UX Research: Objectives, Assumptions, and Hypothesis

by Rick Dzekman

An often neglected step in UX research

Introduction

UX research should always be done for a clear purpose – otherwise you’re wasting the both your time and the time of your participants. But many people who do UX research fail to properly articulate the purpose in their research objectives. A major issue is that the research objectives include assumptions that have not been properly defined.

When planning UX research you have some goal in mind:

  • For generative research it’s usually to find out something about users or customers that you previously did not know
  • For evaluative research it’s usually to identify any potential issues in a solution

As part of this goal you write down research objectives that help you achieve that goal. But for many researchers (especially more junior ones) they are missing some key steps:

  • How will those research objectives help to reach that goal?
  • What assumptions have you made that are necessary for those objectives to reach that goal?
  • How does your research (questions, tasks, observations, etc.) help meet those objectives?
  • What kind of responses or observations do you need from your participants to meet those objectives?

Research objectives map to goals but that mapping requires assumptions. Each objective is broken down into sub-objectives which should lead to questions, tasks, or observations. The questions we ask in our research should map to some research objective and help reach the goal.

One approach people use is to write their objectives in the form of research hypothesis. There are a lot of problems when trying to validate a hypothesis with qualitative research and sometimes even with quantitative.

This article focuses largely on qualitative research: interviews, user tests, diary studies, ethnographic research, etc. With qualitative research in mind let’s start by taking a look at a few examples of UX research hypothesis and how they may be problematic.

Research hypothesis

Example hypothesis: users want to be able to filter products by colour.

At first it may seem that there are a number of ways to test this hypothesis with qualitative research. For example we might:

  • Observe users shopping on sites with and without colour filters and see whether or not they use them
  • Ask users who are interested in our products about how narrow down their choices
  • Run a diary study where participants document the ways they narrowed down their searches on various stores
  • Make a prototype with colour filters and see if participants use them unprompted

These approaches are all effective but they do not and cannot prove or disprove our hypothesis. It’s not that the research methods are ineffective it’s that the hypothesis itself is poorly expressed.

The first problem is that there are hidden assumptions made by this hypothesis. Presumably we would be doing this research to decide between a choice of possible filters we could implement. But there’s no obvious link between users wanting to filter by colour and a benefit from us implementing a colour filter. Users may say they want it but how will that actually benefit their experience?

The second problem with this hypothesis is that we’re asking a question about “users” in general. How many users would have to want colour filters before we could say that this hypothesis is true?

Example Hypothesis: Adding a colour filter would make it easier for users to find the right products

This is an obvious improvement to the first example but it still has problems. We could of course identify further assumptions but that will be true of pretty much any hypothesis. The problem again comes from speaking about users in general.

Perhaps if we add the ability to filter by colour it might make the possible filters crowded and make it more difficult for users who don’t need colour to find the filter that they do need. Perhaps there is a sample bias in our research participants that does not apply broadly to our user base.

It is difficult (though not impossible) to design research that could prove or disprove this hypothesis. Any such research would have to be quantitative in nature. And we would have to spend time mapping out what it means for something to be “easier” or what “the right products” are.

Example Hypothesis: Travelers book flights before they book their hotels

The problem with this hypothesis should now be obvious: what would it actually mean for this hypothesis to be proved or disproved? What portion of travelers would need to book their flights first for us to consider this true?

Example Hypothesis: Most users who come to our app know where and when they want to fly

This hypothesis is better because it talks about “most users” rather than users in general. “Most” would need to be better defined but at least this hypothesis is possible to prove or disprove.

We could address this hypothesis with quantitative research. If we found out that it was true we could focus our design around the primary use case or do further research about how to attract users at different stages of their journey.

However there is no clear way to prove or disprove this hypothesis with qualitative research. If the app has a million users and 15/20 research participants tell you that this is true would your findings generalise to the entire user base? The margin of error on that finding is 20-25%, meaning that the true results could be closer to 50% or even 100% depending on how unlucky you are with your sample.

Example Hypothesis: Customers want their bank to help them build better savings habits

There are many things wrong with this hypothesis but we will focus on the hidden assumptions and the links to design decisions. Two big assumptions are that (1) it’s possible to find out what research participants want and (2) people’s wants should dictate what features or services to provide.

Research objectives

One of the biggest problem with using hypotheses is that they set the wrong expectations about what your research results are telling you. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman points out that:

  • “extreme outcomes (both high and low) are more likely to be found in small than in large samples”
  • “the prominence of causal intuitions is a recurrent theme in this book because people are prone to apply causal thinking inappropriately, to situations that require statistical reasoning”
  • “when people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound”

Using a research hypothesis primes us to think that we have found some fundamental truth about user behaviour from our qualitative research. This leads to overconfidence about what the research is saying and to poor quality research that could simply have been skipped in exchange for simply making assumption. To once again quote Kahneman: “you do not believe that these results apply to you because they correspond to nothing in your subjective experience”.

We can fix these problems by instead putting our focus on research objectives. We pay attention to the reason that we are doing the research and work to understand if the results we get could help us with our objectives.

This does not get us off the hook however because we can still create poor research objectives.

Let’s look back at one of our prior hypothesis examples and try to find effective research objectives instead.

Example objectives: deciding on filters

In thinking about the colour filter we might imagine that this fits into a larger project where we are trying to decide what filters we should implement. This is decidedly different research to trying to decide what order to implement filters in or understand how they should work. In this case perhaps we have limited resources and just want to decide what to implement first.

A good approach would be quantitative research designed to produce some sort of ranking. But we should not dismiss qualitative research for this particular project – provided our assumptions are well defined.

Let’s consider this research objective: Understand how users might map their needs against the products that we offer . There are three key aspects to this objective:

  • “Understand” is a common form of research objective and is a way that qualitative research can discover things that we cannot find with quant. If we don’t yet understand some user attitude or behaviour we cannot quantify it. By focusing our objective on understanding we are looking at uncovering unknowns.
  • By using the word “might” we are not definitively stating that our research will reveal all of the ways that users think about their needs.
  • Our focus is on understanding the users’ mental models. Then we are not designing for what users say that they want and we aren’t even designing for existing behaviour. Instead we are designing for some underlying need.

The next step is to look at the assumptions that we are making. One assumption is that mental models are roughly the same between most people. So even though different users may have different problems that for the most part people tend to think about solving problems with the same mental machinery. As we do more research we might discover that this assumption is not true and there are distinctly different kinds of behaviours. Perhaps we know what those are in advance and we can recruit our research participants in a way that covers those distinct behaviours.

Another assumption is that if we understand our users’ mental models that we will be able to design a solution that will work for most people. There are of course more assumptions we could map but this is a good start.

Now let’s look at another research objective: Understand why users choose particular filters . Again we are looking to understand something that we did not know before.

Perhaps we have some prior research that tells us what the biggest pain points are that our products solve. If we have an understanding of why certain filters are used we can think about how those motivations fit in with our existing knowledge.

Mapping objectives to our research plan

Our actual research will involve some form of asking questions and/or making observations. It’s important that we don’t simply forget about our research objectives and start writing questions. This leads to completing research and realising that you haven’t captured anything about some specific objective.

An important step is to explicitly write down all the assumptions that we are making in our research and to update those assumptions as we write our questions or instructions. These assumptions will help us frame our research plan and make sure that we are actually learning the things that we think we are learning. Consider even high level assumptions such as: a solution we design with these insights will lead to a better experience, or that a better experience is necessarily better for the user.

Once we have our main assumptions defined the next step is to break our research objective down further.

Breaking down our objectives

The best way to consider this breakdown is to think about what things we could learn that would contribute to meeting our research objective. Let’s consider one of the previous examples: Understand how users might map their needs against the products that we offer

We may have an assumption that users do in fact have some mental representation of their needs that align with the products they might purchase. An aspect of this research objective is to understand whether or not this true. So two sub-objectives may be to (1) understand why users actually buy these sorts of products (if at all), and (2) understand how users go about choosing which product to buy.

Next we might want to understand what our users needs actually are or if we already have research about this understand which particular needs apply to our research participants and why.

And finally we would want to understand what factors go into addressing a particular need. We may leave this open ended or even show participants attributes of the products and ask which ones address those needs and why.

Once we have a list of sub-objectives we could continue to drill down until we feel we’ve exhausted all the nuances. If we’re happy with our objectives the next step is to think about what responses (or observations) we would need in order to answer those objectives.

It’s still important that we ask open ended questions and see what our participants say unprompted. But we also don’t want our research to be so open that we never actually make any progress on our research objectives.

Reviewing our objectives and pilot studies

At the end it’s important to review every task, question, scenario, etc. and seeing which research objectives are being addressed. This is vital to make sure that your planning is worthwhile and that you haven’t missed anything.

If there’s time it’s also useful to run a pilot study and analyse the responses to see if they help to address your objectives.

Plan accordingly

It should be easy to see why research hypothesis are not suitable for most qualitative research. While it is possible to create suitable hypothesis it is more often than not going to lead to poor quality research. This is because hypothesis create the impression that qualitative research can find things that generalise to the entire user base. In general this is not true for the sample sizes typically used for qualitative research and also generally not the reason that we do qualitative research in the first place.

Instead we should focus on producing effective research objectives and making sure every part of our research plan maps to a suitable objective.

how to write ux research objectives

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How to write a ux research plan that actually works: 7-step tutorial, saviour egbe, august 29, 2023.

A UX research plan is like a map that will help you navigate the complexity of running a research project. It will help you define your goals, choose the right methods, and collect the data you need to make informed design decisions.

But UX research plans don't have to be boring. In fact, they can be quite funny. For example, one UX researcher I know has a section in his plan called " The Things That Make Me Cry ." This is where he lists all the things that he's learned about his users that make him sad, such as the fact that they often have to deal with frustrating interfaces or unhelpful customer service.

But the primary use of a research plan of course is to make  sure that your research is effective. So, while it’s helpful to have a sense of humor, you also need to be serious about your research.

In this article, we'll consider:

  • What a UX research plan is and why it's important
  • How to create a UX research plan 
  • An example of a well-structured UX research plan and
  • A template for a UX research plan you can use to get started

So, whether you're a UX newbie or a seasoned pro, read on for everything you need to know about UX research plans!

What is a UX Research Plan?

A UX research plan is a document that outlines the goals, methods, and timeline for your research. It's a roadmap that will help you stay on track and ensure that your research is productive.

A good UX research plan should include the following:

  • A clear statement of the research goals: What do you hope to learn from your research? What are the specific questions you're trying to answer?
  • A description of the target audience: Who are the people you're designing for? What are their needs and pain points?
  • A selection of research methods: There are many different research methods available, so it's important to choose the ones that are right for your goals and target audience.
  • A timeline and budget: How long will your research take? How much money will it cost?
  • A plan for data analysis and presentation: How will you analyze your data and communicate the findings to others?

Why is a UX Research Plan Important?

A UX research plan is important for several reasons. It helps you:

  • Stay focused and avoids wasting time and resources.
  • Ensures that your research is relevant to the needs of your users.
  • Get buy-in from stakeholders & align on the goals for the project.
  • Provides a framework for organizing and analyzing your data.
  • Helps you communicate the findings of your research to others.

How to Create a UX Research Plan

Creating a UX research plan is an important step in ensuring that your product or service is user-friendly and meets the needs of your target audience. Here are the essential steps to create a research plan that drives meaningful insights and successful user experiences:

Step 1: Alignment & Requirements Gathering

Research rarely will happen in a vacuum. Usually you are working with a team—product, engineering, design, for example. 

When the need for a research study arises, the first thing you want to do is meet with your team to understand the questions they're trying to answer.

Depending on how formally set up your research practice is, you may even want to supplement this step with a Research Request document where stakeholders can explain the key questions they'd like to answer, why they're important, and any constraints (budgets, timelines) they're working with.

Step 2: Define Your Goals

Once you've gathered your data, the next step is to clearly define & write out your goals. What do you hope to learn from your research? What specific questions are you trying to answer?

