Gain Better UX Insights Using these 4 Touchpoints

While it's helpful to get insights to guide the process early, there is something to learn at all UX Design touchpoints. Here is the approach Research America recommends to maximize your UX Research.

UX – 4 Research Touchpoints

Discovery Phase

The Discovery Phase is about finding collaborators and champions for your design. This is the time when you should be talking to experts and users to learn from others' success stories as well as their mistakes. It is critical to involve your project stakeholders, both internally as well as key customers. The primary objective at this phase is to identify and get ahead of potential problems to make systematic improvements. Some of the approaches we have found to be insightful are User Interviews, Field Studies, and Diary Studies.

Exploration Phase

The Exploration Phase is about making sure the design is working well based on user needs and expectations. There are three critical objectives in the Exploration Phase:

• Define the target audience(s) for the product, app, or technology
• Understand the needs of those audiences and to map them to features of the design
• Consider different user contexts

Some of our approaches for this phase include UX task analysis, journey mapping, and competitive analysis.

Testing Phase

The Testing phase's primary objective is to determine what is working and what needs enhancement within the design. At this phase, optimizing navigation, instruction, FAQs, and the help function are key. It is important to track usability over time to understand how users learn and adapt their behaviors. It is crucial to be concerned about privacy, so during this phase, we want to ensure that the product or app can keep user information secure. Some of our approaches for this phase include usability studies (in-person and remote) and accessibility studies.

Listening Phase

The objective of this phase is to understand user frustrations, issues, and successes to optimize and reduce the need for training. At this phase, it is important to identify and recruit users to participate actively in future research and testing. It is vital to monitor users once your product has launched to identify issues that may not have been present during design. Some of our approaches at this phase include analytics review, social media monitoring and analysis, and SEO analysis.

Whether you want to increase conversion rates, boost brand loyalty, or reduce calls to customer service, UX research can deliver the insights you need to create the best solutions. Through continuous learning and refinement of your user's experience, ensures your product, app, or technology will stay relevant and valued by the market.

Let Research America help create a UX research plan for you!