Think Like a UX Researcher

2nd Edition

A book by David Travis and Philip Hodgson

Book cover

Think Like a UX Researcher: How to observe users, influence design, and shape business strategy

In this newly revised Second Edition, you'll find six new essays that look at how UX research methods have changed in the last few years, why remote methods should not be the only tools you use, what to do about difficult test participants, how to improve your survey questions, how to identify user goals when you can’t directly observe users and how understanding your own epistemological bias will help you become a more persuasive UX researcher.

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Think Like a UX Researcher will challenge your preconceptions about user experience (UX) research and encourage you to think beyond the obvious. You'll discover how to plan and conduct UX research, analyze data, persuade teams to take action on the results and build a career in UX. The book will help you take a more strategic view of product design so you can focus on optimizing the user's experience. UX Researchers, Designers, Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Business Analysts and Marketing Managers will find tools, inspiration and ideas to rejuvenate their thinking, inspire their team and improve their craft.

The best new User Experience books The best Product Design books of all time

Think Like a UX Researcher

War stories from seasoned researchers to show you how UX research methods can be tailored to your own organization.

Prepare for job interviews

Thought triggers and exercises to test your knowledge of UX research alongside workshop ideas to build a development team's UX maturity.

A bedside or coffee-break reader

A dive-in-anywhere book that offers practical advice and topical examples.

Setting the Stage

Most companies would claim to design products and services that are simple to use. But when you ask customers to actually use these products and services, they often find them far from simple. Why is there a disconnect between what organisations think of as "simple" and what users actually experience? This chapter contains some introductory articles to set the stage for the later parts of the book.

Planning UX research

This chapter covers the planning and preparation phase of UX research. The articles in this section will help you decide if UX research is needed on a project, and if so what kind of research to do. It will help you take the first steps with your research, for example in deciding what kinds of participant to include.

Conducting UX research

In this chapter we focus on conducting UX research. This is where the researcher engages with users and observes them working in either natural or controlled environments. It is the phase of research in which data are collected.

Analyzing UX research

This chapter discusses data analysis: the process of turning raw data into a story. This is where the meaning of our findings, and the insights and "Aha!" moments, start to emerge. It's the "So what?" of a UX research study.

Persuading people to take action

In this chapter, we describe how to persuade people to take action on the results of UX research. This chapter will help UX Researchers confidently stand their ground with development team members critical of UX research. The chapter covers both persuading the development team and persuading senior managers and stakeholders.

Building a career in user experience

This chapter of the book aims to help organizations build a UX team and help individuals build a career in user experience. With guidance for both new UX Researchers and people who have been in the field for some time, these articles will help you evaluate, improve and present your skills.

What's new in the 2nd Edition?

Since publication of the first edition, the main change, largely brought about by COVID and lockdowns, was a shift towards using remote UX research methods. So in this edition, we have added six new essays on the topic. Two essays describe the “how” of planning and conducting remote methods, both moderated and unmoderated. We also include new essays on test participants, on survey questions, and we reveal how your choice of UX research methods may reflect your own epistemological biases. We also flag the pitfalls of remote methods and include a cautionary essay on why they should never be the only UX research method you use.

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About the authors

David
David Travis

David Travis has been carrying out ethnographic field research and running product usability tests since 1989. He has published three books on UX, and over 30,000 students have taken his face-to-face and online training courses. He has a PhD in Experimental Psychology.

Philip
Philip Hodgson

Philip Hodgson has been a UX researcher for over 25years. His UX work has influenced design for the US, European and Asian markets for products ranging from banking software to medical devices, store displays to product packaging and police radios to baby diapers. He has a PhD in Experimental Psychology.

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