Here are some things to consider when framing your goals:

  • What are the business objectives for your product or service? Are you trying to grow active users? Or reduce churn? What should the final results of this research project help you do?
  • Who are your target users? These are the people you’d like to learn more about.
  • What do you want to learn about their behavior and preferences? This will help you determine your research questions. Ideally the answers to these questions should also tie to your business goals so there’s a clear line between what you’re trying to learn and what that learning will do for the company.

Once you’ve thought about and drafted the answers to these questions, make sure to follow the below steps before starting interviews:

i. Assess Internal Data and Identify Research Needs

Before you start collecting new data, take some time to assess any existing data you have. This could include analytics, customer feedback, or previous research findings. This will help you identify any gaps in your knowledge and determine what areas need to be explored further.

Sometimes you’ll find you already have the answer to your research question in-house—saving you weeks of research effort and thousands of dollars of investment!

If you’re trying to build a repository to help you do this more effectively, check out this definitive guide on research repositories .

ii. Link Research Goals to Business Objectives

It's also important to link your research goals to the business objectives of your organization. This will help you justify the time and resources that will be required for your research. By demonstrating how your research will help you achieve your business goals, you'll be more likely to get the support you need.

As a bonus, once your research is complete, you can go back and track its impact against these business goals. This will help you build a case for your own work and the research practice at your company.

As you proceed through Step 1, keep in mind that your research goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). This framework will help you ensure that your goals are well-defined and actionable.

Step 3: Identify Your Target Audience & Plan a Recruiting Strategy

Knowing your audience is essential for creating a UX research plan that delivers relevant and actionable insights. In this step, we'll talk about how to define your target audience and plan a recruiting strategy for this set of users.

The target audience you’re considering this research study may overlap with your standard target users, or you may want to speak with a subset of this group.

For instance, if you’re doing a research study on why users churn, speaking to a regular active user won’t help. You’ll need to define and recruit users who can actually answer your questions well—in this case it could be “users who have churned in the last 2 weeks”.

When defining the audience for this study, think about whether your target user falls in a specific category based on one of these characteristics:

  • Demographics:   This includes basic characteristics, such as age, gender, location, and occupation.
  • Behaviors and habits: Are you interested in users who have or have not conducted certain actions on your product? For research on how well your Slack integration works, you may want to speak to users who have already installed it, for example.  
  • Needs and use cases: Sometimes one product can have multiple use cases. For example, a transcription product could be used by researchers, or journalists, or students trying to capture their class notes. Which use case or needs are relevant to your research study?  
  • Payment type: In today’s world products may have free, freemium / trial, or paid users and each of these groups may behave differently. Think about whether you need one or all of these user types as part of your research.

Now that you know who you need to reach, you also need to think about how to reach them.

Recruiting, as we all know, is a major pain point for (most) researchers. There are some ways to speed it up though.

If you’re running research for a B2C product or an easy to find B2B cohort, you may want to turn to an external recruiting software like UserInterview.com or Respondent.io. There are also local agencies to help you find more local audiences in international markets. 

If you are trying to recruit via an external paid channel like this, make sure to budget it in your research plan. These channels are very quick to set up research calls with, but they do come with an added cost.

If you’re running research with a niche B2B audience or are defining your audience based on behaviour on your product (e.g., user who churned in the last 2 weeks), you may need to use internal recruiting methods. This means reaching out to your own users via email, intercom, or via your sales / support team.

If you are recruiting existing customers, make sure to budget in the time it takes to recruit these users. It may take a few days to weeks to gather the relevant user emails and schedule calls, although paid incentives for research help this move much faster.

If you are planning to recruit your own customers, use our Ultimate Guide to Recruiting Your Users for Interviews and Usability Tests . This article has templates for outreach, incentive payment options, and many tactical tips to help you streamline internal recruiting.

Remember, the accuracy and relevance of your research findings depend on the quality of your participants. Take the time to identify and engage users who genuinely reflect your intended audience. This will help you create a research plan that generates insights that drive impactful design decisions.

Step 4: Choose Your Research Methods

Choosing the right research methods is necessary for getting the most out of your UX research plan. Before kicking off your study, make sure to review the possible ways you can answer your research question as well as any constraints you face regarding time, money, or tooling.

If you’re not sure which methods exist, read through this article on UX Research Methods . This article provides an overview of the different methods, so you can choose the ones that are right for your project. It covers everything from usability testing to card sorting, and it includes practical advice on how to conduct each UX research method effectively.

When you’re actually selecting the right method out of the available options, here are the key questions you need to ask yourself: 

  • Your research goals: What do you hope to learn from your research? The methods you choose should be aligned with your specific goals. For example, if you need to deeply understand user motivations, a user interview is much better fit than a survey.
  • Quantitative vs. qualitative: Do you want to collect quantitative data (numbers and statistics) or qualitative insights (in-depth understanding)? Different methods are better suited for different types of data. If you need to know the percentage of users using Zoom vs GoogleMeet, a 5-person user interview won’t get you that data but a 100 person survey with a representative sample might.
  • Resources and time: How much time and money do you have to spend on your research? Some methods are more time-consuming or expensive than others. For instance, an ethnographic study where you travel to see your users is obviously more expensive and time-consuming than a 30-minute remote user interview.

By considering these factors, you can choose a combination of research methods that will help you understand your users better.

Step 5: Define your timelines & budgets

Now that you know your target audience (and therefore recruiting method) and your research methods, you can define the timelines and budgets your stakeholders care about.

  • Timelines: How long will it take to conduct your research? This will depend on the methods you choose, the number of participants you need to recruit, and the amount of data you need to collect. For example, user interviews can typically be conducted within a few weeks, but usability testing can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the number of participants and the complexity of the product or service being tested.
  • Budgets: How much money will you need to conduct your research? This will depend on the methods you choose, the number of participants you need to recruit, and the cost of data collection and analysis. For example, user interviews can be conducted for a few hundred dollars, but usability testing can cost several thousand dollars, depending on the number of participants and the complexity of the product or service being tested.

Step 6: Identify your assumptions

Sometimes without realising it, our research study comes packaged with a set of assumptions about who users are and what they want.

Before kicking off your study, it’s important to identify these assumptions in writing and align on them with your team.

For instance, if you’re running research on how to improve a Slack integration, your in-built assumptions may be:

  • Users already use this integration
  • It’s worth improving this integration further

Once you’ve laid out these assumptions in advance of your research, you can check them against existing data and keep them in mind when you’re reviewing your research findings.

For example, if analytics data shows that no users use your Slack integration, it may call into question the research you’re running today or change the audience you speak to about it.

Instead of speaking to existing Slack integration users, your audience may need to be companies that have Slack but have not downloaded your Slack integration.

Your research questions may also shift from “Why do you use the Slack integration?” to “Why not? ”

In general, taking a moment to review research assumptions helps you be more aware of them throughout your research study.

Step 7: Define the research questions

This is a pivotal phase in the UX research process. It's when you define the questions that will guide your data collection efforts. These questions will be your compass, directing your research toward meaningful insights that drive product improvements.

Here are some tips for crafting and structuring your research questions:

  • Make sure each question is aligned with your overall research objectives. This will ensure that your findings address the core goals of your project.
  • Make your questions clear, concise, and specific. Ambiguity can lead to varied interpretations and muddy insights.
  • Frame your questions from the user's perspective. Use language that aligns with your target audience to ensure your questions are relatable.
  • Avoid leading questions. These are questions that nudge participants towards a particular response. Aim for neutrality to get real insights.
  • Use a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions allow participants to provide detailed responses, while closed-ended questions offer predefined answer choices.
  • Structure your questions logically, moving from broader inquiries to more specific ones. This will help participants to follow your thought process.
  • Limit the number of questions. You want to get comprehensive insights but don't want to overwhelm participants with too many questions.
  • Cover the core areas relevant to your project. This could include user pain points, needs, preferences, expectations, and perceptions.
  • Pilot-test your questions with a small group of participants. Their feedback can help you to identify unclear or misleading questions.
  • Make sure your questions are relevant to the research methods you will be using. For example, usability testing may focus on task-oriented questions, while interviews explore broader experiences.

Here are some examples of well-defined research questions:

1. Usability testing:

  • How easily can users navigate the Looppanel account setup process?
  • What challenges do users face when uploading their recorded calls to Looppanel?
  • How intuitive is the process of setting up Calendar integration on Looppanel?

2. Interviews:

  • Can you describe a recent experience you had with the Looppanel customer support?
  • What motivated you to sign up for Looppanel for your user research needs instead of other platforms?
  • In your view, how does the platform assist in taking your user interview notes effectively?

By carefully defining your research questions, you can ensure that your data collection efforts are focused and meaningful. This will help you to gather the insights you need to improve your product or service and deliver a better experience to your users.

Step 8: Align with your team

Now that you’ve thought through the basics, it's essential to get buy-in from your team and stakeholders on the final plan.

A lot may have happened between your first requirement-gathering meeting and when your plan is finalized. Take the final plan to stakeholders and make sure they are aligned:

  • The research question you’re going to answer
  • How your study ties to business goals
  • Which users you’ll be engaging with
  • Which method you’ll be using
  • What your timelines look like
  • What your budget looks like (if applicable)

This step is really important because if there’s a lack of alignment between you and your key stakeholder, you may end up with findings nobody is going to act on.

Example UX Research Plan

Here is an example UX research plan for improving the onboarding experience of a mobile app. Use this example as a guide to help you create your own plan!

Psst… we also have a template below that you can copy and use!

Project Title: Research study to improve onboarding experience on DuoLingo 

Business Goal: We want to increase the activation rate of new users on the app.

Project Goal(s) :

  • Identify key drop-off points on the onboarding flow
  • Identify why users are dropping off at these points

Target Users: People from the 15-40 age group in North America who have not used Duolingo before.

  • MixPanel analytics data to identify existing drop-off points for users
  • Usability testing with the think aloud protocol to understand why users are dropping off at those points

Timelines: The study will run for 4 weeks:

  • Week 1: Analyzing existing analytics data & recruiting participants
  • Week 2: Running usability tests
  • Week 3: Analyzing results
  • Week 4: Presenting findings

Budget (if applicable): Anticipated spend of $500 on recruiting.

Key Research Questions These are the research questions we’ll be gathering data on :

  • At which point(s) in the onboarding process are users most likely to drop off?
  • What are the common reasons users cite for discontinuing the onboarding process?
  • How do users perceive the clarity of instructions during the initial setup stages?
  • Are there any specific usability issues that lead users to abandon the onboarding flow?
  • How do users' prior experiences with language learning apps impact their expectations of DuoLingo's onboarding?

UX Research plan template

how to write ux research objectives

We’ve also created a UX Research plan template you can use easily duplicate and use for your own work.

Click here to get Looppanel's UX Research Plan template.

This template contains sections for:

  • Project Title
  • Business Goals
  • Project Goals
  • Target Users
  • Research Methods
  • Timelines & Budgets
  • Key Research Questions

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Creating A User Research Plan (with Examples)

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UX research helps to test hypothesis you have about users prior to design. Sadly, not every UX design project starts with user research, and that’s because it takes a lot of time to recruit participants, run UX research projects, and sumamrize findings.

Good research, nevertheless, ensures that your product team doesn’t build the wrong functionality that would cost you valuable resources and make you vulnerable to losing customers.

In this article, you’ll see how you can use UX research plan to get stakeholder’s buy-in and create research reports that’s full of valuable advice for product design. Let’s go.

At the end, when you have your research complete, launch the right tool for your design process. For that, try UXPin, an end-to-end design tool for interactive prototyping that brings design and product development together.

Designers can create a powerful prototypes, show them to product managers who can interact with the design instead of just looking at it. Then, they give the design to engineers who can get all the specs and some code to kickstart front-end design with.

Since with UXPin you work faster, you have ample time for UX research before UX design. Try it for free .

Build advanced prototypes

Design better products with States, Variables, Auto Layout and more.

