think like a user researcher

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Think Like a UX Researcher: How to Observe Users, Influence Design, and Shape Business Strategy Paperback – 25 Jan. 2019

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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.

Key Features

• A dive-in-anywhere book that offers practical advice and topical examples.
• Thought triggers, exercises and scenarios to test your knowledge of UX research.
• Workshop ideas to build a development team’s UX maturity.
• War stories from seasoned researchers to show you how UX research methods can be tailored to your own organization.
• ISBN-10 1138365297
• ISBN-13 978-1138365292
• Edition 1st
• Publication date 25 Jan. 2019
• Language English
• Dimensions 15.24 x 1.75 x 22.86 cm
• Print length 306 pages
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Product description

About the author.

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

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

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 1st edition (25 Jan. 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1138365297
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1138365292
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 1.75 x 22.86 cm
• 161 in Interface Design Programming
• 178 in Beginner's Guide to Databases
• 228 in Web Design Applications

About the author

David travis.

I'm a User Experience Strategist at Userfocus, a consultancy specialising in user experience.

At 18, I appeared as an extra in the film “Quadrophenia" alongside Sting and Ray Winstone. Despite a critically-acclaimed performance lasting 5 seconds, follow-up offers from Hollywood failed to arrive so I turned to psychology where I gained a BSc and a PhD. I'm now an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Psychologist. Since 1989 I have worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience and I have published three books in the field.

I'm no longer in contact with Sting or Ray Winstone, whose career trajectories have been somewhat different.

I've provided UX support to top brands like HP, Microsoft, Whirlpool, Orange, Skype, eBay and Yahoo! and I have also consulted with public sector organisations like The Greater London Authority, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, UK Government and the World Health Organization.

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Think Like a UX Researcher: How to Observe Users, Influence Design, and Shape Business Strategy Paperback

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There is a newer edition of this item:

• Print length 306 pages
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• Dimensions 15.24 x 1.75 x 22.86 cm
• ISBN-10 1138365297
• ISBN-13 978-1138365292
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Product details

• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1138365297
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1138365292
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 412 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 1.75 x 22.86 cm
• Best Sellers Rank: #159,541 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

About the author

David travis.

I'm a User Experience Strategist at Userfocus, a consultancy specialising in user experience.

At 18, I appeared as an extra in the film “Quadrophenia" alongside Sting and Ray Winstone. Despite a critically-acclaimed performance lasting 5 seconds, follow-up offers from Hollywood failed to arrive so I turned to psychology where I gained a BSc and a PhD. I'm now an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Psychologist. Since 1989 I have worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience and I have published three books in the field.

I'm no longer in contact with Sting or Ray Winstone, whose career trajectories have been somewhat different.

I've provided UX support to top brands like HP, Microsoft, Whirlpool, Orange, Skype, eBay and Yahoo! and I have also consulted with public sector organisations like The Greater London Authority, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, UK Government and the World Health Organization.

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An insightful review of ‘Think Like a UX Researcher’

Huh? You’re already a UX researcher…

No matter what your profession, age and experience there is always time to develop and improve. Since the new year, I finally spent some time reading ‘Think Like a UX Researcher: How to Observe Users, Influence Design, and Shape Business Strategy’ by David Travis & Philip Hodgson , and I have to say, I’m a fan! Despite the grayscale print, there was a good variety of topics that kept me engaged and got me thinking about my role as a researcher.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the book is split into six chapters that each contain multiple shorter topics; the idea being that you can dip in and out at your convenience. I’m not going to write a critical review of the book, but instead I’ve picked out my favourite point from each chapter to provide some insight. Each of these points either taught me something new, helped to ingrain what I already knew or encouraged me to address some of my weaknesses.

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

“A user interview is like going to the zoo whereas field research is like going on safari.”

This quote was my favourite analogy used in the book – partly because I like animals, but also because it draws a bold line between lab-based and contextual research.

The discussion explains that the main limitation of lab-based research is the fact that the user’s natural behaviour is missing. Why? Because the environment is missing; there’s no need for the lion to hunt for its prey at the zoo, so instead it will spend more time doing other tasks like sleeping or pacing, with no obvious end goal. Contextual research, however, is free of constraints and allows for the observation of natural actions, with real pressures and dangers – in the lion’s case, these could be heat exhaustion and hunger.

The chapter goes on to identify four questions, from zoologist Niko Tinberg , that can act as a framework for unpacking observed behaviours or interactions. The book uses the great example of stopping a vehicle at a red traffic light to answer each question, as summarised below.

