Creating a UX Research Plan
I bet you probably did not know that it is important to draw up a plan before starting a UX project, particularly the research. I am not attacking you, don’t worry, I just found out myself ! You essentially conduct a UX Research plan to understand your users and how they would interact with your product, right? Thus, a UX Research plan is a document that provides an outline of where and when your project would take place, the goal and purpose of your project, the persons on which your project places focus.
It gives a clearer direction of how your research study should go and contains the deliverables, making it easier for you to track progress. Creating a research plan also ensures that all stakeholders are fully aware of the project’s goals, scope and timeline and that the aims and objectives of the research are accomplished.
According to the Google UX Design course, there are seven elements of a UX Research Plan. They include project background, research goals, research questions, key performance indicators (KPIs), methodology, participants and script. I would just be defining them briefly; you should read up on them to understand better.
Project background provides a clearer perspective on the reason for the project. It answers the question, “what prompted this research?”.
Research goals refer to the aims and objectives the study seeks to go, answering the questions explicitly “why this research?, what does this research seek to achieve?”. Including this in your research plan helps you to know if you are on the same page with the stakeholders.
Research questions cover the questions that the research is trying to provide answers to. These questions need to be open-ended, specific and unbiased.
Key performance indicators (KPIs), as its name implies, refer to the pointers that we would use to measure and track progress made in the research study. For example, it could be conversion rates for a coffee ordering app; that is, how many people were successfully able to make their orders?
Methodology refers to the methods that would be employed in achieving the goals of the research. What is the process you will follow in collecting data and analyzing the data collected? Where would the research take place? What date and time? How long would it last for?
Participants, this means defining your research participants based on the goals your research seeks to achieve. It is more like profiling them based on who the target audience for your product are. Also, it is important that you are inclusive in your research to include people who use assistive technologies.
Script refers to a rundown of how you would carry out your research study: you welcome and thank the participant for agreeing to be a part of the process, obtain their consent to record the interview, get to know them on a basic level, ask them to carry out the usability activities, answer their questions, thank them for their time and stop the recording, of course.
I tried to be as concise as possible but I hope this was helpful. This article contains the lesson I am currently learning about in Course 4. Creating a UX research plan is an area that most designers tend to overlook, but it is super important in any research project. Anyways, I will be back with more updates, stay tuned!
