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How to write effective UX research questions (with examples)

Collecting and analyzing real user feedback is essential in delivering an excellent user experience (UX). But not all user research is created equal—and done wrong, it can lead to confusion, miscommunication, and non-actionable results.

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You need to ask the right UX research questions to get the valuable insights necessary to continually optimize your product and generate user delight. 

This article shows you how to write strong UX research questions, ensuring you go beyond guesswork and assumptions . It covers the difference between open- and close-ended research questions, explains how to go about creating your own UX research questions, and provides several examples to get you started.

Use Hotjar to ask your users the right UX research questions

Put your UX research questions to work with Hotjar's Feedback and Survey tools to uncover product experience insights

The different types of UX research questions

Let’s face it, asking the right UX research questions is hard. It’s a skill that takes a lot of practice and can leave even the most seasoned UX researchers drawing a blank.

There are two main categories of UX research questions: open-ended and close-ended, both of which are essential to achieving thorough, high-quality UX research. Qualitative research—based on descriptions and experiences—leans toward open-ended questions, whereas quantitative research leans toward closed-ended questions.

Let’s dive into the differences between them.

Open-ended UX research questions

Open-ended UX research questions are exactly what they sound like: they prompt longer, more free-form responses, rather than asking someone to choose from established possible answers—like multiple-choice tests.

Open questions are easily recognized because they:

Usually begin with how, why, what, describe, or tell me

Can’t be easily answered with just yes or no, or a word or two

Are qualitative rather than quantitative

If there’s a simple fact you’re trying to get to, a closed question would work. For anything involving our complex and messy human nature, open questions are the way to go.

Open-ended research questions aim to discover more about research participants and gather candid user insights, rather than seeking specific answers.

Some examples of UX research that use open-ended questions include:

Usability testing

Diary studies

Persona research

Use case research

Task analysis

Check out a concrete example of an open-ended UX research question in action below. Hotjar’s Survey tool is a perfect way of gathering longer-form user feedback, both on-site and externally.

Pros and cons of open-ended UX research questions

Like everything in life, open-ended UX research questions have their pros and cons.

Advantages of open-ended questions include:

Detailed, personal answers

Great for storytelling

Good for connecting with people on an emotional level

Helpful to gauge pain points, frustrations, and desires

Researchers usually end up discovering more than initially expected

Less vulnerable to bias

 Drawbacks include:

People find them more difficult to answer than closed-ended questions

More time-consuming for both the researcher and the participant

Can be difficult to conduct with large numbers of people

Can be challenging to dig through and analyze open-ended questions

Closed-ended UX research questions

Close-ended UX research questions have limited possible answers. Participants can respond to them with yes or no, by selecting an option from a list, by ranking or rating, or with a single word.

They’re easy to recognize because they’re similar to classic exam-style questions.

More technical industries might start with closed UX research questions because they want statistical results. Then, we’ll move on to more open questions to see how customers really feel about the software we put together.

While open-ended research questions reveal new or unexpected information, closed-ended research questions work well to test assumptions and answer focused questions. They’re great for situations like:

Surveying a large number of participants

When you want quantitative insights and hard data to create metrics

When you’ve already asked open-ended UX research questions and have narrowed them down into close-ended questions based on your findings

If you’re evaluating something specific so the possible answers are limited

If you’re going to repeat the same study in the future and need uniform questions and answers

Wondering what a closed-ended UX research question might look in real life? The example below shows how Hotjar’s Feedback widgets help UX researchers hear from users 'in the wild' as they navigate.

The different types of closed-ended questions

There are several different ways to ask close-ended UX research questions, including:

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys

CSAT surveys are closed-ended UX research questions that explore customer satisfaction levels by asking users to rank their experience on some kind of scale, like the happy and angry icons in the image below.

On-site widgets like Hotjar's Feedback tool below excel at gathering quick customer insights without wreaking havoc on the user experience. They’re especially popular on ecommerce sites or after customer service interactions.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys

NPS surveys are another powerful type of (mostly) closed-ended UX research questions. They ask customers how likely they are to recommend a company, product, or service to their community. Responses to NPS surveys are used to calculate Net Promoter Score .

NPS surveys split customers into three categories:

Promoters (9-10): Your most enthusiastic, vocal, and loyal customers

Passives (7-8): Ho-hum. They’re more or less satisfied customers but could be susceptible to jumping ship

Detractors (0-6): Dissatisfied customers who are at a high risk of spreading bad reviews

Net Promoter Score is a key metric used to predict business growth, track long-term success, and gauge overall customer satisfaction.

Pro tip: while the most important question to ask in an NPS survey is readiness to recommend, it shouldn’t be the only one. Asking follow-up questions can provide more context and a deeper understanding of the customer experience. Combining Hotjar Feedback widgets with standalone Surveys is a great strategy for tracking NPS through both quick rankings and qualitative feedback.

Pros and cons of closed-ended research questions

Close-ended UX research questions have solid advantages, including:

More measurable data to convert into statistics and metrics

Higher response rates because they’re generally more straightforward for people to answer

Easier to coordinate when surveying a large number of people

Great for evaluating specifics and facts

Little to no irrelevant answers to comb through

Putting the UX researcher in control

But closed-ended questions can be tricky to get right. Their disadvantages include:

Leading participants to response bias

Preventing participants from telling the whole story

The lack of insight into opinions or emotions

Too many possible answers overwhelming participants

Too few possible answers, meaning the 'right' answer for each participant might not be included

How to form your own UX research questions

To create effective UX questions, start by defining your research objectives and hypotheses, which are assumptions you’ll put to the test with user feedback.