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What is a UX Research Plan?

A UX research plan helps to set expectations and document the essentials you need to communicate to stakeholders and clients. Your company needs a strong business case for every user research session, complete with research objectives, goals, methods, and logistical needs for the study.

UX Research Plan Elements

Every UX research plan should start with a solid outline. That’s where templates come in handy. They help you structure your UX research project in a way that team members and stakeholders see value in completing research process.

Master templates are the best way to create a successful and effective UX research plan. Using a template as a starting point makes planning and writing easier and helps you and your team stay focused on the who, what, why, and when of research. Read on for tips and examples for how you can build a user research plan that works.

UX Research Plan Background

The background section should offer your clients and stakeholders a few sentences on why you are creating a user research plan and what it will accomplish. It should orient readers to the needs and expectations behind the purpose of the study. It should also include a problem statement, which is the primary question you’re setting out to answer with your research findings. 

Example Background

The purpose of this study is to understand the major pain points users experience in using our website/app and how these contribute to issues such as cart abandonment, returned items, and low customer loyalty. 

We will be using usability testing to follow the user’s experience of our website/app and the obstacles they encounter leading up to the point of purchase. We will also be using generative research techniques to better understand the customer’s experience of our brand and the challenges and needs they face in making a purchase. 

UX Research Plan Objectives

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of your user research plan, you first want to focus on your research objectives. This step outlines the reasons you are conducting a UX research plan in the first place. Why are you carrying out this research? What are the end goals you have after completing all the work?

Seeking out answers to these questions should be a collaborative effort between you and your stakeholders. It’s also helpful to consider discussions and learnings from past clients and projects to create metrics for your UX research plan. 

Objectives and Success Metrics

Research objectives will be different for every project, but they should always be actionable and specific. 

Example Objectives

  • Understand how users currently go about tracking orders on our website
  • Understand what actions customers take when they consider buying a new [product we offer]
  • Learn about competitor websites/apps customers are using to buy [product we offer]
  • Evaluate pain points customers are experiencing in using our website/app

And here are some examples to help you determine the success of your UX research plan.

Example Success Metrics

  • What information are we trying to collect about users?
  • What scales/documents/statistics do we intend to create?
  • What decisions will these materials help to make? 

UX Research Plan Methodology

This step should be a short and sweet description of the research methods you will use to answer the research objectives. It should include both secondary and primary methods. Generative methods, such as user interviews and open-ended questions, help uncover motivations or more general insights, while UX testing helps to evaluate the usability and experience of your product. 

UXRP 01

Research Scope & Focus Areas

Clearly outlining the research scope and focus areas helps to facilitate efficient user research planning. The more you’re able to hone in on the specifics of what information you are wanting to collect, the less overwhelmed you will be in the process. It also helps avoid inundating your clients with unnecessary information. 

To keep research-focused, this section should include:

  • 3-6 question topics (e.g. How do users spend their time on a website?)
  • Design Focus Components, including interface qualities (e.g. Usability, Training, Efficiency, Satisfaction)
  • Primary User Scenarios (e.g. Scenarios in which pain points are most problematic; scenarios you have the least information about, etc.)

Example Methodology

For this study, we’re conducting a 30-minute usability test to evaluate our user’s experience of our app/website. A secondary method will be to conduct one-on-one generative research interviews to better understand our customers and empathize with their needs. 

UX Research Plan Participant Profiles

Once you’ve defined objectives methodology and focus areas, it’s time to outline the participants you’ll need to get the required insights. Participant profiles help you determine who you want to recruit, or an approximation of your users, to optimize recruiting efforts. Here are a few examples of how to ensure you’ll get the best participants for your study. 

UXRP 02

Define your target user by collaborating with internal stakeholders, marketing, sales, and customer support. With their help, you can create approximations about who your users are. This is a great starting point for finding the right participants for your study. 

Compare yourself to your competitors and create participant profiles based on their audiences. Recruiting people who use a competitor’s product can be an excellent way to glean insights into how to further improve your product. 

Outline a screening process. Participant profiles should include any relevant information concerning your target audience, including behaviors, needs, demographics, geography, etc. Including the right criteria will help you evaluate whether or not to include certain individuals in your user research plan. 

This Nielsen Norman article offers some great information about defining and recruiting the right participants for your study. 

UX Research Plan Timeline

This is optional, but many UX research plans include a timeline that offers clients and stakeholders a general overview of how long the research will take. It helps to set expectations for the final results as well as allowing you to create a schedule for research sessions, debriefing, follow-up, and deliverables. 

Timeline Example: 

Approximately 6-8 weeks for identifying objectives, creating participant profiles, recruitment, in-person meetings, qualitative research, and analysis. 

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UX research plan templates are essential tools for executing a successful project. Having a master template helps you to remember what the process entails, communicate essential information to the right people, and stay on track throughout the user research plan.

UXPin, besides being a great prototyping tool, makes creating such research templates fast and easy. Especially since each project will be a little different and plans will need tweaking in terms of structure and content. Try UXPin for free .

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How to Create a UX Research Plan in 6 Steps (with Examples!)

Cori Widen

Cori Widen currently leads the UX Research team at Lightricks. She worked in the tech industry for 10 years in various product marketing roles before honing in on her passion for understanding the user and transitioning to research.

Get the most value out of your research project from day 1.

PRD – Keyword – ux research plan

If you’re a Product Manager without a user research team, are you out of luck? Absolutely not. Though dedicated researchers are truly the dream (I’m biased, as I lead a team of them myself), a user-centric PM can create and execute a UX research plan that answers some of the most crucial questions about users during the product development and product design process.

I’ll walk you through exactly what to do and how to do it—let’s dive in.

How do you know when it’s time to start a user research project?

Before we get into user research tools and the specifics of how to create a user research plan, it’s important to reflect a little bit about when it’s most helpful to conduct user research. Particularly if you’re not a full-time researcher, you’ll want to make sure that you’re investing time in research where it’s most worthwhile.

Here’s a handy chart to guide your thought process about whether or not it’s time to roll up your sleeves and do some research.

You’re lacking new ideas for features or other initiatives that answer user needsYou don’t have time to make iterations on whatever section of the product you’d like to research
You had a highly successful or unsuccessful product initiative and you aren’t sure what you can learn from the experience for future iterationsYour current questions about your users are more because you’re curious and less because you need answers in order to make product decisions
There is a disagreement or lack of knowledge on your team about which user pain points or needs are most crucial to solveYou won’t have time to finish up your research before you have to make the relevant product decisions
You are working on a new flow or feature and are questioning what the ideal UX is

Overall, doing user research makes sense when you have a practical reason for doing so and when you have sufficient time to do research and define actionable insights. It also bears noting that skipping user research means running the risk of developing a poorly-designed product .

Now, let’s assume that you’ve put some thought into this and you’re feeling ready to get started. Next is your step-by-step guide for creating a solid user research plan.

Creating a UX Research plan, step-by-step

If you do a quick search, you’ll see that the world is full of many different UX research podcasts , resources, and approaches when it comes to creating a research plan. In my role as a User Research Lead, I’ve found that a short, to-the-point one-pager is the best way to both plan your research in a way that all stakeholders can understand and to leave enough time to, you know, actually do the research. Here are the steps to follow when you go about creating your one-page plan.

Step 1: Align with your team on your research goals 

It’s often tempting to start the conversation about user research with methodology—“we’ll do some interviews” or “we’ll conduct a survey.”  The truth is, though, that you can’t know what methodology to use, or even whether you want to use a quantitative or qualitative methodology, until you work with your team to define your goals. 

Once you’ve defined your goals—in other words, what you want to learn and why—and your whole team is aligned, you’ll be able to start drafting your research plan.

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My Recommendation:

Get together the smallest, most relevant group of colleagues whose work will be directly impacted by your research. Often, this group includes other product managers, the UX or product design team, product marketing managers, and a representative from senior management on the product team.  

Think about what makes sense given your product development workflow and organizational culture and get everyone together.

Consider this meeting a brainstorming meeting where you’ll have the ability to get outside of your own head and hear from other colleagues about what they’d like to learn. Ultimately, since you’re creating the research plan and owning the UX design research process , you’ll decide what makes it in and what doesn’t.

Not only does this brainstorming session with your colleagues give you practical information to include in your research plan, but you’ll find that it’s easier to get buy-in for the research process when your colleagues feel that they’re genuinely involved.

Tip

When brainstorming with your team, challenge everyone who puts forward a question about users to explain how answering that question will help them make important product decisions. This is a helpful way to whittle down your research goals to the things that will actually have practical, tangible value in the foreseeable future.

Step 2: Write the Story section of your one-page research plan

Now that you’ve brainstormed with your colleagues, and you have all of the information that motivated you to start planning research in the first place, you’re ready to start drafting your plan. 

The first section of your research plan should be what is called The Story.

The Story is anywhere from 3 to 6 sentences explaining briefly, in words, what you’re doing and why. The goal of this section is to craft a short narrative such that anyone who reads it knows why you’re doing research and what the expected impact of your knowledge will be.

Let’s look at an example to help you get started.  Imagine that your company has a mindfulness app and is planning to build a community feature where people who are interested in mindfulness can interact with each other in a meaningful way.  A sample Story may look something like this:

Story Example

This quarter, the product team is beginning an ambitious project to create a mindfulness community within the app. Our goal is to provide genuine value to our users, and we’ll be using metrics in the realm of conversion rate and community engagement to measure our success.   

Before we begin creating the product roadmap for the community, the team is going to conduct user research in order to learn more about our target audience and the ways in which our future community can best serve them.  This research will allow us to kick off the project by understanding user needs related to the community more in-depth so that we can begin brainstorming product solutions. 

Notice that in the Story section, you’re being fairly general in order to give context and background—in the next section, you’ll write out your concrete research goals.

Step 3: Define and write the Scope section of your research plan

After the story, you’ll create your Scope section, which is the section of the research plan where you’ll define your specific research questions. Simply put, this is where you write out, usually in a bulleted list, what exactly you want to learn from your research.

Continuing with our mindfulness community example, a Scope may look something like this:

Example Scope

  • Do members of our target audience currently involve others in their mindfulness practice? Why/why not? How?
  • Do members of our target audience currently belong to any communities centered around mindfulness? If yes, what are the primary value propositions of these communities? What are these communities lacking, if anything?
  • Do members of our target audience have goals related to mindfulness? If yes, how do they articulate them? What’s challenging about reaching those goals? What helps them work toward their goals?

The scope can be longer or shorter than this example, and you can use the syntax that makes the most sense for your team—but the overall idea is that anyone who reads the Scope section of your UX research plan will know exactly what your research questions are and what type of information you’re looking to learn.

Next up, you’ll use your Story and your Scope to decide which research methodology you’ll be using…

Step 4: Define your research methods and write the Methodology section of your research plan

Once you’ve defined your Scope, you can decide which research methods will best help you to answer the research objectives that you’ve defined. There are a lot of decisions to make here, and you’ll likely be asking yourself questions like:

  • Should I be doing qualitative research or quantitative research?
  • I’ve done usability testing before, but I’m not sure if that’s relevant to the goals of the research – how do I know?
  • How many methods should I use? How many research participants do I need?

These are all great and relevant questions—and it’s certainly true that a hugely important part of the research process is choosing the appropriate methodology. Even the most commonly used methods—interviews, surveys , usability testing, and so on—give very different types of information.  

The good news is that—even if you’re not yet knowledgeable about which UX research methods to use and when—there are a ton of good user experience research resources out there that can give you some guidance.  This guide is a great place to start when it comes to understanding which research techniques will help you with your specific research project. 

To understand more about the number of participants to recruit, or how many research sessions to do,  for each stage of your UX research project, this article does a great job at defining what to take into account.

Once you’ve defined your methodology, write it out in your research plan. Title the section Methodology and include one bullet point for each method – and yes, it’s definitely possible that you’ll use more than one research method in your research project.

Make sure to define the target research participants for each method.