I can’t wait to put these into practice when writing my next session guide, and now also have a great analogy for selling contextual research too!

Chapter 2: Planning User Experience Research

“You should actively bias your sample toward people with lower digital skills and lower domain knowledge.”

Anyone working in UX research will know that Jakob Nielsen has promoted five as the magic number of users required to identify 85% of usability issues. This supports the approach of conducting short rounds of iterative testing as the design evolves. Although this book agrees that this is in keeping with an agile approach, it provided a welcome reminder that the chance of finding usability problems isn’t quite so simple!

The success figure of 85% is based on the assumption that each usability issue will affect approximately one-third (31%) of users, meaning that you have a one in three chance of it being identified during the testing. However, some parts of the interface may affect a smaller proportion of users, meaning that this figure is in fact lower. The book suggests that to get the most out of a small sample, you should therefore bias it towards users who are more likely to identify these issues, such as those with digital skills below average for the target user group.

Whilst I think that this is an interesting idea, I’m still trying to figure out whether I agree. Firstly, I am worried that biasing to this extreme will mean that I miss other issues; what about expert users who have more established mental models of the digital world? There are also other individual differences unrelated to skill levels that should be considered, such as users with accessibility needs. I’d love to know what you think!

Chapter 3: Conducting User Experience Research

“There is a misconception that if the participant isn’t speaking, then you’re not learning anything.”

Clients often want to pack as much as possible into usability testing sessions, including asking questions when the participant is in the middle of the task. ‘Think Like a UX Researcher’ reinforced the danger of usability testing sessions becoming interviews or sitting somewhere between the two, and highlighted ways for the researcher to manage the level of talking during usability testing.

• While the participant is completing a task, the researcher should adjust their body language to that of an observer, by sitting to the side and slightly behind the participant, whilst avoiding any eye contact, which may trigger a conversation.
• Don’t be afraid of silence! The researcher should give the participant time to read, process and make judgements during the task; without expecting them to think aloud continuously. By forcing themselves to use the same phrase to prompt the participant, researchers will feel stupid repeating it too many times, accepting the need for some quiet.
• As a researcher, be up-front with the client about your expertise, and ensure that the usability testing is the core focus of the session. Make it clear that anything that does not come out of the observation will be covered in a follow-up interview.

I think this is something that most researchers probably need to work on, and clients can hopefully take notice too. I’ve made a note to look back over some recent session recordings as a reflection activity (highlighted in the final part of the book).

Chapter 4: Analyzing User Experience Research

“It’s the process of UX research that matters, not the beauty of the final artefact.”

The section on ‘Agile Personas’ resonated with me whilst reading ‘Think Like a UX Researcher’ as I agree that the value of personas can sometimes be a sticking point with clients. Having studied design, I am a sucker for making things look appealing, but it was refreshing to be reminded that this isn’t always necessary or helpful. In the case of personas, beautifully designed persona profiles give the impression that they cannot be changed as more is learnt about users, and can also suggest that they lack depth.

There is, however, value in creating quick, basic personas using research findings. To demonstrate this, the book introduced me to the 2½D Sketch by David Marr, which captures the idea that our visual system fills in any gaps to construct objects, based on reasonable assumptions. For example, if you see someone with their back turned to you, you are able to predict what they will look like from the front – you would be surprised if they turned around and had no facial features. It explains how intentionally creating a persona that appears unfinished, acts as a reminder that you can never know everything about your users, and that personas are approximate, live, working documents. To do this, you can simply split a page into four quadrants showing:

• a sketch of the user type in context
• proven facts about the user type
• user behaviours related to the product
• user needs and goals related to the product

The book also reminded me that you should complete persona generation as a team, and prioritise the points in each quadrant, in order to reach a shared understanding of different user types.

Chapter 5: Persuading People to Take Action on the Results of User Experience Research

“There is more than one way to skin an interface.”

One of my favourite tools in ‘Think Like a UX Researcher’ is SCAMPER; designed to help generate solutions following user research. This is something that I hope to use in a future debrief with clients, to spark ideas about how they might act on the research recommendations.

SCAMPER is a creative framework that can be used to help generate ideas to a problem, by approaching it from several different angles, as shown in Figure 1. The book makes a valid point that you should not only use this when struggling to find a solution to a usability problem, but also when you think you’ve found one, as it may not always be the best. I’ve tried using it to generate five potential design solutions following an example problem (with a bit more context) from the book.

Problem: The homepage control on a website is hidden beneath a ‘More options’ tab.