Use this tried-and-tested formula to create research hypotheses by filling in the blanks according to your unique user and business goals:

We believe (doing x)

For (x people)

Will achieve (x outcome)

For example: ' We believe adding a progress indicator into our checkout process (for customers) will achieve 20% lower cart abandonment rates.'

Pro tip: research hypotheses aren’t set in stone. Keep them dynamic as you formulate, change, and re-evaluate them throughout the UX research process, until your team comes away with increased certainty about their initial assumption.

When nailing down your hypotheses, remember that research is just as much about discovering new questions as it is about getting answers. Don’t think of research as a validation exercise where you’re looking to confirm something you already know. Instead, cultivate an attitude of exploration and strive to dig deeper into user emotions, needs, and challenges.

Once you have a working hypothesis, identify your UX research objective . Your objective should be linked to your hypothesis, defining what your product team wants to accomplish with your research—for example, ' We want to improve our cart abandonment rates by providing customers with a seamless checkout experience.'

Now that you’ve formulated a hypothesis and research objective, you can create your general or 'big picture' research questions . These define precisely what you want to discover through your research, but they’re not the exact questions you’ll ask participants. This is an important distinction because big picture research questions focus on the researchers themselves rather than users.

A big picture question might be something like: ' How can we improve our cart abandonment rates?'

With a strong hypothesis, objective, and general research question in the bag, you’re finally ready to create the questions you’ll ask participants.

32 examples of inspiring UX research questions

There are countless different categories of UX research questions.

We focus on open-ended, ecommerce-oriented questions here , but with a few tweaks, these could be easily transformed into closed-ended questions.

For example, an open-ended question like, 'Tell us about your overall experience shopping on our website' could be turned into a closed-ended question such as, ' Did you have a positive experience finding everything you needed on our website?'

Screening questions

Screening questions are the first questions you ask UX research participants. They help you get to know your customers and work out whether they fit into your ideal user personas.

These survey question examples focus on demographic and experience-based questions. For instance:

Tell me about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?

What does a typical day look like for you?

How old are you?

What’s the highest level of education that you’ve completed?

How comfortable do you feel using the internet?

How comfortable do you feel browsing or buying products online?

How frequently do you buy products online?

Do you prefer shopping in person or online? Why?

Awareness questions

Awareness questions explore how long your participants have been aware of your brand and how much they know about it. Some good options include:

How did you find out about our brand?

What prompted you to visit our website for the first time?

If you’ve visited our website multiple times, what made you come back?

How long was the gap between finding out about us and your first purchase?

Expectation questions

Expectation questions investigate the assumptions UX research participants have about brands, products, or services before using them. For example:

What was your first impression of our brand?

What was your first impression of X product or service?

How do you think using X product or service would benefit you?

What problem would X product or service solve for you?

Do you think X product or service is similar to another one on the market? Please specify.

Task-specific questions

Task-specific questions focus on user experiences as they complete actions on your site. Some examples include:

Tell us what you thought about the overall website design and content layout

How was your browsing experience?

How was your checkout experience?

What was the easiest task to complete on our website?

What was the hardest task to complete on our website?

Experience questions

Experience questions dig deeper into research participants’ holistic journeys as they navigate your site. These include:

Tell us how you felt when you landed on our website homepage

How can we improve the X page of our website?

What motivated you to purchase X product or service?

What stopped you from purchasing X product or service?

Was your overall experience positive or negative while shopping on our website? Why?

Concluding questions

Concluding questions ask participants to reflect on their overall experience with your brand, product, or service. For instance:

What are your biggest questions about X product or service?

What are your biggest concerns about X product or service?

If you could change one thing about X product or service, what would it be?

Would you recommend X product or service to a friend?

How would you compare X product or service to X competitor?

Excellent research questions are key for an optimal UX

To create a fantastic UX, you need to understand your users on a deeper level.

Crafting strong questions to deploy during the research process is an important way to gain that understanding, because UX research shouldn’t center on what you want to learn but what your users can teach you.

UX research question FAQs

What are ux research questions.

UX research questions can refer to two different things: general UX research questions and UX interview questions. 

Both are vital components of UX research and work together to accomplish the same goals—understanding user needs and pain points, challenging assumptions, discovering new insights, and finding solutions.

General UX research questions focus on what UX researchers want to discover through their study. 

UX interview questions are the exact questions researchers ask participants during their research study.

What are examples of UX research questions?

UX research question examples can be split into several categories. Some of the most popular include:

Screening questions: help get to know research participants better and focus on demographic and experience-based information. For example: “What does a typical day look like for you?”

Awareness questions: explore how much research participants know about your brand, product, or service. For example: “What prompted you to visit our website for the first time?”

Expectation questions: investigate assumptions research participants have about your brand, product, or service. For example: “What was your first impression of X?”

Task-specific questions: dive into participants’ experiences trying to complete actions on your site. For example: “What was the easiest task to complete on our website?”

Experience questions: dig deep into participants’ overall holistic experiences navigating through your site. For example: “Was your overall experience shopping on our website positive or negative? Why?”