Here is an example of what bullet points under the Methodology section may look like:

  • 10 User Interviews {Current power users who have at least 2 sessions per week for the past month}
  • 10 User Interviews {Users who use XYZ competitor app at least twice per week}

You can include other relevant details in this section if you think they’re important to state. For example, will each method be conducted in-person or virtual? Do you want to link to your list of interview questions for transparency about what you’ll ask users if you are doing interviews? As long as the core information is here, you can add details that you think your team needs to align on and/or be aware of.

Step 5: Define and write your Timeline and Budget

Ask any user researcher and they’ll tell you that anyone who gets wind of a user research project will immediately want to know how long it’s going to take. At the end of your one-page research plan, give a target date for when your research deliverables will be ready. Simply, this means: when will you have your research insights and product recommendations ready to present to other stakeholders?  

You may want to specifically define your timeline as approximate in your research plan since actually executing research can be somewhat unpredictable. For example, your project timeline may need to be altered depending on how long it takes you to recruit participants, which you can’t always anticipate precisely in advance.

In addition to your Timeline, think about whether it makes sense within your organizational culture to make explicit your Budget for the project in your research plan. If your manager will need to approve your plan and expenses such as paying research participants for their time, it’s a good idea to include it in your plan.

Step 6: Share your research plan for feedback and final alignment

Congratulations! You’re finished with the first draft of your UX research plan. It’s one page, it gives all of the necessary context, and it lays out exactly what you’re going to do and when. Just to recap, your very basic UX research plan template is something like this:

Story : Give the general context for this research

Scope : Give a bulleted list of what you’d like to learn from this study

Methodology : List which research methods you’ll use and with whom

Timeline : Give an approximate timeline for your research and tell everyone when you plan to deliver your results

Budget : If needed, define your budget here for approval

The next and final step is to share the main stakeholders with the draft of your plan. Allow comments, and use your judgment as to which user feedback to incorporate (or not). Once you feel that you and your colleagues are reasonably aligned, you’re done! You have your research plan and you’re ready to start doing your user research project. 

Executing your research and beyond

Whether this is your first time implementing a user research plan or you have some experience, it’s worth taking a little bit of time to reflect on some best practices right before you get started. 

Here are some tips and tricks to keep in mind as you move forward:

  • Never Stop Learning: Remember that if you’re unfamiliar with a specific method, there are a ton of online resources. Carve out some time in your calendar to fill in knowledge gaps as needed throughout the research process.
  • Over-Communicate: Update your team from time to time as your timeline evolves. It’s inevitable that something won’t go precisely as planned, and that’s usually fine as long as you communicate any timeline changes to the relevant stakeholders.
  • Don't Fear Change: I'm not referring to jumping on a hip new UX design trend —I'm talking about the need to pivot when your research isn't going as you hoped. Don’t forget that your research plan can be altered. If you start doing research and realize that you aren’t achieving saturation with your current sample size, or that you need to add an additional research method in order to get the insights that you need—that’s totally fine! Most user researchers experience this from time to time. Do what you need to get the job done.
  • Focus on Value: The format of your deliverables depends on your organizational culture but ultimately, everyone wants actionable insights to come from every user research project. Good research is research with practical value, whether it’s delivered as a research report or a presentation. 

User experience research is transformative— lean into it!

It can feel overwhelming to initiate and execute user research projects among all of your other tasks, but hopefully, now that you’ve drafted your one-page plan, you feel that it’s more manageable. Most product and UXR professionals who have leaned into user research and integrated it into the product development process describe it as transformative for themselves, the product, and their team members. It’s invigorating to learn from your users and to use your research findings as a starting point for key product initiatives.

As your user research journey continues, be sure to subscribe to The Product Manager newsletter , which is one of my favorite sources for new and timely advice when it comes to user experience research.

Happy researching!

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Research Objective

What is a research objective.

A research objective is a statement that outlines the specific goals and intentions of a UX research study . It describes what you’re trying to find out with your research, its purpose and key focus. It also serves as a baseline for creating research questions and tasks. By defining research objectives, UX professionals ensure that their research activities align with the broader objectives of the project, facilitating the creation of user-centered design solutions. 

Synonyms: research goal, study objective

glossary bee

How to write a research objective?

Well-defined research objectives provide a solid foundation for conducting meaningful UX research and generating valuable insights. Write your research objective following these 4 tips:

  • Identify the problem: Begin by understanding the purpose of your research. Clearly define the problem or area of investigation that needs to be addressed. Identify what is not known or what needs to be improved. Talking to stakeholders and other teams like sales or support can help. 
  • Focus on a single goal: Each research objective should address a specific goal or outcome. Avoid combining multiple goals in a single sentence, as this can lead to confusion and lack of clarity. Keep each objective focused and concise.
  • Ensure clarity: Craft research objectives that are clear and easily understandable. Use simple and straightforward language to communicate the intended purpose of your research. 
  • Be specific: Clearly define the scope and boundaries of your research. Avoid vague and complicated jargon-heavy statements. Defining a specific research objective will make it easy to come up with the right questions as well as analyze the study results later on. 
  • Consult and seek feedback: When you already have a draft of your research objective, ask other team members to give you feedback. What would they expect to find out from that research? What do they think of the statement you came up with? This collaborative approach can help to refine and strengthen research objectives based on collective expertise.

By following these steps you should be able to come up with a clear research objective that’ll drive the success of your study.

When should I write a research objective?

Write your research objectives at the early stages of the research planning process. They should be developed before you begin designing your research study, writing questions and choosing the user research methods . 

Writing research objectives early on helps to provide clarity and direction for your study, ensuring that your research activities align with the overall goals. As soon as you have the problem statement defined and know what you’ll need to find out with the research, you can start writing the research objective.

The reason for starting so early is that the research objectives you define will provide a foundation for formulating research questions, selecting appropriate methodologies, choosing the right UX research tools , and determining the necessary resources and timelines for your study.

Benefits of writing a research objective

  • Guiding research activities: Research objectives serve as a guide for designing and conducting your study. They help you determine the appropriate UX research questions , data collection methods, and analysis techniques. With clearly defined objectives, you can structure your user research plan and make informed decisions about how to approach your study.
  • Evaluation of the results: Research objectives provide a basis for evaluating the success of your study. They allow you to assess whether you have achieved your intended outcomes or met your research goals. Having measurable objectives enables you to track progress, measure the impact of your research, and make data-driven conclusions.
  • Assuring clarity and focus: A well-defined research objective provides clarity and focus to your study. It helps you clearly articulate the purpose and goals of your research, ensuring that your efforts remain aligned with the desired outcomes. By having a clear objective, you avoid ambiguity and stay on track throughout the UX research process .

how to write ux research objectives

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How many research objectives should I write?

A good rule of thumb is to stick to 1-3 research objectives per study . But the number of research objectives you write can vary depending on the scope and complexity of your research study. However we advise to have a limited number of focused and specific research objectives rather than an excessive amount. 

The difference between research objective and business objective is that while research objectives contribute to informing and supporting business objectives by providing relevant insights and data, they are more focused on the specific research study and its outcomes. Business objectives , on the other hand, encompass a broader organizational context and guide decision-making and resource allocation across various departments and initiatives.

To give an example of a good research objective, let’s imagine we’re testing a website of an airline company. In this case, we’d want to find out if users face any problems when trying to book a trip through the website. 

A good example of a research objective in this case would be:

We want to identify any problems or barriers users encounter when trying to book a flight.

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  • Card Sorting
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What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

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The UX researcher’s toolkit: 11 UX research methods and when to use them

After defining your objectives and planning your research framework, it’s time to choose the research technique that will best serve your project's goals and yield the right insights. While user research is often treated as an afterthought, it should inform every design decision. In this chapter, we walk you through the most common research methods and help you choose the right one for you.

ux research methods illustration

What are UX research methods?

A UX research method is a way of generating insights about your users, their behavior, motivations, and needs.

These methods help:

  • Learn about user behavior and attitudes
  • Identify key pain points and challenges in the user interface
  • Develop user personas to identify user needs and drive solutions
  • Test user interface designs to see what works and what doesn’t

You can use research methodologies like user interviews, surveys, focus groups, card sorting, usability testing to identify user challenges and turn them into opportunities to improve the user experience.

More of a visual learner? Check out this video for a speedy rundown. If you’re ready to get stuck in, jump straight to our full breakdown .

The most common types of user research

First, let’s talk about the types of UX research. Every individual research method falls under these types, which reflect different goals and objectives for conducting research.

Here’s a quick overview:

ux research methods

Qualitative vs. quantitative

All research methods are either quantitative or qualitative . Qualitative research focuses on capturing subjective insights into users' experiences. It aims to understand the underlying reasons, motivations, and behaviors of individuals.

Quantitative research, on the other hand, involves collecting and analyzing numerical data to identify patterns, trends, and significance. It aims to quantify user behaviors, preferences, and attitudes, allowing for generalizations and statistical insights.

qualitative research quantitative research

Qualitative research also typically involves a smaller sample size than quantitative research. Nielsen Norman Group recommends 40 participants—see our full rundown of how many user testers you need for different research methods .

Attitudinal vs. behavioral

Attitudinal research is about understanding users' attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs. It delves into the 'why' behind user decisions and actions. It often involves surveys or interviews where users are asked about their feelings, preferences, or perceptions towards a product or service. It's subjective in nature, aiming to capture people's emotions and opinions.

Behavioral research is about what users do rather than what they say they do or would do. This kind of research is often based on observation methods like usability testing, eye-tracking, or heat maps to understand user behavior.

attitudinal research behavioral research

Generative vs. evaluative

Generative research is all about generating new ideas, concepts, and insights to fuel the design process. You might run brainstorming sessions with groups of users, card sorting, and co-design sessions to inspire creativity and guide the development of user-centered solutions.

On the other hand, evaluative research focuses on assessing the usability, effectiveness, and overall quality of existing designs or prototypes. Once you’ve developed a prototype of your product, it's time to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. You can compare different versions of a product design or feature through A/B testing—ensuring your UX design meets user needs and expectations.

generative vs evaluative research

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11 Best UX research methods and when to use them

There are various UX research techniques—each method serves a specific purpose and can provide unique insights into user behaviors and preferences. In this section, we’ll highlight the most common research techniques you need to know.

Read on for an at-a-glance table, and full breakdown of each method.

User interviews One-on-one open-ended and guided discussions Start and end of your project Qualitative
Generative
Field studies Observe people in their natural environment All stages Qualitative
Behavioral
Focus group Group discussions facilitated by a moderator Start and end of your project Qualitative
Generative
Diary studies Users keep a diary to track interactions and  experience with a product Start of your project Qualitative
Evaluative
Surveys Asking people open or closed questions All stages

Qualitative
Quantitative
Attitudinal
Generative
Evaluative

Card sorting Users sort information and ideas into groups that makes sense to them Start of your project

Qualitative
Generative
Attitudinal

Tree testing Assess the findability and organization of information as users navigate a stripped-down IA Start of your design or redesign process

Quantitative
Behavioral
Evaluative

Usability testing Users perform a set of tasks in a controlled setting All stages

Qualitative Behavioral
Evaluative

Five second testing Collect immediate impressions within a short timeframe During initial ideation and throughout design Attitudinal
Evaluative
A/B testing Compare two versions of a solution All stages

Quantitative
Evaluative

Concept testing Evaluate the feasibility, appeal, and potential success of a new product During initial ideation, design, and before launch

Qualitative
Generative

1. User interviews

Tl;dr: user interviews.

Directly ask users about their experiences with a product to understand their thoughts, feelings, and problems

✅ Provides detailed insights that survey may miss ❌ May not represent the wider user base; depends on user’s memory and honesty

User interviews are a qualitative research method that involves having open-ended and guided discussions with users to gather in-depth insights about their experiences, needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Typically, you would ask a few questions on a specific topic during a user interview and analyze participants' answers. The results you get will depend on how well you form and ask questions, as well as follow up on participants’ answers.

