expert, but you are not the user.

• Just use best practices instead of research

Best practices originate from design decisions in a specific context; the digital industry is evolving at a rapid pace, design trends and recommendations change constantly, there is no fixed book of rules. We need to be able to adjust and adapt. Those decision should be made based on research, not practices employed by others, on different projects.

• We already know everything about our users

Invite your client to a user needs discovery session to observe how users are using the product. Start with small tests and use remote usability testing tools such as usertesting.com to get some quick insights and videos of users in action.

The outcome might be a user journey map or a user task flow. Aim for a visualized document that identifies outstanding questions so you can define areas that need more research.

• We have personas, we don’t need more research

Personas are a good tool for making your target group more tangible, and for becoming aware of different needs, key task flows and and how that might vary for different groups. It’s the common ground and a good starting point.

However, to redesign a product you need a better understanding of the usage. You need to know how people work with your product, what they do with it, when they get frustrated.

Ask for further details about user stories and task flows to make use of personas.

• We don’t have the budget for it

The above list of sources for information about user behaviour should give you a good starting point for sharing ideas with your client on how to gain user information on a (very) tight budget.

Make your client aware of the risks if product design decisions are made without a good understanding of the user.

User Research Is The Basis Of Every Good User Experience

User experience is still a bit of a “mystery” in many circles: Everybody talks about it yet it is hard to define, as a good experience is in the eye of every user.

It is, therefore, key to gaining a sound understanding of the context, the user goals, and the thinking necessary for designing a truly exceptional user experience.

The more transparent you are with your work process, the better your client will understand your tools and the information you need to make good decisions.

While some clients may not be open to the idea of using additional resources on research, it’s necessary for experience specialists to explain the value of user research, and to argue for further research when necessary. To accomplish this, UX designers will require negotiating skills to make their case.

Luckily, proper user research is beneficial to clients and UX designers, so convincing clients to divert more resources towards research should be feasible in most situations. Reluctant clients may be swayed if you manage to devise a cost-effective user-research method, and I hope some of the tips and resources in this article will help boost user research, even if money is tight.

The original article is from Toptal and more UX resources can be found here.