Weekly challenge 1: Research in the design process

There are three key qualities that UX researchers usually possess. Which of the following helps UX researchers understand someone else's feelings or thoughts in a situation?

Empathy

A team is in the early stages of developing a product and needs to define the problem in order to create the solution. Which type of research can best help the team answer their question?

Foundational

Confirmation bias is defined as looking for evidence to prove a hypothesis you already have. Identify a method that can help overcome confirmation bias.

Practice active listening and ask open-ended questions

Consider the following scenario: To decide what type of fitness app to design, the research team designs a survey to learn about gaps in the marketplace. They survey a group of fitness enthusiasts, and ask users to rate—from 1 (strongly dislike) to 5 (strongly like)—the top fitness apps on the market. Using this numeric data, the researchers calculate the average likability rating for each app. What type of research is the team conducting?

Quantitative research

What is the goal of UX research?

Prioritizing the user

Imagine that a design team needs to evaluate a mobile app prototype before the next design iteration. They want to learn about user pain points and fix any problems before the product launches. What is the most appropriate research method?

Usability study

Consider the following scenario: Imagine that a UX designer creates an app for saving, organizing, and streaming podcasts. To learn about users' experiences with their product, the designer conducts interviews with a select group of target users: podcast enthusiasts. The research team has a hypothesis that podcast enthusiasts prefer long-form, polished content—rather than talk radio and news—so they ask a series of questions about how users interact with this content. How can the researcher avoid the impact of confirmation bias? Select all that apply.

- Interview a large group of users with diverse perspectives - Ask open-ended questions and actively listen to respondents

A design team decides to conduct interviews to learn more about users' experiences with their product. Although this is a valuable method of primary research, why might the design team be concerned about conducting interviews? Select all that apply.

- Interviews require a significant investment of time and money - Interviews collect information from only a small sample of users

A design team wants to build an application for mobile users. They've noticed a lack of cat owner-related apps on the market and they want to create an app to fill that void. They want to figure out what they should build. At this stage, what kind of research in the product development lifecycle should they employ?

Foundational research

Which type of bias refers to the ease of remembering the last thing that was heard in an interview or conversation?

Recency bias

Which research method allows in-depth feedback and firsthand interaction, but only measures how easy it is to use a product?

Usability study

Which of the following research methods evaluates a product by testing it on users?

Usability studies