“As a researcher, it's our responsibility to drive the user to their actual problems,” says Yuliya Martinavichene , User Experience Researcher at Zinio. She adds, “The narration of incidents can help you analyze a lot of hidden details with regard to user behavior.”

That’s why you should:

  • Start with a wide context : Make sure that your questions don’t start with your product
  • Ask questions: Always ask questions that focus on the tasks that users are trying to complete
  • Invest in analysis : Get transcripts done and share the findings with your team

Tanya Nativ , Design Researcher at Sketch recommends defining the goals and assumptions internally. “Our beliefs about our users’ behavior really help to structure good questions and get to the root of the problem and its solution,” she explains.

It's easy to be misunderstood if you don't have experience writing interview questions. You can get someone to review them for you or use our Question Bank of 350+ research questions .

When to conduct user interviews

This method is typically used at the start and end of your project. At the start of a project, you can establish a strong understanding of your target users, their perspectives, and the context in which they’ll interact with your product. By the end of your project, new user interviews—often with a different set of individuals—offer a litmus test for your product's usability and appeal, providing firsthand accounts of experiences, perceived strengths, and potential areas for refinement.

2. Field studies

Tl;dr: field studies.

Observe users in their natural environment to inform design decisions with real-world context

✅ Provides contextual insights into user behavior in real-world situations ✅ Helps identify external factors and conditions that influence user experience ❌ Can be time-consuming and resource-intensive to conduct ❌ Participants may behave differently when they know they are being observed (Hawthorne effect)

Field studies—also known as ethnographic research—are research activities that take place in the user’s environment rather than in your lab or office. They’re a great method for uncovering context, unknown motivations, or constraints that affect the user experience.

An advantage of field studies is observing people in their natural environment, giving you a glimpse at the context in which your product is used. It’s useful to understand the context in which users complete tasks, learn about their needs, and collect in-depth user stories.

When to conduct field studies

This method can be used at all stages of your project—two key times you may want to conduct field studies are:

  • As part of the discovery and exploration stage to define direction and understand the context around when and how users interact with the product
  • During usability testing, once you have a prototype, to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution or validate design assumptions in real-world contexts

3. Focus groups

Tl;dr: focus groups.

Gather qualitative data from a group of users discussing their experiences and opinions about a product

✅ Allows for diverse perspectives to be shared and discussed ❌ Group dynamics may influence individual opinions

A focus group is a qualitative research method that includes the study of a group of people, their beliefs, and opinions. It’s typically used for market research or gathering feedback on products and messaging.

Focus groups can help you better grasp:

  • How users perceive your product
  • What users believe are a product’s most important features
  • What problems do users experience with the product

As with any qualitative research method, the quality of the data collected through focus groups is only as robust as the preparation. So, it’s important to prepare a UX research plan you can refer to during the discussion.

Here’s some things to consider:

  • Write a script to guide the conversation
  • Ask clear, open-ended questions focused on the topics you’re trying to learn about
  • Include around five to ten participants to keep the sessions focused and organized

When to conduct focus groups

It’s easier to use this research technique when you're still formulating your concept, product, or service—to explore user preferences, gather initial reactions, and generate ideas. This is because, in the early stages, you have flexibility and can make significant changes without incurring high costs.

Another way some researchers employ focus groups is post-launch to gather feedback and identify potential improvements. However, you can also use other methods here which may be more effective for identifying usability issues. For example, a platform like Maze can provide detailed, actionable data about how users interact with your product. These quantitative results are a great accompaniment to the qualitative data gathered from your focus group.

4. Diary studies

Tl;dr: diary studies.

Get deep insights into user thoughts and feelings by having them keep a product-related diary over a set period of time, typically a couple of weeks

✅ Gives you a peak into how users interact with your product in their day-to-day ❌ Depends on how motivated and dedicated the users are

Diary studies involve asking users to track their usage and thoughts on your product by keeping logs or diaries, taking photos, explaining their activities, and highlighting things that stood out to them.

“Diary studies are one of the few ways you can get a peek into how users interact with our product in a real-world scenario,” says Tanya.

A diary study helps you tell the story of how products and services fit into people’s daily lives, and the touch-points and channels they choose to complete their tasks.

There’s several key questions to consider before conducting diary research, from what kind of diary you want—freeform or structured, and digital or paper—to how often you want participants to log their thoughts.

  • Open, ‘freeform’ diary: Users have more freedom to record what and when they like, but can also lead to missed opportunities to capture data users might overlook
  • Closed, ‘structured; diary: Users follow a stricter entry-logging process and answer pre-set questions

Remember to determine the trigger: a signal that lets the participants know when they should log their feedback. Tanya breaks these triggers down into the following:

  • Interval-contingent trigger : Participants fill out the diary at specific intervals such as one entry per day, or one entry per week
  • Signal-contingent trigger : You tell the participant when to make an entry and how you would prefer them to communicate it to you as well as your preferred type of communication
  • Event-contingent trigger : The participant makes an entry whenever a defined event occurs

When to conduct diary studies

Diary studies are often valuable when you need to deeply understand users' behaviors, routines, and pain points in real-life contexts. This could be when you're:

  • Conceptualizing a new product or feature: Gain insights into user habits, needs, and frustrations to inspire your design
  • Trying to enhance an existing product: Identify areas where users are having difficulties or where there are opportunities for better user engagement

TL;DR: Surveys

Collect quantitative data from a large sample of users about their experiences, preferences, and satisfaction with a product

✅ Provides a broad overview of user opinions and trends ❌ May lack in-depth insights and context behind user responses

Although surveys are primarily used for quantitative research, they can also provided qualitative data, depending on whether you use closed or open-ended questions:

  • Closed-ended questions come with a predefined set of answers to choose from using formats like rating scales, rankings, or multiple choice. This results in quantitative data.
  • Open-ended question s are typically open-text questions where test participants give their responses in a free-form style. This results in qualitative data.

Matthieu Dixte , Product Researcher at Maze, explains the benefit of surveys: “With open-ended questions, researchers get insight into respondents' opinions, experiences, and explanations in their own words. This helps explore nuances that quantitative data alone may not capture.”

So, how do you make sure you’re asking the right survey questions? Gregg Bernstein , UX Researcher at Signal, says that when planning online surveys, it’s best to avoid questions that begin with “How likely are you to…?” Instead, Gregg says asking questions that start with “Have you ever… ?” will prompt users to give more specific and measurable answers.

Make sure your questions:

  • Are easy to understand
  • Don't guide participants towards a particular answer
  • Include both closed-ended and open-ended questions
  • Respect users and their privacy
  • Are consistent in terms of format

To learn more about survey design, check out this guide .

When to conduct surveys

While surveys can be used at all stages of project development, and are ideal for continuous product discovery , the specific timing and purpose may vary depending on the research goals. For example, you can run surveys at:

  • Conceptualization phase to gather preliminary data, and identify patterns, trends, or potential user segments
  • Post-launch or during iterative design cycles to gather feedback on user satisfaction, feature usage, or suggestions for improvements

6. Card sorting

Tl;dr: card sorting.

Understand how users categorize and prioritize information within a product or service to structure your information in line with user expectations

✅ Helps create intuitive information architecture and navigation ❌ May not accurately reflect real-world user behavior and decision-making

Card sorting is an important step in creating an intuitive information architecture (IA) and user experience. It’s also a great technique to generate ideas, naming conventions, or simply see how users understand topics.

In this UX research method, participants are presented with cards featuring different topics or information, and tasked with grouping the cards into categories that make sense to them.

There are three types of card sorting:

  • Open card sorting: Participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and name those categories, thus generating new ideas and names
  • Hybrid card sorting: Participants can sort cards into predefined categories, but also have the option to create their own categories
  • Closed card sorting: Participants are given predefined categories and asked to sort the items into the available groups

Table showing differences between three card sorting types: open, closed, hybrid

Card sorting type comparison table

You can run a card sorting session using physical index cards or digitally with a UX research tool like Maze to simulate the drag-and-drop activity of dividing cards into groups. Running digital card sorting is ideal for any type of card sort, and moderated or unmoderated sessions .

Read more about card sorting and learn how to run a card sorting session here .

When to conduct card sorting

Card sorting isn’t limited to a single stage of design or development—it can be employed anytime you need to explore how users categorize or perceive information. For example, you may want to use card sorting if you need to:

  • Understand how users perceive ideas
  • Evaluate and prioritize potential solutions
  • Generate name ideas and understand naming conventions
  • Learn how users expect navigation to work
  • Decide how to group content on a new or existing site
  • Restructure information architecture

7. Tree testing

Tl;dr: tree testing.

Evaluate the findability of existing information within a product's hierarchical structure or navigation

✅ Identifies potential issues in the information architecture ❌ Focuses on navigation structure, not visual design or content

During tree testing a text-only version of the site is given to your participants, who are asked to complete a series of tasks requiring them to locate items on the app or website.

The data collected from a tree test helps you understand where users intuitively navigate first, and is an effective way to assess the findability, labeling, and information architecture of a product.

We recommend keeping these sessions short, ranging from 15 to 20 minutes, and asking participants to complete no more than ten tasks. This helps ensure participants remain focused and engaged, leading to more reliable and accurate data, and avoiding fatigue.

If you’re using a platform like Maze to run remote testing, you can easily recruit participants based on various demographic filters, including industry and country. This way, you can uncover a broader range of user preferences, ensuring a more comprehensive understanding of your target audience.

To learn more about tree testing, check out this chapter .

When to conduct tree testing

Tree testing is often done at an early stage in the design or redesign process. That’s because it’s more cost-effective to address errors at the start of a project—rather than making changes later in the development process or after launch.

However, it can be helpful to employ tree testing as a method when adding new features, particularly alongside card sorting.

While tree testing and card sorting can both help you with categorizing the content on a website, it’s important to note that they each approach this from a different angle and are used at different stages during the research process. Ideally, you should use the two in tandem: card sorting is recommended when defining and testing a new website architecture, while tree testing is meant to help you test how the navigation performs with users.

8. Usability testing

Tl;dr: usability testing.

Observe users completing specific tasks with a product to identify usability issues and potential improvements

✅ Provides direct insights into user behavior and reveals pain points ❌ Conducted in a controlled environment, may not fully represent real-world usage

Usability testing evaluates your product with people by getting them to complete tasks while you observe and note their interactions (either during or after the test). The goal of conducting usability testing is to understand if your design is intuitive and easy to use. A sign of success is if users can easily accomplish their goals and complete tasks with your product.

There are various usability testing methods that you can use, such as moderated vs. unmoderated or qualitative vs. quantitative —and selecting the right one depends on your research goals, resources, and timeline.

Usability testing is usually performed with functional mid or hi-fi prototypes . If you have a Figma, InVision, Sketch, or prototype ready, you can import it into a platform like Maze and start testing your design with users immediately.

The tasks you create for usability tests should be:

  • Realistic, and describe a scenario
  • Actionable, and use action verbs (create, sign up, buy, etc)

Be mindful of using leading words such as ‘click here’ or ‘go to that page’ in your tasks. These instructions bias the results by helping users complete their tasks—something that doesn’t happen in real life.

✨ Product tip

With Maze, you can test your prototype and live website with real users to filter out cognitive biases, and gather actionable insights that fuel product decisions.

When to conduct usability testing

To inform your design decisions, you should do usability testing early and often in the process . Here are some guidelines to help you decide when to do usability testing:

  • Before you start designing
  • Once you have a wireframe or prototype
  • Prior to the launch of the product
  • At regular intervals after launch

To learn more about usability testing, check out our complete guide to usability testing .

9. Five-second testing

Tl;dr: five-second testing.

Gauge users' first impressions and understanding of a design or layout

✅ Provides insights into the instant clarity and effectiveness of visual communication ❌ Limited to first impressions, does not assess full user experience or interaction

In five-second testing , participants are (unsurprisingly) given five seconds to view an image like a design or web page, and then they’re asked questions about the design to gauge their first impressions.