S – The ‘More options’ tab could be substituted with a toolbar with a series of icon buttons indicating the functionality of each control. For example, a button with a house icon for the homepage control.

C – The interface could combine a link to the homepage with the existing brand logo. This is a common solution and would therefore likely match the mental model of website users. It would also optimise space in the interface.

A – Breadcrumbs on the website could be added or adapted so that they always begin with a ‘Home’ link, which takes users back to the homepage. This would remove the need to offer a home button in the website’s global navigation.

M – The development team could modify the information architecture of the website based on card sorting research to reorganise the menu options to include links currently under ‘More options’.

P – After removing the homepage option, if the ‘More options’ tab is still required, it could be re-used for less frequently used controls currently visible in the website menu.

Chapter 6: Building a Career in User Experience Research

“Technical expertise, although important, is not enough.”

The final chapter in the book identifies three spheres of user experience skills, which together make a great UX researcher: ‘technical’, ‘process’ and ‘marketing’. It identifies that although technical expertise can be gained through training, the other two spheres are harder to meet, and rely on experience and practice.

• Process skills : These are the skills that researchers use to manage each project, in order to satisfy the client’s needs and improve the user’s experience. The majority of this lies in understanding the objectives from the project outset, whilst understanding how the client’s company operates. This allows the researcher to tailor the research approach and ensure that the results of the research will be appropriate to drive positive change.
• Marketing skills : This is where the researcher must be able to explicitly showcase the benefits of user research to current and potential clients through proposals, case studies and reporting. Particularly for clients new to UX, it is important to identify the cost-benefit of research whilst grounding it in the relevant field or industry. The book also talks about how researchers should aim to leave a legacy, which can be achieved by contributing to the wider UX community through articles (like this), talks and shared artefacts.

Overall, the book has provided me with a great overview of UX principles, which reinforce best practice, whilst introducing a few new tools that I plan to try out in future projects. I particularly liked how each topic was summarised with short questions and exercises (such as the SCAMPER example), as these got me thinking, and highlighted that approaches should always be questioned and adapted to suit individual projects.

‘Think Like a UX Researcher’ is a well-structured, inspiring book that I would recommend and will certainly be picking up again!

Frances James, UX Consultant

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User Research: What It Is and Why You Should Do It

User research is an essential part of UX design. Unless we understand who we are designing for and why, how can we even know what to create or where to begin? Depending on your project, requirements and constraints, you can choose different types of research methods, from surveys and tests to interviews and the most common method — usability testing. Here, we’ll look at what user research is, and the three most common reasons for doing user research — namely, to create designs that are truly relevant, to create designs that are easy and pleasurable to use, and to understand the return on investment of your user experience (UX) design .

What is User Research?

User research, or “ design research ,” as it’s sometimes called, covers a wide range of methods. It can mean anything from doing ethnographic interviews with your target group, to classical usability studies , to quantitative measurements of return on investment (ROI) on your user experience design. What all user research has in common is that it helps place people at the center of your design process and your products . You use user research to inspire your design, to evaluate your solutions, and to measure your impact. User research (and other kinds of research) is often divided into quantitative and qualitative methods.

Surveys and formal experiments such as A/B testing and tree testing are examples of quantitative research tools. Quantitative user research methods seek to measure user behavior in a way that can be quantified and used for statistical analysis.

Interviews and (to some degree) usability tests are examples of qualitative research tools. These are often more exploratory and seek to get an in-depth understanding of the experiences and everyday lives of individual users or user groups.

Each research method has benefits and drawbacks. As such, each can be used for achieving different goals. Which method you choose depends on what you want to achieve as well as a number of practical concerns, such as what type of project you are working on, your budget and your time constraints. With that in mind, let’s look at some different reasons for why you should involve users in your design process.

Three Good Reasons for Doing User Research

“ Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.” — Tim Brown, CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO

The type of user research you should do depends on your work process as well as your reason for doing user research in the first place. Here are three excellent reasons for doing user research:

1. To Create Designs That are Truly Relevant

If you understand your users, you can make designs that are relevant for them. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your users, you have no way of knowing whether your design will be relevant. A design that is not relevant to its target audience will never be a success .

The first step and core of the design thinking process is to empathize with your users. User research is one of the best ways to do that. Conducting different types of interviews and observing people in the contexts where they will use your design is a common method of doing this type of user research. We often place this type of research at the very beginning of a project to ensure that the overall direction for the project is relevant to potential customers and users. In order to ensure that your design continues to be relevant as your project progresses, validating your ideas with prospective users on a continuous basis is a vital habit to stick to. Talk to them about how they perceive your design and how they could imagine using it, or involve them directly in your design process, to ensure that you are still on the right track.

