User Research Methods and Practices

Overview

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This course introduces the fundamentals of user research methods and practices. Understanding users, identifying their concerns, and addressing their frustrations are key to designing usable, engaging, and persuasive UX products. The course explores various techniques for gathering insightful user data, offering participants the opportunity to delve into user behavior and learn how to interpret this data to uncover opportunities for design improvement. Learning Outcomes -Identify User Needs: Understand user concerns to design engaging solutions. -Apply Research Methods: Learn techniques to gather and analyze user data. -Analyze Behavior: Interpret user behavior to uncover design opportunities.

Syllabus

Welcome

This course introduces the fundamentals of user research methods and practices, focusing on understanding users, identifying their concerns, and addressing frustrations. Key to designing engaging and effective UX products, it covers various techniques for gathering insightful user data. Participants will explore user behavior nuances and learn to interpret behavioral data to uncover opportunities for impactful design solutions.

Research and Audit

This module introduces audits as a key component of the research stage, covering their importance, methods, and objectives. It also includes a detailed lesson on literature research and conducting competitive analysis.

Stakeholders, Experts and User Research

This module introduces stakeholder and expert interviews, covering their roles, learning objectives, and expected outcomes. It also introduces user research, its objectives, and commonly used research methods.

User Research - Contextual Inquiry

This module covers the planning and execution of user research, focusing on contextual inquiry. It explores defining study objectives, team building, roles and responsibilities of each team member, and the six phases of conducting contextual inquiry with target users.

User Research - Focus groups and Self-Documentation

This module introduces two qualitative user research methods: focus group studies and self-documentation. It explores their advantages, challenges, and their practical applications.

User Research Analysis

This module introduces systematic methods for modeling and analyzing user research insights. It covers techniques such as affinity analysis, activity diagrams, and decision trees, enabling the identification and presentation of clear, concrete and actionable findings.