Concluding questions: ask participants to reflect on their overall experience with your brand, product, or service. For example: “What are your biggest concerns about (x product or service)?”

What’s the difference between open-ended and closed-ended UX research questions?

The difference between open- and closed-ended UX research questions is simple. Open-ended UX research questions prompt long, free-form responses. They’re qualitative rather than quantitative and can’t be answered easily with yes or no, or a word or two. They’re easy to recognize because they begin with terms like how, why, what, describe, and tell me.

On the other hand, closed-ended UX research questions have limited possible answers. Participants can respond to them with yes or no, by selecting an option from a list, by rating or ranking options, or with just a word or two.

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User Experience (UX) Surveys: The Ultimate Guide

Imagine you're a business owner eager to improve your website's user experience. You want to know what's working, what's not, and where you need improvements. While you have various research methods (such as user interviews , usability tests, A/B testing , etc.) available, a user experience (UX) survey helps gather valuable insights and pinpoint the areas for enhancement.

UX surveys can offer actionable insights , presenting qualitative data that informs decisions. 

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Through this piece, you'll learn everything about user experience surveys. From market research professionals and business owners to website developers, anyone aiming for customer satisfaction will find this helpful.

You'll learn about UX survey best practices and the right questions to help identify pain points and understand different question types. 

What are UX Surveys?

UX Surveys, or User Experience Surveys, gather information about users' feelings, thoughts, and behaviors related to UX design , product, or service. These online surveys form a part of the broader field of usability surveys. They focus on understanding how users interact with a system, application, or website to create a user-centered design .

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

1. Customer Effort Score Surveys (CES)

CES surveys assess how simple it is for customers to complete tasks with your company. Think of it like this: It's a score that tells you if using your product or getting help from your service team was a breeze or a struggle for the customer.

Many people value quick, straightforward answers to their questions. Time is precious, so spending less effort resolving issues is better. Ease of experience can be more revealing than overall satisfaction. Experts now use the Customer Effort Score.

For instance, after a customer service interaction, the question could be:

"How easy was resolving your issue with our customer support?"

Very Difficult

This format helps companies understand the ease of interaction from the customer's viewpoint. It can be an excellent tool for identifying areas for improvement.

2. Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT)

A CSAT survey measures how happy customers are with your company. 

The main question is, "How satisfied are you with our service?" 

Answers range from 1, meaning "very dissatisfied," to 5, indicating "very satisfied." 

CSAT surveys focus on individual interactions, like purchasing or using customer support. They use numeric scales to track satisfaction levels over time. These surveys help you understand your customers’ needs and pinpoint issues with your products or services. They also allow you to categorize customers based on their satisfaction levels, which helps with targeted improvements.

3.Net Promoter Score Surveys (NPS)

NPS surveys are simple and quick since they use just one question: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague?”. Based on the score, you can do respondent segmentation into one of three categories:

Promoters (Score 9-10): These are your biggest fans, and they are likely to recommend your product.

Passives (Score 7-8): These folks find your product/service satisfactory but could easily switch to competitors.

Detractors (Score 0-6): These unhappy customers could harm your brand through negative word-of-mouth.

You can calculate the NPS score by subtracting the Detractors' percentage from the Promoters'. This gives a snapshot of customer loyalty and areas for improvement.

4. Close-ended Questions for Quantitative Research

Well-designed, close-ended questions are easy to answer. Users pick from predefined options like checkboxes, scales, or radio buttons. These surveys are suitable for gathering data. You'll see these in exit surveys asking users about their shopping experience. The answers provide actionable data, like customer preferences or standard problems.

Get more insights on quantitative research in this course on Data-driven Design .

You may ask,

"How satisfied are you with our delivery speed?" 

The options could be:

Very Satisfied

Dissatisfied

Very Dissatisfied

Here, users don't need to type out their thoughts. They select an option that best describes their feelings. It's quick for the user and easy for the company to analyze.

5. Open-ended Questions for Qualitative User Research

While closed-ended questions offer fixed options for quick responses, open-ended questions allow for more detailed, free-form answers. These questions ask for written responses. They dig deeper into how users feel and what they expect. 

It may take more time to analyze the responses you gather from this type of survey. But they're valuable because they offer nuanced insights.

For example, questions like "What feature do you wish we had?" can lead to ideas for product enhancements that meet users' needs .

When and Why Should One Conduct a UX Survey?

Conducting a UX survey is a strategic decision to understand various aspects of user interaction with a product or service. Here are vital scenarios and reasons for implementing them:

1. Feature Evaluation and Enhancement

You may find UX surveys better suited to assess existing products than development ones. These surveys can gather insights on how well your target audience receives a feature or service. Feedback from such surveys can guide adjustments or additions to your product.

For instance, if customers believe an existing feature lacks functionality, you can focus on enhancing it. UX surveys offer valuable data to refine a product to better align with customer needs and expectations.

2. Identifying Pain Points

Spotting pain points is essential for creating a user-friendly experience. UX surveys provide direct feedback from users about what's troubling them. These could be issues you're unaware of that make the customer experience less enjoyable or efficient. 

For example, users might point out that they find your checkout process too complicated or that they have trouble finding specific information on your website. These insights are like gold; they give you specific areas to focus your improvement efforts. Addressing these issues helps you fix problems and show users you value and act upon their feedback.