Let’s look at an example: In 2005, Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung did a number of ethnographic user studies that completely changed the way it thought about designing TVs. Together with the innovation and strategy consultancy ReD Associates, Samsung representatives visited people in different countries to observe how they live and to talk to them about their homes and the TV’s role in their homes. What they found surprised them. At the time, Samsung and most other TV manufacturers primarily designed their TVs with technical specs such as high-quality picture and sound in mind. The TVs were designed to show off their technical capabilities, but what Samsung found when visiting people was that they viewed a TV more like a piece of furniture . As a TV is turned off most of the time, people do not want it to dominate their living room. So, rather than show off their expensive TV with all its technological capabilities, they tried to hide it away as much as possible.

Following this insight, Samsung changed its design strategy radically, moving the inbuilt speakers to make the TV slimmer and creating a subtler, minimalistic design that would fit more seamlessly into people’s living rooms. Technical capabilities were still important, but they had to be balanced with design choices that made the TVs fit into people’s homes. “Home” was the watchword here, and Samsung got hard to work on the transformation. The challenge involved getting away from treating a living room like a showroom or sports bar, and going for “harmony” instead. By 2007, Samsung had doubled its share in the global TV market because it had proven to understand how to make its TVs relevant to its customers.

User research made Samsung change its TV design strategy to focus on making more minimalistic designs that fit into the customer’s home. Although TVs have not become smaller, everything extraneous has been removed. As we see here, the TV functions as a gallery-sized moving picture — with all the “bells and whistles” discreetly housed — light-years away from the old notion of “peacocking” its technical prowess as if it were a James Bond gadget.

2. To Create Designs That are Easy and Pleasurable to Use

“If the user is having a problem, it’s our problem.” — Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers

All products should have a high level of usability (i.e., be easy to use ), and usability tests can be a big help in achieving that. The days when programmed technology was a tool only to be used by experts are long gone. People expect products to be easy to learn and easy to use. They expect to pick them up and do things with them while only thinking about what they hope to achieve, not having to think about the products themselves. If your user experience is not good, chances are that people will move on to another product . Unless you work in a field with no competitors, a high level of usability (and a matching high-quality user experience) is essential in making any product a commercial success. Not to mention that your users will love you for creating a great user experience. Even if you are designing products for — e.g. — a highly specialized work environment where the users have no alternatives, products with a high level of usability will make work processes faster, safer and more efficient.

Wikiwand is a good example of a company that operates solely on providing a great user experience. Their product is a browser plugin which changes the design of Wikipedia articles to make them more appealing and user-friendly. Wikiwand does not provide different content from the classic Wikipedia webpage, but the company has thousands of users who praise it for the awesome user experience it delivers.

To the left is the classic Wikipedia interface; to the right is the Wikiwand version of the same article. The content is the same, but the experience is different.

When you are designing or developing a product, you become the primary expert on how to use it and what functionalities it has. Because you know your own product so well, however, you can become blind to functionality in your product that is difficult to use. As designers, we need that level of understanding of our products, but it also means that we can all too easily shift far away from the same perspective as our users. The author has personally participated in many projects where the designers know the ideas behind the interface and functionality of a product so well that separating the understandable from the not-so understandable is really difficult for them. This tendency of seeing things from the point of view of one’s profession — what we call “déformation professionnelle” — and not stepping back to catch the reality of what’s going on from a fresh, generalist angle is a natural one, incidentally.

Happily, though, you can avoid a lot of usability issues by following various guidelines and rules of thumb, but there will always be situations that the guidelines don’t cover, or where different guidelines tell you different things. You might also be designing for a target group such as seniors or children where the regular guidelines do not apply. That means testing the user experience of your product is always a good idea. Usability tests work best when they are an integrated part of your work process so that you test your product iteratively and from an early stage of development onward. Early tests are what we can do on primitive prototypes — e.g., using paper; from there, we progress to more refined prototypes until we have something that resembles the final product. If you only start testing when you have an almost-finished product, you run a very serious risk in that your findings might come too late for you to make larger changes to the product. For instance, if all the software is done or if you can’t push your release date, you’ll have your back against the wall. So, stay fluid with your design until the very end of the process — it’s amazing what insights can come from an eleventh-hour test of the ‘last’ version you have planned for rollout.

