Guidelines
Research Guidelines
It is to ensure successful and ethical user research, prioritise defining clear goals, understand your audience, use diverse research methods, prioritise participant recruitment, and focus on data privacy and confidentiality.
1. Define Your Research Goals
- Be specific: Before starting any research, determine exactly what you want to learn from users. What problems are you trying to solve, and what questions do you need to answer?
- Align with business objectives: Ensure your user research goals align with your overall business and project goals.
- Set clear objectives: Have specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives for your research.
2. Understand Your Audience
- Know your target users: Conduct research to understand the demographics, behaviours, and motivations of your target audience.
- Develop user personas: Create fictional representations of your target users to help you better understand their needs and behaviours.
- Consider different user groups: Identify and research various user groups that might have different needs and experiences.
3. Choose Appropriate Research Methods
- Mix and match: Use a variety of user research methods to gather comprehensive data, such as interviews, surveys, usability testing, and contextual inquiries.
- Consider the context: Choose methods that are appropriate for your research questions and your target audience.
- Be flexible: User research should be a process that can be adjusted based on initial findings and emergent themes.
4. Prioritize Participant Recruitment
- Recruit representative participants: Ensure your participants reflect the characteristics of your target users.
- Use clear recruitment criteria: Define the qualifications and requirements for participants to ensure they are suitable for your research.
- Screen participants: Use pre-screening questions or surveys to identify suitable participants for your research.
5. Data Privacy and Confidentiality:
- Ensure anonymity: Protect the privacy of participants by anonymising any personally identifiable information.
- Obtain informed consent: Explain the purpose of your research, the data collection process, and how the data will be used to participants before they participate.
- Secure data storage and handling: Implement robust data storage and security measures to protect participant data.
- Agree on a data retention period: Define how long the collected data will be stored and destroyed in accordance with relevant regulations and ethical guidelines.
6. Building Empathy and Understanding User Behaviour
- Focus on user needs, not opinions: Prioritise understanding user needs and pain points rather than relying on what users say they want or prefer.
- Observe user actions: Pay close attention to how users interact with the product or service in real-life situations.
- Empathise with users: Try to understand the user's perspective, their challenges, and their goals.
7. Sharing Results
- Prepare a clear report: Present your findings in a clear, concise, and actionable manner.
- Share findings with stakeholders: Engage stakeholders to discuss the research results and identify potential solutions.
- Follow up on findings: Track the implementation of any changes or improvements based on the research findings.
Research Guidelines
Transparent research that contributes meaningfully to knowledge
UKRI
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