UX Research Methods for every Market Research Toolkit

Expanding Market Researchers’ Toolkit with User Experience Research (UXR)

User Experience Research (UXR) has rapidly evolved within design, product, and marketing departments, playing a vital role in ensuring companies build the right products and optimize user experiences. While some UXR tools may seem familiar to market researchers, UX research goes beyond the scope of acquisition to focus on product usage, engagement, and optimization.

With over 12 years of experience working alongside both marketers and UX professionals, I’ve seen the benefits when market researchers incorporate UXR methods into their approach. This article provides a high-level overview of key UXR methods, highlighting how they can be integrated into the Market Researchers' toolkit.

Contextual Inquiry

Contextual Inquiry is a method many market researchers are familiar with, as it involves interviewing customers to uncover perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. However, UX researchers take a different approach. Rather than focusing on value propositions or messaging, they aim to understand how users interact with products, their mental models, and specific recent experiences. This method is essential for uncovering unmet needs and understanding users' workflows in their natural environments.

For more on conducting effective interviews, you can refer to The Guide to User Interviews in UX.

Goals

While market researchers typically use interviews to grasp brand sentiment and attitudes, UXRs focus on mental models—how users prioritize and organize information. These mental models help UXRs understand user expectations and design products that match their cognitive frameworks. For example, users expect certain web elements like navigation bars or buttons to be in specific places due to previous experiences. Aligning designs with these expectations is critical for user satisfaction.

Another significant aspect of contextual inquiry is understanding recent user experiences rather than general behaviors. This focus helps UXRs uncover real issues users face when interacting with products, ensuring that feedback is grounded in practical, not hypothetical, use cases.

Scope

Where some market researchers might rely on focus groups, UXRs prefer one-on-one interviews. This prevents groupthink and allows for deeper exploration of individual behaviors and motivations. Small, targeted sample sizes help identify key themes rather than generalized statements about a large population. The aim is to discover new insights or "ah-ha" moments, which can then be explored further.

Environments

In-person interviews in users’ natural environments are particularly valuable in UXR, as they offer clues that remote research may miss. For instance, noticing a sticky note near a user's computer indicating steps they need to take when using your product might reveal an opportunity to simplify or improve the experience. Observing users in context often surfaces latent needs, which users might not be able to articulate in traditional interviews.

Usability Testing

Usability testing is one of the most widely known UXR methods. It involves observing users as they attempt to complete tasks with a product to assess how easily they can achieve their goals. Usability issues—whether related to navigation, efficiency, or clarity—can frustrate users, leading to lower satisfaction and even churn. By testing products early and iteratively, UXRs can identify and fix usability problems before launch.

For more on usability testing best practices, you can explore Usability Testing: What It Is and How to Do It.

Behavioral Focus

Unlike methods that focus on user attitudes, usability testing is purely behavioral. UXRs observe how users interact with the product, often using the think-aloud protocol where users explain their thought processes while navigating the product. The goal is to understand how users are thinking, where they get stuck, and whether the design supports task completion.

Scope

Usability testing often involves small sample sizes, typically 5-6 participants, as research shows that this is sufficient to uncover around 80% of usability issues. This iterative approach allows UXRs to continuously refine and test products throughout the development process, providing fast, actionable insights.

For more on the impact of small sample usability testing, refer to Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative

While most usability tests are qualitative and focused on identifying major usability issues, quantitative methods can be employed for benchmarking. Metrics like task completion rate, time-on-task, and error rates provide measurable insights that can be tracked over time or compared across different versions of the product.

Card Sorting & Tree Testing

Card Sorting and Tree Testing are two methods UXRs use to understand how users categorize and relate information. These tools are invaluable when designing navigation systems, taxonomies, or information architecture, as they reveal how users naturally group related concepts.

For a detailed guide on these methods, check out Card Sorting: A Definitive Guide.

Card Sorting

In card sorting, users are asked to organize topics or items into groups that make sense to them. UXRs use this method to learn how users think about the structure of information, which informs the design of navigation systems or databases. For instance, in a card sorting exercise for an e-commerce site, users might group categories like “clothing” and “accessories” together, providing insight into how the site should be organized.

This method is particularly useful in the early stages of design to ensure that the information architecture reflects user expectations.

Tree Testing

Tree testing helps evaluate whether an existing or proposed hierarchy is intuitive. Users are given a task and asked to navigate a text-only version of the hierarchy to find specific information. This helps UXRs test the clarity of the organizational structure without the distractions of visual design.

For example, in a tree test for a restaurant website, a user might be asked to find "fries" in the menu. If they struggle to locate it under “sides,” the structure might need adjustment. This method pinpoints problem areas in the hierarchy that can be improved to enhance navigation.

Expanding the Toolbox

The methodologies discussed—contextual inquiry, usability testing, card sorting, and tree testing—are just a few of the essential tools used by UXRs today. Integrating these techniques can help market researchers uncover deeper insights into user behavior, identify unmet needs, and collaborate more effectively with UX teams. Whether you are defining a new product or refining an existing one, these methods can provide the clarity needed to ensure a product is user-friendly, intuitive, and aligned with customer expectations.

By expanding their toolbox to include these methods, market researchers can improve their ability to evaluate customer experiences, drive product innovation, and optimize customer satisfaction.