Before you start conducting your user research, you should know what you want to achieve from it. Once you are clear on your purpose, you can move onto writing your plan. The following 3 steps can help you to structure your user research project:
1. Objectives
When you conduct user research, you should have an objective in mind. You may want to find out:
- what users need from a new service
- what users like about a current platform
- where problems occur throughout a common user journey
Write out a short sentence that summarises what you hope to achieve. For example:
- ‘I want to gain an understanding of what users want from their BRUM account’
- ‘I want to identify common user pain points when they send a request to the council’
You might have more than one objective depending on how extensive your project is.
When you conduct user research, you should have an objective in mind. You may want to find out:
- what users need from a new service
- what users like about a current platform
- where problems occur throughout a common user journey
Write out a short sentence that summarises what you hope to achieve. For example:
- ‘I want to gain an understanding of what users want from their BRUM account’
- ‘I want to identify common user pain points when they send a request to the council’
You might have more than one objective depending on how extensive your project is.
2. Hypothesis
Once you have established your objective, you can start to form your user research hypothesis.
A hypothesis is a prediction of what you think will be found through your research. For example:
- ‘Most users want the ability to filter local news articles by date’
- ‘Most users want access to a chat bot when logging in to their account’
Your hypothesis will be an informed idea that you will go on to test and explore through your research.
Once you have the predictions for your findings down, you can use them to shape your research questions.
3. Questions
- ‘Do users want the ability to filter local news articles by date?’
- ‘Do users want access to a chat bot when logging in to their account?’
Your user research plan will be formed around your objective, hypothesis and questions. They will help you determine who to talk to and what methods to use, so that you get the best outcome from your user research.
You can find out more on how to plan your user research here