3. Assessing Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is crucial for any business. A well-timed UX survey can gauge how well you meet customer expectations after a critical interaction, such as a purchase or customer service call. 

Positive feedback helps identify vital areas, while negative feedback highlights issues that need attention.

4. Evaluating Customer Loyalty

Long-term success hinges on customer loyalty. NPS surveys, a type of UX survey, help gauge this. 

Identifying promoters, passives, and detractors can help you tailor customer retention and referral strategies. If you see a dip in loyalty scores, it's an alert to dig deeper into potential issues.

5. Journey Mapping

Journey mapping visually represents a user's interactions with your product or service. It tracks the entire experience, from the first touchpoint to the final interaction. A well-designed UX survey can provide insights at multiple stages of this journey.

For example, you can use CES surveys at various checkpoints to measure ease of use . Are customers finding it simple to navigate from one section of your website to another? CSAT surveys can check satisfaction at critical touchpoints like purchase or support.

Open-ended questions can offer qualitative insights into why users make specific choices. These answers fill gaps in the journey map that analytics data might lack.

6. During Major Transitions or Updates

If you're planning a significant change, such as a rebrand or major update, a UX survey becomes invaluable. It helps assess customer sentiment and expectations before you roll out the differences. 

Collecting survey data allows for adjustments that align with customer needs. This way, you can reduce the risk of negative backlash.

7. Continuous Improvement

The need for improvement never stops. Regular UX surveys create a feedback loop to help you track user sentiment and performance metrics. They allow for ongoing adjustments based on real-world usage. 

For example, if you notice a slight dip in satisfaction scores related to app usability, you can investigate and make adjustments before it becomes a significant issue. 

Continuous improvement through regular UX surveys keeps your product aligned with users’ needs and expectations. It helps you sustain your success.

6 UX Survey Best Practices From Experts

Conducting a UX survey requires careful planning and execution to achieve actionable insights. Here are five best practices from experts in the field:

1. Make it Quick

People value their time, and long surveys can deter participation. A quick and concise survey ensures that the participant remains engaged. Focus on the essential questions and remove any unnecessary ones. 

Steps you can take:

Limit your survey to 5-10 essential questions

Use clear and concise language

Preview the survey with a friend or colleague to get feedback on the length.

2. Keep It Relevant

Ensuring relevance in your survey questions is crucial for collecting valuable data. If questions stray off-topic, they risk irritating or baffling participants. Keep questions focused to ensure you get the insights for your goals.

Define your target audience and goals before writing questions

Avoid generic questions that don't relate to the product or service

Focus on specific user experiences that align with your objectives.

Provide not applicable/don’t know answers for all closed questions.

3. Avoid Bias

Bias can distort the results and lead to misguided conclusions. The objective framing of questions helps in collecting unbiased responses. Some of the common biases include: 

Question order bias: Affects responses based on the sequence of questions.

Confirmation bias: Only ask questions that affirm what you already believe.

Primacy bias: People choose the first options given.

Recency bias: People are more influenced by their last experience.

Hindsight bias: Respondents say events were foreseeable.

Assumption bias: Assumes respondents know certain information.

Clustering bias: People see patterns where none exist.

Avoid leading questions

Use neutral language

Consider asking an expert to review your questions for potential bias

Test the survey on a small group before launching it.

4. Mix Up Your Question Types

While multiple-choice and rating scales excel at gathering numerical data, open-ended questions offer rich, qualitative insights. The blend can give you a more comprehensive view of customer sentiment. 

Use a mixture of types of questions according to the information you need

Utilize open-ended questions for in-depth insights and multiple-choice for quick feedback

Consider using scale questions to gauge user satisfaction or preferences

5. Ensure Accessibility

Making your survey accessible helps you capture a wide range of perspectives. If you create an accessible survey for everyone, including those with reduced abilities, you'll get a more complete and diverse set of insights. This comprehensive view can enhance the quality of your data and decision-making.

Utilize easy-to-read fonts and adequate color contrast

Provide alternative text for images

Ensure that users can navigate the survey using keyboard controls

Test the survey's accessibility features

Avoid complex layouts and matrix-style questions

See the W3’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for more details.

6.Maintain Privacy

Prioritizing participants' privacy is critical to building trust. When people feel confident that their data is safe, they're more likely to engage fully in your survey. A strong privacy policy meets legal standards and boosts participation rates. It enriches the quality of your insights.

State your privacy policy at the start of the survey

Use secure platforms for conducting the survey

Assure participants that their responses will remain confidential

Put sensitive or personal questions towards the end

Following these best practices, you can make UX surveys effective for gathering insights and improving the user experience. The actionable steps outlined above make creating an engaging, unbiased, and insightful survey possible.

The Ultimate Guide to Conduct a UX Survey

Conducting UX surveys is essential for understanding user interaction with your product. Follow these steps to design, distribute, and analyze surveys for actionable insights.

Step 1: Define Your Objectives

Defining clear objectives sets the stage for a successful UX survey. It helps you understand the key insights you are seeking. To zero in on what you're aiming to discover, consider these questions:

What is the main goal? Understand if you want to measure user satisfaction or you want to focus on something else.

Which user behaviors are relevant? Is the survey targeting frequent users, new users, or both?

What are the key metrics? Do you want to look at completion rates, time spent, or other indicators?