Why five seconds? According to data , 55% of visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a website, so it;s essential to grab someone’s attention in the first few seconds of their visit. With a five-second test, you can quickly determine what information users perceive and their impressions during the first five seconds of viewing a design.

Product tip 💡

And if you’re using Maze, you can simply upload an image of the screen you want to test, or browse your prototype and select a screen. Plus, you can star individual comments and automatically add them to your report to share with stakeholders.

When to conduct five-second testing

Five-second testing is typically conducted in the early stages of the design process, specifically during initial concept testing or prototype development. This way, you can evaluate your design's initial impact and make early refinements or adjustments to ensure its effectiveness, before putting design to development.

To learn more, check out our chapter on five-second testing .

10. A/B testing

Tl;dr: a/b testing.

Compare two versions of a design or feature to determine which performs better based on user engagement

✅ Provides data-driven insights to guide design decisions and optimize user experience ❌ Requires a large sample size and may not account for long-term effects or complex interactions

A/B testing , also known as split testing, compares two or more versions of a webpage, interface, or feature to determine which performs better regarding engagement, conversions, or other predefined metrics.

It involves randomly dividing users into different groups and giving each group a different version of the design element being tested. For example, let's say the primary call-to-action on the page is a button that says ‘buy now’.

You're considering making changes to its design to see if it can lead to higher conversions, so you create two versions:

  • Version A : The original design with the ‘buy now’ button positioned below the product description—shown to group A
  • Version B : A variation with the ‘buy now’ button now prominently displayed above the product description—shown to group B

Over a planned period, you measure metrics like click-through rates, add-to-cart rates, and actual purchases to assess the performance of each variation. You find that Group B had significantly higher click-through and conversion rates than Group A. This indicates that showing the button above the product description drove higher user engagement and conversions.

Check out our A/B testing guide for more in-depth examples and guidance on how to run these tests.

When to conduct A/B testing

A/B testing can be used at all stages of the design and development process—whenever you want to collect direct, quantitative data and confirm a suspicion, or settle a design debate. This iterative testing approach allows you to continually improve your website's performance and user experience based on data-driven insights.

11. Concept testing

Tl;dr: concept testing.

Evaluate users' reception and understanding of a new product, feature, or design idea before moving on to development

✅ Helps validate and refine concepts based on user feedback ❌ Relies on users' perception and imagination, may not reflect actual use

Concept testing is a type of research that evaluates the feasibility, appeal, and potential success of a new product before you build it. It centers the user in the ideation process, using UX research methods like A/B testing, surveys, and customer interviews.

There’s no one way to run a concept test—you can opt for concept testing surveys, interviews, focus groups, or any other method that gets qualitative data on your concept.

*Dive into our complete guide to concept testing for more tips and tricks on getting started. *

When to conduct concept testing

Concept testing helps gauge your audience’s interest, understanding, and likelihood-to-purchase, before committing time and resources to a concept. However, it can also be useful further down the product development line—such as when defining marketing messaging or just before launching.

Which is the best UX research type?

The best research type varies depending on your project; what your objectives are, and what stage you’re in. Ultimately, the ideal type of research is one which provides the insights required, using the available resources.

For example, if you're at the early ideation or product discovery stage, generative research methods can help you generate new ideas, understand user needs, and explore possibilities. As you move to the design and development phase, evaluative research methods and quantitative data become crucial.

Discover the UX research trends shaping the future of the industry and why the best results come from a combination of different research methods.

How to choose the right user experience research method

In an ideal world, a combination of all the insights you gain from multiple types of user research methods would guide every design decision. In practice, this can be hard to execute due to resources.

Sometimes the right methodology is the one you can get buy-in, budget, and time for.

Gregg Bernstein, UX Researcher at Signal

Gregg Bernstein , UX Researcher at Signal

UX research tools can help streamline the research process, making regular testing and application of diverse methods more accessible—so you always keep the user at the center of your design process. Some other key tips to remember when choosing your method are:

Define the goals and problems

A good way to inform your choice of user experience research method is to start by considering your goals. You might want to browse UX research templates or read about examples of research.

Michael Margolis , UX Research Partner at Google Ventures, recommends answering questions like:

  • “What do your users need?”
  • “What are your users struggling with?”
  • “How can you help your users?”

Understand the design process stage

If your team is very early in product development, generative research —like field studies—make sense. If you need to test design mockups or a prototype, evaluative research methods—such as usability testing—will work best.

This is something they’re big on at Sketch, as we heard from Design Researcher, Tanya Nativ. She says, “In the discovery phase, we focus on user interviews and contextual inquiries. The testing phase is more about dogfooding, concept testing, and usability testing. Once a feature has been launched, it’s about ongoing listening.”

Consider the type of insights required

If you're looking for rich, qualitative data that delves into user behaviors, motivations, and emotions, then methods like user interviews or field studies are ideal. They’ll help you uncover the ‘why’ behind user actions.

On the other hand, if you need to gather quantitative data to measure user satisfaction or compare different design variations, methods like surveys or A/B testing are more suitable. These methods will help you get hard numbers and concrete data on preferences and behavior.

*Discover the UX research trends shaping the future of the industry and why the best results come from a combination of different research methods. *

Build a deeper understanding of your users with UX research

Think of UX research methods as building blocks that work together to create a well-rounded understanding of your users. Each method brings its own unique strengths, whether it's human empathy from user interviews or the vast data from surveys.

But it's not just about choosing the right UX research methods; the research platform you use is equally important. You need a platform that empowers your team to collect data, analyze, and collaborate seamlessly.

Simplifying product research is simple with Maze. From tree testing to card sorting, prototype testing to user interview analysis—Maze makes getting actionable insights easy, whatever method you opt for.

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about testing methods, head on to the next chapter all about tree testing .

Get valuable insights from real users

Conduct impactful UX research with Maze and improve your product experience and customer satisfaction.

user testing data insights

Frequently asked questions

How do you choose the right UX research method?

Choosing the right research method depends on your goals. Some key things to consider are:

  • The feature/product you’re testing
  • The type of data you’re looking for
  • The design stage
  • The time and resources you have available

What is the best UX research method?

The best research method is the one you have the time, resources, and budget for that meets your specific needs and goals. Most research tools, like Maze, will accommodate a variety of UX research and testing techniques.

When to use which user experience research method?

Selecting which user research method to use—if budget and resources aren’t a factor—depends on your goals. UX research methods provide different types of data:

  • Qualitative vs quantitative
  • Attitudinal vs behavioral
  • Generative vs evaluative

Identify your goals, then choose a research method that gathers the user data you need.

What results can I expect from UX research?

Here are some of the key results you can expect from actioning the insights uncovered during UX research:

  • Improved user satisfaction
  • Increased usability
  • Better product fit
  • Informed design decisions
  • Reduced development costs
  • Higher conversion rates
  • Increased customer loyalty and retention

Tree Testing: Your Guide to Improve Navigation and UX

The User Research and Insights Tool for Design and Product Teams

How to Create a UX Research Plan [Free Template Inside]

UX research plan

Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail”. While Benjamin Franklin wasn’t talking about UX research, the statement applies. 

Many researchers fail to plan because they assume they understand user research well enough to create a budget, timeline, process, and more. They conveniently forget that planning is the cornerstone of a successful project and expertise is never enough to see anything through. 

Creating a UX research plan allows you to leverage multiple perspectives from project stakeholders and teammates.  Stakeholders can help you understand where techniques might not work, timelines may be too tight, or budget insufficient to execute a research project. 

Research planning prevents surprises that may come up along the way. It reduces cost and helps you determine how each step of the UX research will be executed to ensure success.

In this guide, we’ll lead you through the steps of creating a UX research plan. You’ll also get a free template so you can create your first research plan immediately.

What Is UX Research?

UX research is the study of user interaction to obtain insights that improve the design process. UX researchers study a group of target users to collect and analyze data that leads to user-friendly products. 

The primary goal of UX research is to build products for the end-user based on real data not what you think the user wants. When you conduct UX research, you can give your audience the best solutions because you know what they need.

As a UX researcher, you could begin with qualitative research methods to collect data and understand the user’s needs and motivation. Next, you use quantitative measures such as usability testing to test your hypothesis and results.

What Is a UX Research Plan?

A UX research plan is a document that sets expectations and highlights the most important information you need to communicate with stakeholders in a research project. It is usually a collaboration between all stakeholders to ensure it meets the goals and objectives you’ve laid out.

A user research plan acts as a starting point to help you write easily and keep your team focused on the who, what, why, and when of a UX research project.

What Are the Benefits of Planning User Research?

benefits of UX research plan

Show Project Sponsors and Senior Executives the ROI of Your Research

In most scenarios, project sponsors do not care about the process or the user research techniques you choose. They want to know what your research will achieve and how much it will cost to execute. A brief research plan lays out the objective of the research and how it will benefit product design.

Engage Stakeholders

A written research plan is also a great way to engage stakeholders and ensure they’re involved with the research project and the results. You’ll also be leveraging the experience of team members who’ve conducted similar research in the past.

Keeps You Accountable

When you write something down, it looks different from what you pictured in your head. It eliminates the risk of missing steps in the process, going above budget, or losing sight of your research objectives. Think of a research plan as a list of checkpoints to make sure you’ve achieved each goal in your research.

Easier to Plug Holes in Your Process

A research plan helps you to learn what works or doesn’t work and questions you need to be asking. As you write down your plan and process, you can find holes and improve your research plan. It makes it easier to focus and prepare for the study.

How to Create a User Research Plan? 

How to create UX research plan

1. Write the Background of the Research

The background section should be brief. Tell stakeholders and clients about the recent history of the project, why you’re conducting the research, and what you’re going to accomplish. In a few sentences (no more than five lines of text), everyone should understand the purpose of the study.

The background section should also include the problem statement. A few ways to identify the problem statement include interviews with stakeholders, a deep analysis of the current data, or team sessions to brainstorm.

2. What Are the Objectives of the Research?

You must have an objective before getting in a room with users. The research objective drives all the research questions you’ll be asking participants during the user interview process.

Why are you conducting user research? What problems do you hope to solve? What is the end goal after completing the research?

Getting answers to these questions should be a collaborative effort between stakeholders and team members involved in the project.

3. Define Stakeholders

UX research plan example

Who are the stakeholders that will benefit from the results? Research project stakeholders could be employees in sales, customer support, C-level executives, or product teams.

When you’ve listed everyone you think should be involved, set up a meeting to brainstorm ideas and collect input. It’s easier to deliver the right insights when you’re involving the right stakeholders in your project.

4 . Study Existing Solutions

Have any studies been done on this topic in the past? Perhaps your competitors or in-house teammates have published previous findings that will work as the basis of your research? The answers will help you determine where to begin.

If your team uses Aurelius as a research repository , you’ll be able to easily search through past research projects to quickly find information and make Cross-Project Insights and recommendations from past research with your current project.

5. Recruit Participants

After defining the problem and objectives, it’s time to create a participant profile. Choosing the right participants is one of the most crucial parts of a project. 

When creating participant profiles start with characteristics such as occupation, age group, geography, and level of engagement with the product. Next, determine the number of participants to recruit for each UX research method. 

We advise internal collaboration with all stakeholders such as sales, marketing, and customer support teams to brainstorm a hypothesis on who your ideal user is. Analyze your competitors to see what type of users they have in their audience.

finding participants for user interviews

If you have a database, consider looking inwards to customers who already know your product. If you don’t, use a research recruitment platform to find participants. 

When recruiting externally, use a screener to hone in on your ideal participant. Is there a particular behavior you’re looking for? A qualifying action they must have taken within a specific timeframe? Do they need to be a certain age? Screeners ensure you’re bringing in the right users for your research.

6. Establish KPIs and Metrics of Success

How will success be determined?  What criteria will you use to check milestone achievements? Examples of success metrics include:

  • Time on task
  • Specific information about the user 
  • Decisions that the collected data will help you make 
  • Statistics you intend to create

7. Outline Scope and Focus of Research

Outlining the focus areas leads to efficient research planning. The deeper you’re able to hone in on the specific information you want to collect from the research, the more clarity you’ll have. 