3. To Understand the Return on Investment of Your UX Design

Although the importance of good design has become widely recognized, UX designers and researchers still experience having to fight for resources to enable them to do their work. Executives and shareholders sometimes fail to see the value in investing in user research and UX design. UX design and user research is not as tangible as new features or fixing software bugs; so, overlooking their value can happen all the more easily. If resources become scarce, UX is also often one of the first areas to experience cuts; the reason is that consequences are not as immediately felt as when you save on development or similar areas. If you make cuts in say, software development, you can immediately see that the consequences involve cutting back on features or having buggy software; however, if you make cuts in UX, you don’t experience the consequences until your product reaches your users, and when your competitors attract your users towards them.

We can easily argue for the value of great UX; it is much more effective if we can show it. This is where studies to show the return on investment (ROI) on UX efforts are worth their weight in gold (or the weight, at least, of the printouts). If you can 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, you have a much stronger case for investing in UX. User studies to measure the effect of your design are mostly quantitative and can take different forms. You can do A/B tests during development that compare different versions of your design, or you can do studies after your product is released to measure differences in use patterns. With apps and webpages, you often build in different types of analytics to inform you of different user patterns.

The global online marketplace Etsy is a good example of a company that has built its success on a focus on customer experience throughout the entire customer journey and that continuously measures the user experience. 

For example , Etsy routinely tests different versions of user interfaces to constantly improve the platform’s usability as well as business metrics. Etsy's continued position as one of the largest online marketplaces is a result of its rigorous focus on usability, research and testing.

The world’s most successful companies continually test and iterate their products, as is evident in their A/B tests. Here is one of several that GoodUI has been tracking. You can see more such “leaked” tests from AirBnb, Amazon, Booking, Netflix and others on their website.

The Take Away

Here, we have shown three good reasons for doing user research and we have touched on when in your design process you can integrate user research. Here are the three reasons again:

Do user research to ensure that you create products that are truly relevant to your target group.

Do user research to ensure that your products deliver a great user experience.

Do user research to show the ROI of your design efforts.

You can — and should — do user studies at all stages of the design process. You do studies before you start designing so as to get an understanding of what your target group needs ; you carry out iterative tests during development to ensure that the user experience is on track, and you can measure the effect of your design after your product is released. This “holy trinity” approach can keep you three steps ahead as every dimension of your release will have been considered, analyzed, and tested before you sit down to see the results of the ultimate test (the ROI), more confident that you’ve got a winning design.

References and Where to Learn More

For an in-depth coverage of different user research methods, take the following courses:

User Research – Methods and Best Practices

Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX

In this interview, founder of Wikiwand, Lior Grossman explains the company’s approach to designing a more usable encyclopedia.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Think Like a UX Researcher: How to Observe Users, Influence Design, and Shape Business Strategy 1st Edition

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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.

Key Features

• A dive-in-anywhere book that offers practical advice and topical examples.
• Thought triggers, exercises and scenarios to test your knowledge of UX research.
• Workshop ideas to build a development team’s UX maturity.
• War stories from seasoned researchers to show you how UX research methods can be tailored to your own organization.
• ISBN-10 1138365351
• ISBN-13 978-1138365353
• Edition 1st
• Publisher CRC Press
• Publication date January 21, 2019
• Language English
• Dimensions 6.3 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
• Print length 294 pages
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Editorial Reviews

About the author.

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

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

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ CRC Press; 1st edition (January 21, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Unknown Binding ‏ : ‎ 294 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1138365351
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1138365353
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
• #1,574 in Human-Computer Interaction (Books)
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About the author

David travis.

I'm a User Experience Strategist at Userfocus, a consultancy specialising in user experience.

At 18, I appeared as an extra in the film “Quadrophenia" alongside Sting and Ray Winstone. Despite a critically-acclaimed performance lasting 5 seconds, follow-up offers from Hollywood failed to arrive so I turned to psychology where I gained a BSc and a PhD. I'm now an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Psychologist. Since 1989 I have worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience and I have published three books in the field.

I'm no longer in contact with Sting or Ray Winstone, whose career trajectories have been somewhat different.

I've provided UX support to top brands like HP, Microsoft, Whirlpool, Orange, Skype, eBay and Yahoo! and I have also consulted with public sector organisations like The Greater London Authority, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, UK Government and the World Health Organization.

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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.

In this newly revised Second Edition , the authors have added 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.

Key Features

• Provides a dive-in-anywhere book that offers practical advice and topical examples.
• Includes thought triggers, exercises and scenarios to test your knowledge of UX research.
• Features workshop ideas to build a development team's UX maturity.
• Discusses war stories from seasoned researchers to show you how UX research methods can be tailored to your own organization.