New feature opinions : Are you seeking input on new rolled-out features?

Pain points : Are you trying to identify user frustrations and roadblocks? 

Clarity in the objectives will guide every next step and ensure you align the results with your project goals. Well-defined goals will streamline the survey's structure and help craft relevant questions. The sharper focus also helps in analyzing the data you collect later on.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your target audience is a pivotal step in creating a survey. Here's why:

Product awareness: Gauge how much your audience knows about your product. This shapes the depth and detail of questions.

Interests : Understand what topics engage your audience. Use that insight to make questions interesting.

Language : A professional audience may understand industry jargon. A general audience may not. Choose words carefully.

Region : Geography can affect preferences and opinions. Localize questions if needed.

Understanding your target audience helps you write questions that they can relate to. It leads to higher engagement and more accurate data in user research . You can also create customer personas and a user journey around them. 

Step 3: Craft Engaging Questions for the Questionnaire

Questions are the heart of your survey. Writing engaging, clear, and unbiased questions will provide the insights you need. 

Learn the art of writing good questions for surveys

So, here’s what you can do to craft engaging questions: 

Use different types, such as multiple-choice for quick feedback or open-ended for deeper insights. 

Use simple language, avoid jargon, and ensure each question serves a clear purpose. 

Be mindful of potential biases and keep the questions neutral. 

Your questions must captivate the user's interest and guide them through the survey.

Step 4: Select a Tool For the UX Research Survey

Selecting the right tool for your UX survey is crucial for data collection and analysis. A Google Form provides a quicker way to get started with UX surveys. Here’s why:

Ease of use : Google Forms is user-friendly. Even if you're not tech-savvy, you can create a survey quickly.

Customization : It offers various themes and allows question branching based on prior answers.

Integration : Google Forms integrates with other Google services like Google Sheets for real-time data tracking.

Free : For basic features, it's free of charge.

Data analysis : Offers basic analytics like pie charts and bar graphs for quick insights.

You can also use specialized UX research tools like SurveyMonkey with more advanced features. Consider what your objectives and target audience need. Then, choose a tool that best serves those needs.

Step 5: Pilot the Survey

Pilot testing is an invaluable step in refining the UX survey. It provides an opportunity to uncover unforeseen issues with the survey design, questions, or technology. 

Recruit participants in small numbers to test the survey. You can ask internal team members for help or contact professionals via LinkedIn. Use this test survey to understand their experience and make necessary adjustments. This can make the difference between a good survey and a great one. It helps iron out the kinks and ensures a smoother product experience for the primary audience.

Step 6: Launch the Survey

Launching the survey is more than making it live. It involves choosing the proper channels, timing, and even incentives. Promoting the survey ensures that it reaches your intended audience and encourages participation. 

Consider the time of day, week, and even platform that aligns with your audience. You must plan every aspect of the launch to maximize participation.

Step 7: Analyze and Interpret the Results

Data analysis transforms raw data into valuable insights. Use analytical tools to sort, filter, and interpret the data in the context of your objectives. Look for patterns and correlations but also for unexpected discoveries. 

Your interpretation should lead to actionable insights that guide product or service improvement. This step transforms the effort of surveying real value for your project.

Step 8: Share Insights and Implement Changes

Finally, sharing your findings and implementing changes completes the process. Create comprehensive reports and engage stakeholders with the insights. Sharing fosters a shared understanding and sets the stage for informed decisions. 

Plan and iterate on improvements based on the insights and use the learnings for continuous enhancement.

Each step is a building block that contributes to a successful and insightful user experience survey. Following this roadmap helps ensure that you create an engaging, relevant, and actionable UX research survey.

The 20 Best User Experience Survey Questions

These questions form a comprehensive framework for understanding various aspects of the user experience. Remember to use only a few of these to keep response rates high.

How did you find our website/app?

This question helps assess the effectiveness of your marketing channels. It shows you where people first encounter your brand. While Google Analytics reveals traffic from specific sources like AdWords or Facebook, it needs to track direct traffic. Knowing this can fine-tune your marketing strategy.

What was your primary goal in visiting our site today? Did you achieve it?

Focuses on why users visit and if the site meets their needs. It helps identify gaps in content or functionality.

How easy was it to navigate our site?

This question examines the effectiveness of your website. You're on the right track if people find it easy to navigate. If not, it's a red flag. Your site's layout or functionality may need tweaks.

What features did you use most?

This question identifies which parts of your product or service are most valuable to customers. If the majority say they often use a specific feature, that's a pivotal strength to highlight in marketing.

Were there any features that needed to be clarified or easier to use?

This question zeroes in on potential weak spots in your product design or functionality. A feature consistently labeled as confusing or complicated to use needs improvement.

How would you rate your overall experience?

Provides a general impression of user satisfaction.

What would you change about our website or app?

This question invites suggestions for improving your digital solution. It gives users a voice in the development process.

How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend or colleague?

Recommendations measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. Pop-up surveys commonly use this question based on a widely used metric called the Net Promoter Score (NPS). A high likelihood to recommend means customers are happy and likely to become brand advocates.

What other products or services would you like us to offer?

This question taps into unmet customer needs and wants. Responses can reveal gaps in your current offerings and inspire new products or services.

Did you encounter any technical issues?

Technical issues, like bugs, error messages, or crashes, can affect customer satisfaction.

