How To Share Your UX Research, Including Tools to Work With
Bringing stakeholders and other team members closer to our research is so beneficial, and this is why many organizations are finally placing a greater emphasis on listening to the people who use their products and services.
Unfortunately, the wealth of information gleaned from our research does not always translate well into bullet points, emails, or brief summaries.
This made me wonder how we could better translate our findings into compelling insights and anecdotes.
A simple solution to that is “Story telling”. Story telling is the most powerful tool in communications so what better way to share your research other than it?
Keep reading to find out ways you can use story telling creatively to share your user research below:
Build a user research wall
A great way to get into the habit of visually sharing your insights is creating a permanent home for research in your workspace. User research walls are a great way to get you into the habit of communicating your findings visually, and showing the rest of your coworkers and the UX community the constant evolution of your work.
Use Your Infographics
Not the most visually creative person in the world? Doesn’t matter as there are many great tools available to help you quickly and easily design polished infographics and charts. Consider Canva, Piktochart, or Infogram. These applications software can assist you in creating compelling visuals that are pretty to look at and nicely summarize the findings of your research.
Conduct Interactive Workshops
It is not necessary to be passive when presenting your research findings. Making it interactive can be a great way to foster empathy and understanding, as well as a great strategy to gather key stakeholders in the same room.
Tell A Good Story
If you are going to share a research that your coworkers and stakeholders would actually listen to, then you should tell a good story. Highlight the key areas of your research and present with clear words that will help non partakers of the research understand what you have done. Also, don’t forget to pay attention to details.
Iterate, Test, And Repeat.
It takes practice and courage to become a better storyteller. If our insights aren’t producing the desired results, it’s time to test, experiment, and iterate our way to something we’d want to consume. Request feedback from your peers and don’t be afraid to experiment with new approaches. Make every research project the best and most compelling story you’ve ever told.
Tools To Streamline Your UX Research
A flood of UX research tools is sweeping the design industry. You may be wondering which ones are worthwhile to invest in.
Using the right tool, in my experience, can make your UX research much leaner. You can speed up your work, make it more efficient, save time, and even automate many tasks.
These products have proven to be particularly useful in assisting designers and researchers make research more efficient and effective.
Recruiting Tools:
- Ethnio: It assists you in finding, screening, incentivizing, and managing participants. It includes “intercepts” for capturing participants directly within your product, a scheduling system, and advanced tracking and organization features for your pool of respondents such as tagging and sequences.
- UXtweak: offers quite a lot of things, but a favorite is their “Recruiting Widget.” You can stick this straight onto your website or app and recruit participants for multiple studies at once. They also offer what they call “User Panel” which allows you to recruit from pre-selected individuals. And of course, all of this connects with their long list of user testing features.
User Testing Tools:
- Google Optimize: A/B testing can be extremely useful when deciding between various concepts, and Google Optimize provides free tools to make it happen. It allows for advanced customization such as targeting based on geography or other user attributes, and the free plan even includes limited support for multivariate and simultaneous tests.
- Maze: Complete usability testing is becoming more popular across the industry, and Maze is inarguably one of the forerunners. It provides excellent tools for testing everything from prototypes to UX copy, as well as useful integrations and reports.
- Sprig: It allows you to target specific users during key moments in product flows and conduct research right in your app using a widget. Micro surveys, concept testing, and asynchronous user interviews are examples of functions you can perform.
- Optimal Workshop: For good reason, is a well-known name in the industry. It includes a variety of user tests, such as card sorting, tree testing, and first-click tests. It also includes analysis and recruitment tools. It is also useful for planning information architecture.
Survey Tools :
- Google Forms: Many designers use this as their default survey tool. It’s free, simple to use, has useful features, and can connect to a variety of other products via apps like Zapier.
- Tally: has a better survey creation and presentation process than Google Forms, as well as a couple of nice features like answer piping and redirect on completion. 99 percent of the features, including unlimited forms and responses, are free.
User Interviews Tools:
- Grain: allows you to record Zoom meetings, capture key moments, and share those clips with various integrations. It also includes the ability to create quick video summaries, auto transcribe, add highlights, and organize clips into groups.
- Ribbon: allows you to recruit participants in-product, screen them, and schedule recorded user interviews or jump on a call immediately. They are also developing features such as automated transcriptions and participant incentives.
- Lookback: provides an effective interface for remote live user testing and interviews, making the process much easier and more insightful. It also includes full recordings of everything and tools for unmoderated user tests and collaborative analysis.
Analytics / Tracking Tool:
- Hotjar: It provides advanced analytics and tracking for your product, such as session recordings and heatmaps. Observing how your customers use your product can provide you with a wealth of information. You can also set up in-app micro surveys and feedback capture.
Documenting / Sharing Tools:
- Notion: Notion is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a free or low-cost option for documenting and synthesizing your research. It’s not designed specifically for research, but it’s extremely adaptable and has a slew of useful features.
- Slab: is worth looking into as an alternative to Notion. It is a knowledge base platform with excellent features such as unified search, useful organization options, and numerous integrations.
Conclusion
Not everyone has a large budget for UX research tools. Hence, the important thing is to make whatever you have work for you. Many of these tools can be stitched together and will work well together. As you advance, you can upgrade and begin to use more.