8. Write Research Questions

This is the section where you’ll write down the research questions to ask during user interviews. Start by examining what you already know about the problem such as insights from previous research . Find the knowledge gaps and create questions to answer them.

When brainstorming research questions, it’s important to determine if the goal is to create a new design or to fix an existing design. 

If your objective is to build the right design, then your questions will focus on observing user behavior and leveraging mental models.

If the goal is to fix an existing design, then you’ll ask questions about usability to improve the current design. Whatever the goal is, aim for open-ended questions.

Here’s a comprehensive list of questions to ask when conducting UX research interviews

9. Determine Your Budget 

budget is an essential part of research planning

Budget plays a role in the amount of data you gather and how you conduct research. More budget equals flexibility to outsource to a dedicated recruitment service, run paid campaigns to attract more people, or even increase the incentives for participants.

More money also makes it easier to choose the right UX research methods that translate into quality insight. Conversely, with a small budget, you have to think of ways to stretch your funds such as using zoom over in-person meetings, limiting the number of research participants, or choosing inexpensive research techniques.

10. Establish Project Timeline

Having a timeline for executing the research plan lets stakeholders and clients know how long the research will take. There might be different expectations between what you think the timeline should be versus the client’s expectation. 

When establishing a timeline consider the following:

  • The scale of the project
  • The time needed to collect data for research analysis
  • Time for recruiting research participants
  • Number of teammates to engage in research activities
  • Unforeseen circumstances such as participants showing up late or needing to reschedule for another day

11. Develop Research Protocols

The research protocol is a list of questions and tasks you’ll cover during in-person sessions. It also includes a list of research methods you’ve chosen. 

A common practice is to write down the opening and closing statement of your UX interview. It begins with an explanation of the product, research objectives, and how long each interview session will take. In the end, you thank the participant for their time and answer any questions they might have.

Make sure you get feedback from stakeholders on the research questions as well as the following:

  • The duration of each session
  • Tasks each research participant will complete during usability testing
  • A script to guide each session
  • How to record interviews and protect participant data

12. Determine the Research Methods

In this section, you’ll discuss the UX research methods you’ll use during the research and explain why you’ve chosen these techniques.

While there are dozens of research methods to choose from, your choices should be informed by your research questions. Some, like A/B tests and surveys, are suited for quantitative research while others like user interviews and contextual inquiries work best for qualitative research . 

Learn more about how to choose a UX research method plus options to choose from during user research

13. Choose UX Research Tools 

Similar to research protocols, the research tools you choose should be based on your research objectives and questions.

When choosing UX research tools, consider the following:

  • Are you recruiting participants internally from your database or externally?
  • Is it going to be a usability test?
  • Will you conduct interviews via video conferencing?
  • How will you store and analyze research data ?
  • Are you going to A/B test certain elements for conversion?
  • Will you conduct surveys to collect mass feedback?

There are different tools that fulfill each of these objectives. For example, you can recruit participants from platforms like User Interviews and Userbrain . You can build a research repository to store data and get insights with Aurelius . Tools like Optimizely and Crazy Egg are great for A/B testing.

Get a comprehensive list of UX research tools to complete each stage of the research process in this article

14. Draw Insights and Present your Research Findings

This is the final stage when creating a UX research plan. The insights will be determined by the goals of the research. Is the goal to improve an existing product or create a new product? Which stakeholders will need access to the result?

Make sure you document your process and include details about setbacks you faced along the way, methodologies used, and session materials. This way, your team can have an overview to look back on when conducting the next research project.

To get insight from your research data, use Aurelius to analyze dozens of notes, audio/video recordings as well as spreadsheets.

difference between Aurelius and alternatives

Create a new project in Aurelius, import your data from anywhere, find information quickly with Tags, search for patterns with Keywords, highlight major findings with Key Insights and make suggestions with Recommendations.

Aurelius turns your recommendations and key insights into shareable reports that you can customize as you like. You can share or present your research findings via email, a PDF, or a live link to your report.

Learn More About How Aurelius Can Help You Improve the Research Process 

Asides from having a plan of action for research issues, you must have a plan for working with research participants. 

A few things to do during the first interaction with research participants include:

  • Inform users about the background of the research and what they’re signing up for
  • Tell them how you plan to store their data
  • Ask for permission to record the process
  • Ask for permission to use their data for research purposes only
  • Share details about the UX research process
  • Tell them the methods you’re using to collect data 

If you feel like it’s too much information, remember that it’s better to overshare than to not give sufficient information.

Use a Template to Streamline UX Research Planning

Templates help you create research plans quickly. Think of it as a starting point for your research project. It includes all the essential elements you need to conduct research and communicate your findings.

Go ahead and download our free UX research plan template. Then, use the tips above to fill out the template.

Download our free UX research plan template

How to create a UX research plan

Steven-Carr

Steven Carr

how to write ux research objectives

The concept of research planning can be met with mixed emotions. Some may say that planning delays action. However, a good plan should really do the opposite by providing a clear guide for action and deliverables. In this post, we’ll detail how a well-conceived UX research plan will help streamline your research and foster understanding and engagement from all stakeholders involved.

What is a UX research plan?

A UX research plan can take many forms. It can be a document, spreadsheet, set of slides, or anything else you can imagine as long as it acts as an overview for kicking off the project.

While a UX research plan doesn’t have to be a formal document, it shouldn’t only live in the mind of a single person. Consolidating ideas, milestones, and deliverables together in one, accessible place allows for a guided conversation that has major benefits on the outcomes of a set of research.

What are the benefits of building a UX research plan?

When it comes to user research, it may seem daunting to be too prescriptive when building your UX research plan. After all, how can you account for everything a user might need, say, or want? Nonetheless, it’s important to try, because making progress on your goals is rarely made through random activity. And, there’s nothing wrong with making adjustments as you go. 

Even when faced with uncertainty—often compounded by the everchanging world we live in—effective planning facilitates progress.

The benefits of a UX research plan are numerous, but some include:

  • Fosters alignment : Rarely does UX research involve a single stakeholder. With a written UX research plan, you can ensure that all team members involved are on the same page, marching toward agreed-upon goals. Not to mention, a plan allows you to spot conflicting interests before you’re too far down the line.
  • Engages stakeholders : An effective UX research plan ensures stakeholders are properly engaged with the study and its results. Without a written plan, there’s a greater chance that stakeholders won’t feel invested and may become observers of the research rather than active participants.
  • Ensures UX goals are achieved : A UX research plan should clearly map desired outcomes as well as mileposts to define progress. These provide a standard for assessing how the plan is progressing and if adjustments need to be made to keep the plan on track.

Every organization is different, so the teams within them may be responsible for different business goals. This means that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to creating a UX research plan. 

In this section, we’ll provide an overview of steps to consider when creating your plan.

A well-oiled UX research plan should include:

  • A clear problem statement
  • Objectives for the research
  • The research method(s) needed to execute the research
  • An overview of the participants
  • A test plan
  • How you’ll present your findings

Let’s get started.

1. Craft a clear problem statement

As with most plans, you should start by clearly identifying and stating the problem that you’re trying to solve. A UX research plan is no different. Your problem statement should be clear, specific, and give enough detail that stakeholders understand what the research is trying to solve.

Problem statements don’t just stem from nowhere. Some great sources for inspiration might be your support team which deals with customer issues on a daily basis, customer reviews on your website, or feedback from social media. Understanding what data already exists—and what you still need to know—is a fantastic starting point for building a strong UX research plan. Let's take a closer look at some of the steps involved in creating a great  problem statement:

Defining the problem:

Begin by articulating the issue in a manner that is concise yet comprehensive. A well-crafted problem statement should communicate the essence of the issue succinctly, making it immediately apparent to all stakeholders what the research will address. It’s important that this statement avoids generalities and is rooted in specific user experiences or observed difficulties. For example, instead of saying "improve website navigation," specify "users are struggling to locate the search function on the homepage, which is impacting conversion rates."

Gathering preliminary data:

Before formalizing your problem statement, gather preliminary data to understand the context better. Chat to your customer support team to identify common complaints or challenges users face. Review customer feedback collected through surveys, feedback forms on your website, or direct interactions. Social media platforms can also be a goldmine of user opinions and issues, often providing raw, unfiltered feedback on what users like or struggle with regarding your product or service.

Analyzing existing data:

Analyze the data you’ve gathered to detect patterns or recurring themes. This analysis might reveal that users feel a particular feature is too complicated or that there are barriers to completing a purchase. Such insights help refine your problem statement by focusing on specific user challenges that your research needs to address.

Crafting a detailed problem statement:

With a clear understanding of user challenges, refine your problem statement to reflect these specifics. Ensure it encapsulates the user's perspective, focusing on their experiences and the difficulties they encounter. For instance, if users find an application form daunting due to its length and complexity, your problem statement could be, "Users are abandoning the application form because its length and complex questions create a perception that the process is tedious and time-consuming."

Communicating the significance:

Ensure your problem statement communicates why addressing this issue is crucial for the business or product. Link the problem directly to business outcomes, such as improved user satisfaction, increased sales, or reduced customer churn. This not only highlights the importance of the research but also aligns it with broader business goals, facilitating stakeholder buy-in.

Seeking feedback:

Once you have a draft, share it with key stakeholders—include team members from design, development, marketing, customer service etc. This will help provide new insights, validate the problem’s relevance, and make sure it resonates across all areas of the business. This feedback might prompt revisions that make the statement more inclusives and more robust.

Finalizing the problem statement:

Once you've used that feedback to refine your problem statement, you'll have a well-defined statement that will lead to powerful and useful reseaarch insights. 

Once you’ve put together your problem statement, it’s time to define your objectives.

2. Define your objectives

Think about defining your objectives as telling the story of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what you expect to learn from your  UX research . The objectives you set should be the driving force behind every task you assign and every question that you ask research participants.

This means it’s important to be specific. Setting clear objectives will help you define the project scope and the questions you have to ask participants to get the information you need. If the scope is too broad, anything and everything becomes a research question—which becomes overwhelming to manage.

If you like to think visually, consider this chart.

how to write ux research objectives

Avoiding the rabbit hole

A well-defined objective keeps you from falling into the rabbit hole of scope creep. Without specific targets, your project can easily grow unwieldy, trying to cover too much ground and diluting the impact of your findings. To avoid this, break down large goals into smaller, focused tasks that you can tackle effectively. For instance, if improving website navigation is your goal, you could focus specifically on enhancing the visibility of the main menu, reducing clicks to reach key content, or improving search functionality.

Using SMART goals

To make your objectives really work for you, frame them using the SMART criteria—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Here’s how you might apply these to a UX project:

  • Specific : Nail down exactly what you want to achieve. Instead of a broad "improve website usability," aim for something like "cut down the time it takes users to complete a purchase by 20%."
  • Measurable : Set up ways to measure your success. You could track the average time it takes users to check out before and after you make site improvements.
  • Achievable : Keep your objectives realistic, considering the resources and time you have. If user access is limited, opt for in-depth feedback from a smaller user group instead of surface-level input from many.
  • Relevant : Tie your objectives to your broader business goals. If increasing online sales is the target, streamlining the checkout process is a no-brainer.
  • Time-bound : Put deadlines on your goals to keep the project moving forward. Plan out when you'll conduct phases of research, analysis, and implementation.

Iterative review and adaptation

Objectives aren’t set in stone. As you dive into your research and start gathering data, be ready to tweak and refine your objectives based on what you learn. UX research is inherently iterative, and being flexible allows you to pivot as you uncover new insights or face unexpected challenges. Regularly revisiting your objectives ensures your research stays relevant and aligned with both user needs and business priorities.

By keeping your objectives clear and focused, you make sure that your UX research is effective, impactful, and tightly connected to enhancing user experience. This isn't just about sticking to a plan—it's about making the plan work hard for you, every step of the way.