What is your preferred payment/delivery method?

It may seem trivial, but some customers will only buy if their preferred payment method is available. So, you must understand the popular payment options that resonate with your target audience.

What is your preferred method of contact for support?

This question seeks to know how customers prefer to reach out for help. Understanding this helps businesses optimize their customer service channels.

How would you describe our product in one sentence?

This question aims to capture a concise customer impression of your product. The one-sentence descriptions can reveal key strengths or weaknesses.

How does our product compare to similar ones in the market?

This question seeks to understand your product's competitive edge or shortcomings. Responses can tell you where you excel or lag behind rivals.

Were our support resources (FAQs, live chat) helpful?

You need to understand the effectiveness of your customer support tools, like FAQs and live chat. If most people find these resources helpful, they validate your support strategy. If not, it's a cue to improve these areas. Understanding this aspect ensures that you offer assistance that benefits your customers.

How could our product better meet your needs in the future?

This question aims to collect suggestions for future improvements. Whether adding new features or refining existing ones, the feedback helps roadmap planning. If multiple customers highlight the same issue (like with pricing), that's a vital sign that needs attention. 

How did you find the speed of the site?

This question evaluates how site speed impacts user satisfaction. Slow loading can frustrate users and may even lead them to abandon the site. If multiple people report this issue, it signals a need for optimization.

What language options would you prefer for our website/app?

This question identifies the language preferences of your user base. If a significant portion prefers another language, it makes sense to offer that option. Adding new languages can broaden your reach and make your platform more inclusive.

Would you like a follow-up from our team regarding your feedback?

This question gauges interest in further communication. A 'yes' suggests the respondent is engaged and open to dialogue, indicating higher loyalty or interest. A 'no 'means they provided feedback but aren't looking for a discussion.

Would you be interested in future updates or newsletters?

This question gauges customer interest in staying connected with your brand. A 'yes' indicates a satisfied customer likely to engage with future offerings. A 'no' could suggest they're not fully satisfied or not interested in long-term engagement.

UX Survey Templates

Here’s a list of the eight best user experience survey templates that are free to use:

Client Feedback Form

Find out what clients think about your business. Use this form as a case study to gather thoughts on customer service and more. Make changes to the template to focus on specific aspects of customer interaction

NPS-Enhanced Software Survey

Experts have made this ready-to-use template to improve your software's Net Promoter Score (NPS). Gather critical insights to elevate your product.

Basic NPS Inquiry Template

Easily gauge customer loyalty with this template. Customers rate their likelihood of recommending you from 0 to 10. Adapt the template to explore additional areas.

Support Team Feedback Form

Assess the performance of your customer service team. Adapt the survey to delve into aspects you are particularly interested in.

Quick Response Customer Survey

Send this brief survey to understand customer perceptions . It encourages customers to elaborate on their answers. Make adjustments to fit your needs.

Product Feedback Survey

Use this template to collect comments on your products. It aims to identify issues and suggest resolutions.

Snapshot Product Assessment

Collect rapid feedback on your products. Use this form to get concise and actionable comments from customers.

Comprehensive Client Feedback Form

Capture detailed information on how your customers feel about your products and services. This is useful for pinpointing specific areas for improvement.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it. We have provided an in-depth guide to creating a successful UX survey. It covers all the essential aspects, from defining objectives to crafting engaging questions, ensuring accessibility, analyzing results, and implementing changes. 

We’ve included a curated list of 20 UX survey questions and eight templates, each serving a unique purpose in understanding the user experience. 

Two major takeaways from this content include: 

Align the survey with clear objectives : Understanding what you want to achieve with the survey sets the foundation for success. It guides every subsequent step.

Asking relevant and engaging questions : Crafting clear, interesting, and unbiased questions that cover various facets of the user experience is vital. It helps in capturing genuine feedback and insights. 

You can follow these guidelines to uncover profound insights that drive success in your product or service.

Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX

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What Is User Research, and What Is Its Purpose?

User research, or UX research, is an absolutely vital part of the  user experience design process.

Typically done at the start of a project, it encompasses different types of research methodologies to gather valuable data and feedback. When conducting user research, you’ll engage with and observe your target users, getting to know their needs, behaviors, and pain points in relation to the product or service you’re designing.

Ultimately, user research means the difference between designing based on guesswork and assumptions, and actually creating something that solves a real user problem. In other words: Do not skip the research phase!

If you’re new to user research, fear not. We’re going to explain exactly what UX research is and why it’s so important. We’ll also show you how to plan your user research and introduce you to some key user research methods .

We’ve divided this rather comprehensive guide into the following sections. Feel free to skip ahead using the menu below:

• What is user research?
• What is the purpose of user research?
• How to plan your user research.
• An introduction to different research methods—and when to use them.

Ready? Let’s jump in.

1. What is user research?

User experience research is the systematic investigation of your users in order to gather insights that will inform the design process. With the help of various user research techniques, you’ll set out to understand your users’ needs, attitudes, pain points, and behaviors (processes like task analyses look at how users actually navigate the product experience —not just how they should or how they say they do). 

Typically done at the start of a project—but also extremely valuable throughout—it encompasses different types of research methodology to gather both qualitative and quantitative data in relation to your product or service.

Before we continue, let’s consider the difference between qualitative and quantitative data .

Qualitative vs. Quantitative data: What’s the difference?

