UX Research: Basic Principles

There’s something suave about saying you’re a writer. Go ahead, try it: “What do you do?” “I’m a writer…”

Saying you’re a writer has a certain seductive appeal—smoky rooms, typewriters, fedoras perhaps. Yet good UX writing is based on something far less glamorous: research.

Research isn’t sexy, but it is the critically essential first step toward good UX design and writing. And, many find it to be both fun and fascinating.

As a UX writer, all of the copy you write, the features you propose, and the design suggestions you make should be informed by UX research, which is divided into two major components: data acquisition and data analysis.

UX research incorporates a wide array of methods that help us understand the needs and goals of the end user. It shows us who our target audience is, allowing us to learn about that audience. To do this, we might conduct interviews, surveys, observe prospects and potential users, and examine existing literature and data. This allows us to understand how we can create a conversational product for our target audience.

Research is also closely linked to testing, where we analyze data in order to gather actionable insights for our writing. We look at usability and sentiment, run A/B tests, and talk about how the results will inform our writing. But first, we must, of course, acquire the data.

UX research borrows many methods and techniques from other fields: academics, sciences, marketing, and many others. This means we don’t have to be pioneers in this aspect of the job, though there are some elements of UX research that are specific to UX writing, such as conversation mining and others. 

UX research encompasses a variety of investigative methods used to add context and insight to the writing process. We conduct research in order to gather as much information as possible before we start with our product design. You’ll often hear about “user research,” which is an essential element of UX design and writing as it allows us to align our copy with both the users’ and business’s needs. 

Along with user research, you’ll need to develop a thorough understanding of the market and industry you are writing for, as this will inform your research at every step. Particularly, it will allow you to have productive conversations during the engagement component of your research. 

And if you’re short on time, here’s a summary: 

User research places people at the center of your design process and your products. There are three good reasons for conducting user research:

1. To create designs that are truly relevant to your users
2. To create designs that are easy and pleasurable to use
3. To understand the return on investment (ROI) of your user experience (UX) design

Relevant designs

Research is the only way to achieve an understanding of the people who are going to use your design. Understanding the user allows us to create products that are relevant to them. User research will allow you to empathize with the user and understand the desires and goals.

For example, Samsung discovered that people viewed TVs not as something expensive to show off, but as a piece of furniture that should blend in with their living room. This changed the company’s approach from larger, bulky TVs to slimmer ones.

Easy-to-use designs

People expect products to be easy to learn and easy to use. They want to focus on their goal with the product, not on the product itself. Usability testing will allow you to understand if the product is easy to use.

Understand the ROI

Many stakeholders don’t appreciate or understand the value of user research. User research and testing to show that the changes you made in the design generated more sales, resulted in a larger number of customers, or made work processes more efficient, will prove the value of research and UX in general to the stakeholders. 

Finally, remember that you can—and should—do user studies/testing at all stages of the design process.

UX Writing Research: Same Same but Different

At this point, you may be thinking, “isn’t UX research the job of the UX designer, product manager, or dedicated UX researcher?” In many companies, that very well may be the case. If you end up on a product team in a large company like Google, Uber, or Amazon, you’ll be able to turn to your UX research peers for guidance in finding the insights you’re seeking. However, there are aspects of UX research that pertain specifically to UX writing.

The job of the UX writer is to focus on research findings that are related to the type of conversations and language that will appeal to the end user. UX writers must gather information that will allow them to make informed decisions about things like tone, voice, grammar, style, and word choice.

It’s easy to imagine how those aspects will be vastly different between a children’s learning app and an app for the financial sector, for example. But if your target audience is related to finance and economics, what is the relevant vocabulary? How formal or informal should the brand voice be? There are countless things we learn from our research that will ultimately influence every decision we make about the copy of our digital products.

In the next unit, we’ll explore a number of research methods and practices that will serve as the basis for writing effective copy in any kind of digital product.

Even if you’re not a dedicated UX researcher, you should still conduct initial scoping research before you embark upon a project; research is a critical component of user-centered design. 

Your user research should give you some insight into the answers to the following questions:

• What do your users want to get done?
• What are their goals?
• What are they trying to achieve?

Spend some time with your users. Learn about their needs and what they’re trying to achieve, i.e., understand their pain points.

Research is an ongoing process and is rarely ever finished. Adopt an iterative approach: 

• Research
• Design
• Prototype
• Build
• Test

We can think of the research landscape as having two axes:

• Qualitative and Quantitative
• Behavioral and Attitudinal

It’s important to conduct user testing on people that echo your target audience, not just people you happen to know.

Qualitative research is primarily exploratory research, undertaken to establish users’ underlying motivations and needs. Its methods tend toward being unstructured, subjective, and have the goal of establishing insights and theories. This includes methods like interviews, contextual inquiries, and card sorting.

Quantitative research is primarily undertaken to test your assumptions. It is more structured, objective, and focused on testing theories. This includes surveys and questionnaires, analytics, and A/B testing.

Use qualitative and quantitative methods hand-in-hand—both have their place.

When analyzing your findings, look for data points that are backed up by multiple methods. Aim for triangulation: the overlapping of three methods.

Conversation Mining Example

Conversation mining is an invaluable technique for UX writers. The idea behind conversation mining is simple: dig into your users’ conversations, wherever they’re having them, and grab words with both hands.

After all, if our aim is to create a conversational user interface, then what better way to do so than by using the words our users use in actual conversations? For example, let’s say you work for a fashion e-commerce site such as Nasty Gal. You go online and see that someone in your target audience left a popular comment that said, “these pants are SO BOSSY.” So, instead of using copy that says “Shop now,” you write “So Bossy Tailored Tapered Pants.”  Sometimes, it’s as easy as that.

Conversation mining is more than just finding good one-liners, though. We also use it to understand our users’ lingo, explore their pain points, and understand their goals—and, as a result, to give us direction in our general content strategy exploration.