Start with a problem statement, define the objectives you need to address the problem, then build out tasks and questions that will uncover the necessary information from your participants. 

Once you have a clear understanding of what your problem is and how you’re going to aim to solve it, you’ll need to choose the right research method for your plan. 

3. Selecting the right UX research method

Next, you'll have to choose the research method that will achieve your stated goals—based on the objectives you've already identified. Before we jump into individual research methods, or the tactics used for conducting UX research, there are big-picture questions that need to be addressed first. And that’s: What types of UX research are there?

We won’t dive too deep into this here, but here’s some additional reading that might help you understand the type of research you’ll need to conduct:

  • Qualitative vs. quantitative research : Qualitative methods are all about the 'why' behind user behaviors, giving you insights through interviews, observations, and open-ended interactions. Quantitative methods crunch the numbers—you’ll get stats, percentages, and graphs that show what users are doing at scale.
  • Attitudinal vs. behavioral research :  Are you looking to find out what users say they do or what they actually do? Attitudinal research focuses on opinions, preferences, and beliefs, often gathered through surveys or interviews. Behavioral research, on the other hand, observes the real actions users take, often in usability tests or through analytics.
  • Generative vs. evaluation research : Starting fresh and need ideas? Generative research helps you understand problems and identify new opportunities, perfect when you’re at the drawing board. Evaluation research is your go-to when you’ve got something to test, checking if your designs are hitting the mark or missing it by a mile.

Choosing a method that fits

Now that you’ve got a lay of the land, it’s time to match your research method to your project goals. Here’s how you can ensure the method you pick will deliver the goods:

  • Match the method to your objective : If your goal is to understand how users feel about a new feature, a survey might give you broad quantitative data, but in-depth interviews could unveil deeper insights about their feelings and reactions.
  • Consider your resources : Some methods, like extensive field studies, can be resource-heavy. Have a think about what’s realistic in terms of time, budget, and available tools.
  • Think about the outcome : What kind of data do you need at the end? Numbers that prove a point, or stories that give you direction? Choose a method that aligns with the kind of evidence that will best inform your design decisions.

Mix and match for best results

Often, no single method will tell the whole story. Consider using a mix of approaches to get both the depth and breadth of insights you need. For instance, you might start with a survey to get a general sense of user satisfaction and follow up with interviews to dive deeper into specific issues highlighted by the survey results.Once you understand the types of results you're trying to achieve, make sure that the research method you choose delivers the evidence you need to make informed decisions.

Related reading:  The UX research methodology guidebook

4. Select your participants

One of the most important factors that contribute to a successful UX research plan lies in choosing the right participants (and the right number of them). There’s some debate out there over how many participants you should include in UX research, and the right answer depends on what you’re trying to learn.

Figuring out the right number of participants Let’s unpack this a bit:

  • The rule of five : Research shows that five test participants will  uncover 85% of a product’s usability issues . This is particularly handy when you’re looking to iron out kinks in a prototype or an existing product.
  • Looking for trends? Go bigger : If your mission is to catch broader user trends or get data that you can really hang your hat on, you’ll need a bigger crowd. This means pulling in more folks to get that robust quantitative data that’ll make your stakeholders sit up and listen.

Selecting the right participants is more than just filling seats—it’s about ensuring that every voice you hear from can directly contribute to richer, more actionable insights. So take your time, think it through, and choose wisely to make your UX research as impactful as possible.

Ensuring a good fit

Finally, make sure they’re a good fit for what you’re trying to learn:

  • Screen effectively : Develop screening surveys or questions that help you verify that potential participants really do match the profile you’re looking for.
  • Keep it balanced : Try to maintain a balance in your participant group to avoid skewing your data. If you’re only hearing from one type of user, you might miss out on insights that could be critical for another segment of your audience.

Recruiting the right participants

Finding these people and convincing them to take part in your study is next on the agenda. Here are a few strategies:

  • Leverage existing data : Start with what you know. Use your app’s analytics to identify users who fit your criteria, or sift through customer service logs to find people who’ve faced relevant issues.
  • Consider your reach : Depending on your resources and the scale of your project, think about how you’ll reach out to these potential participants. Email blasts, social media calls, or leveraging a professional recruiting service can all be effective, depending on your needs and budget.

Matching participants to your target audience

But it’s not just about numbers. Who these people are matters a ton. Here’s how to get the right mix:

  • Broad vs. specific : You’ve got two paths here. Either you go broad, casting a wide net to gather a diverse range of insights across a general demographic, which is great for more exploratory or generative research. Or, you get laser-focused, targeting a very specific group of users who represent your core audience or a particular user scenario. This approach is fantastic when your research goals are tightly defined.
  • Align with your objectives : Circle back to what you’re aiming to learn. If your goal is to improve the check-out process for a shopping app, your best bet is to zero in on users who’ve abandoned their cart recently. That’s your goldmine for insights.

Defining who your participants should be will require you to go back to the goals you’ve set and the questions that need answering.

5. Build your test plan

There's a certain art to crafting a great test plan. Admittedly, it can take a bit of practice. From moderated  user interviews  to unmoderated usability tests to prototyping—test plans can take many different shapes and sizes. Lucky for you, our education and research teams have come together to build out this outstanding resource for building test plans.

Check out all of our articles on the UserTesting Knowledgebase for building a  test plan . 

how to write ux research objectives

6. Lock in a timeline

Establishing your research project’s timeline is an essential step in creating a UX research plan. Estimating how long the research project will take place and when the findings could be expected are necessary considerations in any project.

Even if not exact, determining an approximate timeline (e.g., 2-3 weeks) will enable you to manage stakeholders’ expectations of the process and the results.

Let’s dive into how to effectively map out the time your research will take and when you can expect to roll out the findings.

Planning your research timeline

Here’s how you can approach it:

  • Start with the end in mind : Think about when you need the results and work backward from there. Are there product development deadlines or marketing launches that your research needs to feed into? Pin these dates down first.
  • Break it down : Segment your research into phases like planning, recruitment, execution, analysis, and presentation of findings. Assign realistic time frames to each phase based on the complexity of the tasks involved.

Be realistic and flexible

While it’s great to have a timeline, it’s also important to stay flexible:

  • Allow for buffers : Research can be unpredictable. Participants might cancel, or you might stumble upon a vein of insights that requires deeper exploration. Build in buffer days to accommodate these uncertainties without throwing off your entire schedule.
  • Continuous updates : Keep your stakeholders in the loop with regular updates. If timelines shift, communicate this early and clearly, explaining the reasons and the new expected dates.

Managing expectations

An accurate timeline helps in setting and managing expectations:

  • Transparent scheduling : Share your timeline with everyone involved in the project. This transparency helps manage expectations and allows team members to align their schedules and responsibilities accordingly.
  • Prepare for adjustments : Be prepared to adjust your timeline based on feedback from interim findings or logistical hiccups. This flexibility can be crucial for maintaining the quality and relevance of your research.

Locking in a timeline isn’t just about sticking to dates. It’s about creating a structured approach to your research that allows for informed planning, anticipates adjustments, and aligns with the broader goals of your project. By taking the time to map out each phase and communicate this effectively, you ensure that your UX research delivers valuable insights in a timely and efficient manner.

7. Present the results

Finally, determining how you’ll present the findings of your project from the start ensures they will be impactful and implemented across the organization. Setting this understanding from the beginning will also determine if all of your stakeholders have been properly identified. It can be frustrating to find out that you need to  present to an executive  halfway through a project.

Ultimately, for the purpose of your UX research plan, it’s important to choose a presentation medium that’s appropriate for your key stakeholders. Perhaps it’s a UX research report , a set of slides, or even a Jira ticket for your product team; the point is, you want to deliver the information to stakeholders in a way they’re comfortable with—and will be most receptive to.

Using a UX research plan template

So now you’ve built a UX research plan from scratch. While it may seem like an arduous process, we can assure you that it’s well worth your time. Being able to confidently embark on a project with clear deliverables, milestones, stakeholder buy-in, and a plan for presenting results is a major feat—one that will be recognized and appreciated by all of those involved.

Nevertheless, time is money. So once you’ve gone through an entire UX research project, we encourage you to hold a retrospective meeting to identify all the ways you could improve the process. Once you uncover what went well and what can be improved, turn your UX research plan into a template for you and your peers to leverage within your organization. 

Need some inspiration for your next UX research project? Check out our list of curated  test templates  to get you started.

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how to write ux research objectives

ROI of UserTesting

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Steven is a Marketing Content Strategist. When he’s not inserting oxford commas where they belong, you can find him shooting pool at a local dive or building killer playlists on Spotify.

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IMAGES

  1. How to Create a UX Research Plan? (w/Example)

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  2. How to Create a UX Research Plan Document?

    how to write ux research objectives

  3. How to Write UX Research Objectives (with 14 Examples)

    how to write ux research objectives

  4. How To Write UX Research Objectives (with 14 Examples)

    how to write ux research objectives

  5. UX Research Plan: Examples, Tactics & Templates

    how to write ux research objectives

  6. How to Create a UX Research Plan [Free Template Inside]

    how to write ux research objectives

COMMENTS

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  4. Writing UX research objectives

    These objectives should center on specific features or processes of your product. Think of it this way: the better your objective, the better your feedback will be. Keeping your objective front and center will help you figure out your UX research deliverables. It will ensure you structure your studies to gain insights into the right set of ...

  5. Writing UX Research Objectives

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  6. How to Create a User Research Plan

    How to plan a UX research study. This is a step-by-step guide to planning user research. It explains the process by which a research plan comes together into a shareable document (like the one above) that enables team alignment, accountability, and efficiency throughout your study. 1. Identify your research goals.

  7. How to Write a UX Research Plan That Actually Works: 7-Step Tutorial

    Step 1: Alignment & Requirements Gathering. Research rarely will happen in a vacuum. Usually you are working with a team—product, engineering, design, for example. When the need for a research study arises, the first thing you want to do is meet with your team to understand the questions they're trying to answer.

  8. Creating A User Research Plan (with Examples)

    Master templates are the best way to create a successful and effective UX research plan. Using a template as a starting point makes planning and writing easier and helps you and your team stay focused on the who, what, why, and when of research. Read on for tips and examples for how you can build a user research plan that works.

  9. Defining UX Research Objectives

    Before you begin writing a test plan for your remote study, you'll want to set a research objective and determine what you'll be studying. Define your UX research objective. The first step toward gathering helpful feedback is setting a clear and focused objective. If you don't know exactly what sort of information you need to obtain by ...

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  12. Setting clear objectives for your UX research

    Objectives should be the driving force behind every task you assign and every question that you ask. These objectives should be focused on particular features or processes on your product. As a UX researcher, I've learned that the more specific the objectives, the easier it is to write tasks and questions, and the easier it is to extract ...

  13. Essential Elements to Create a UX Research Plan

    6. Prepare the brief. The next component of a research plan is to create a brief or guide for your research sessions. The kind of brief you need will vary depending on your research method, but for moderated methods like user interviews, field studies, or focus groups, you'll need a detailed guide and script.

  14. How to Create a UX Research Plan in 6 Steps (with Examples!)

    Step 2: Write the Story section of your one-page research plan. Now that you've brainstormed with your colleagues, and you have all of the information that motivated you to start planning research in the first place, you're ready to start drafting your plan.

  15. Research Objective

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  16. Setting objectives for user research

    Research Objectives. In the book Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal, two researchers, Nate Bolt, UX Research Manager at Facebook and Cyd Harrel, a former VP of UX Research at BOLT/Peters, talk about a time when they were approached by a client who needed UX research conducted but did not have the time or budget for full-blown research.

  17. How to Write a User Research Plan

    Below is an example structure on how to write an interview script. Try not to be too structured with your approach as part of being a good researcher is to listen to what the user has to say and ask meaningful follow up questions. a. Introduction. Introduce yourself, your role and the purpose of the interview.

  18. 11 UX Research Methods and When to Use Them

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  19. How to Create a UX Research Plan [Free Template Inside]

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  22. Goal vs Objective in User Research

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