Qualitative UX research results in descriptive data which looks more at how people think and feel. It helps to find your users’ opinions, problems, reasons, and motivations. You can learn all about in-depth in this video by professional UX designer Maureen Herben:

Quantitative UX research , on the other hand, generally produces numerical data that can be measured and analyzed, looking more at the statistics. Quantitative data is used to quantify the opinions and behaviors of your users.

User research rarely relies on just one form of data collection and often uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods together to form a bigger picture. The data can be applied to an existing product to gain insight to help improve the product experiences, or it can be applied to an entirely new product or service, providing a baseline for UX, design, and development.

From the data gathered during your user research phase, you should be able to understand the following areas within the context of your product or service:

• Who your users are
• What their needs are
• What they want
• How they currently do things
• How they’d like to do them

As you consider the  why  of user research, remember that it’s easier than you might realize to overlook entire groups of users. It’s important to ensure that you’re conducting inclusive UX research and that starts in the earliest stages!

2. What is the purpose of user research?

The purpose of user research is to put your design project into context. It helps you understand the problem you’re trying to solve; it tells you who your users are, in what context they’ll be using your product or service, and ultimately, what they need from you, the designer! UX research ensures that you are designing with the user in mind, which is key if you want to create a successful product.

Throughout the design process, your UX research will aid you in many ways. It’ll help you identify problems and challenges, validate or invalidate your assumptions, find patterns and commonalities across your target user groups, and shed plenty of light on your users’ needs, goals, and mental models.

Why is this so important? Let’s find out.

Why is it so important to conduct user research?

Without UX research, you are essentially basing your designs on assumptions. If you don’t take the time to engage with real users, it’s virtually impossible to know what needs and pain-points your design should address.

Here’s why conducting user research is absolutely crucial:

User research helps you to design better products!

There’s a misconception that it’s ok to just do a bit of research and testing at the end of your project. The truth is that you need UX research first, followed by usability testing and iteration throughout.

This is because research makes the design better. The end goal is to create products and services that people want to use. The mantra in UX design is that some user research is always better than none .

It’s likely at some point in your UX career that you will come across the first challenge of any UX designer—convincing a client or your team to include user research in a project.

User research keeps user stories at the center of your design process.

All too often, the user research phase is seen as optional or merely “nice-to-have”—but in reality, it’s crucial from both a design and a business perspective. This brings us to our next point…

User research saves time and money!

If you (or your client) decide to skip the research phase altogether, the chances are you’ll end up spending time and money developing a product that, when launched, has loads of usability issues and design flaws, or simply doesn’t meet a real user need. Through UX research, you’ll uncover such issues early on—saving time, money, and lots of frustration!

The research phase ensures you’re designing with real insights and facts — not guesswork! Imagine you release a product that has the potential to fill a gap in the market but, due to a lack of user research, is full of bugs and usability issues. At best, you’ll have a lot of unnecessary work to do to get the product up to scratch. At worst, the brand’s reputation will suffer.

UX research gives the product a competitive edge. Research shows you how your product will perform in a real-world context, highlighting any issues that need to be ironed out before you go ahead and develop it.

User research can be done on a budget

There are ways that you can conduct faster and less costly user research , utilizing Guerrilla research outlined later on in this article (also handy if budget and time are an issue). Even the smallest amount of user research will save time and money in the long run.

The second challenge is how often businesses think they know their users without having done any research. You’ll be surprised at how often a client will tell you that user research is not necessary because they know their users!

In a 2005 survey completed by Bain, a large global management consulting firm, they found some startling results. 80% of businesses thought they knew best about what they were delivering. Only 8% of those businesses’ customers agreed.

The survey may be getting old, but the principle and misperception still persist.

In some cases, businesses genuinely do know their customers and there may be previous data on hand to utilize. However, more often than not, ‘knowing the users’ comes down to personal assumptions and opinions.

“It’s only natural to assume that everyone uses the Web the same way we do, and—like everyone else—we tend to think that our own behavior is much more orderly and sensible than it really is.” (Don’t Make Me Think ‘Revisited’, Steve Krug, 2014.) A must on every UX Designer’s bookshelf!

What we think a user wants is not the same as what a user thinks they want. Without research, we inadvertently make decisions for ourselves instead of for our target audience. To summarize, the purpose of user research is to help us design to fulfill the user’s actual needs, rather than our own assumptions of their needs.

In a nutshell, UX research informs and opens up the realm of design possibilities. It saves time and money, ensures a competitive edge, and helps you to be a more effective, efficient, user-centric designer.

3. How to plan your user research

When planning your user research , it’s good to have a mix of both qualitative and quantitative data to draw from so you don’t run into issues from the value-action gap, which can at times make qualitative data unreliable.

The value-action gap is a well-known psychology principle outlining that people genuinely don’t do what they say they would do, and is commonly referred to as what people say vs. what people do.

More than 60% of participants said they were “likely” or “very likely” to buy a kitchen appliance in the next 3 months. 8 months later, only 12% had. How Customers Think, Gerald Zaltman, 2003

When planning your user research, you need to do more than just User Focus Groups—observation of your users really is the key. You need to watch what your users do.

Part of being a great user researcher is to be an expert at setting up the right questions and getting unbiased answers from your users.

To do this we need to think like the user.

