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UX research fuels your design process
Understanding what you already know about your user and product
So you know how to do experience design. You are confident that you know how to craft an intuitive interface that follows the principles of User-Centred Design and Human-Computer Interaction. You even constantly communicate with other UI designers and engineers to make sure every animation, every component and every event is exactly how you envisioned them to be. You, as a UI/UX designer, you are really doing what you can to create the most natural experience that is visually simplified but functionally sophisticated.
But how do you get there?
How do you know what is the best experience? How do you target your potential user? How are you so confident that you are not just assuming?
🚨 This article is not a UX Research manual, it doesn’t explain every UX Research methodology in great details, it only provides a general idea of how and when UX Research is conducted from a macro perspective and why designers should care about it.
We know things we don’t understand
In Denis Villeneuve’s masterpiece Blade Runner 2049, when agent K was given an investigation case. He didn’t just sit in his office and guess what might have happened. He went out and traveled from place to place, he scrutinized objects and queried what was real and what was implanted memories, he visited an archive library to listen to an old cassette tape that contained valuable information, which led him to a DNA record facility. From there, K was presented with a much bigger secret than he had expected — he may or may not be the miracle child of a real human being and a replicant.
There is a difference between knowing and understanding. K wasn’t only doing his job because he had to know, K also wanted to understand why. Why this case went cold? Why there are so many dead ends? Why he has something to do with it? Why him? The case became personal the moment when he started questioning reality. He discovered things he could not comprehend…
