What is the goal?
Deciding on the goal for user research is the first step of your study as it broadly dictates what types of research methods may work. The most important questions to ask yourself before deciding what research methods to use are "What do I want to learn?" and "Why do I want to learn it?" To answer these questions, identify what you already know about users and what knowledge you lack.[1]
Some examples of things you may or may not already know about your users are:
- Who your users are
- How they currently use the product
- If they like using your product
Once you know what you're trying to learn, you can start thinking about how to learn it. Your research method could be:
- Attitudinal (What do people say about a subject?) vs. behavioral (What are people actually doing?) studies
- Qualitative (Why?) vs. quantitative (How many? How much?) studies
Many of these research methods won't fall strictly into one category.
You can also divide research methods according to which type of broad question it helps answer:
- What do people need?
- What do people want?
- Can they use it?