Put yourself in your user’s shoes without your own preconceptions and assumptions on how it should work and what it should be. For this, we need empathy (and good listening skills) allowing you to observe and challenge assumptions of what you already think you know about your users.

Be open to some surprises!

4. When to use different user research methods

There’s a variety of different qualitative and quantitative research methods out there. If you’ve been doing the CareerFoundry UX Design course , you may have already covered some of the list below in your course.

It isn’t an exhaustive list, but covers some of the more popular methods of research. Our student team lead runs through many of them in the video below.

Qualitative Methods:

• Guerrilla testing: Fast and low-cost testing methods such as on-the-street videos, field observations, reviews of paper sketches, or online tools for remote usability testing.
• Interviews: One-on-one interviews that follow a preset selection of questions prompting the user to describe their interactions, thoughts, and feelings in relation to a product or service, or even the environment of the product/service.
• Focus groups: Participatory groups that are led through a discussion and activities to gather data on a particular product or service. If you’ve ever watched Mad Men you’ll be familiar with the Ponds’ cold cream Focus Group !
• Field Studies: Heading into the user’s environment and observing while taking notes (and photographs or videos if possible).
• In-lab testing: Observations of users completing particular tasks in a controlled environment. Users are often asked to describe out loud their actions, thoughts, and feelings and are videoed for later analysis
• Card sorting : Used to help understand Information Architecture and naming conventions better. Can be really handy to sort large amounts of content into logical groupings for users.

Quantitative Methods:

• User surveys: Questionnaires with a structured format, targeting your specific user personas. These can be a great way to get a large amount of data. Surveymonkey is a popular online tool.
• First click testing: A test set up to analyse what a user would click on first in order to complete their intended task. This can be done with paper prototypes, interactive wireframes or an existing website.
• Eye tracking: Measures the gaze of the eye, allowing the observer to ‘see’ what the user sees. This can be an expensive test and heatmapping is a good cheaper alternative.
• Heatmapping: Visual mapping of data showing how users click and scroll through your prototype or website. The most well-known online tool to integrate would be Crazyegg.
• Web analytics: Data that is gathered from a website or prototype it is integrated with, allowing you to see the demographics of users, page views, and funnels of how users move through your site and where they drop off. The most well-known online tool to integrate would be Google Analytics .
• A/B testing: Comparing two versions of a web page to see which one converts users more. This is a great way to test button placements, colors, banners, and other elements in your UI.

Further reading

Now you know what user research is and why it’s so important. If you’re looking for a way to get trained in this particular discipline, there’s good news—owing to demand and popularity, there’s a growing number of UX research bootcamps out there.

If you’d like to learn more about UX research, you may find the following articles useful:

• What Does A UX Researcher Actually Do? The Ultimate Career Guide
• How to Conduct User Research Like a Professional
• How to Build a UX Research Portfolio (Step-by-Step Guide)

User research is the process of understanding the needs, behaviors, and attitudes of users to inform the design and development of products or services. It involves collecting and analyzing data about users through various methods such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing.

2. How to conduct user research?

User research can be conducted through various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, and usability testing. The method chosen depends on the research goals and the resources available. Typically, user research involves defining research objectives, recruiting participants, creating research protocols, conducting research activities, analyzing data, and reporting findings.

3. Is user research the same as UX?

User research is a part of the broader UX (User Experience) field, but they are not the same. UX encompasses a wide range of activities such as design, testing, and evaluation, while user research specifically focuses on understanding user needs and behaviors to inform UX decisions.

4. What makes good user research?

Good user research is characterized by clear research goals, well-defined research protocols, appropriate sampling methods, unbiased data collection, and rigorous data analysis. It also involves effective communication of research findings to stakeholders, as well as using the findings to inform design and development decisions.

5. Is user research a good career?

User research is a growing field with many opportunities for career growth and development. With the increasing importance of user-centered design, there is a high demand for skilled user researchers in various industries such as tech, healthcare, and finance. A career in user research can be fulfilling for those interested in understanding human behavior and designing products that meet user needs.

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How to Ask UX Research Questions

In this part of the guide we are going to explain what makes good ux research questions, as well as how and when to ask them..

Last update 11.10.2023

The key to an insightful study is a set of carefully thought-through questions that correlate to your project’s goals. Today we’ll take a look at 4 common types of UX research questions and their examples.

Why is it important to ask good UX research questions?

UX research questions are one of the key parts of your research, and when used right can bring out all the important details you miss during the study itself. They help you gather additional information, allow testers to share their opinions and concerns and are just a great way of gathering feedback before, during and after the study.

We recommend to plan out your questions ahead and include them into your UX research plan . This way you can make sure to not forget anything and won’t change the questions going from one participant to another. 

A great advantage of UX research tools like UXtweak is that they allow you to insert those questions during the study setup process, no matter what UX research method you choose. 

This comes in handy especially when conducting an unmoderated user test, with no researcher present to ask the questions. This saves you tons of time as there is no need to prepare a separate questionnaire each time and send it out to the participants before and after the study.

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Types of UX research questions

There are different types of questions you may want to ask depending on the part of the study you’re in, the goals of your research etc. However, the questions also differ in their subject. 

Some of them will be questions about the participants themselves. You might want to know their background before the study, get to know them better in order to understand how they think and approach certain tasks dealing with your product. 

There are also questions concerned about the problem you’re trying to solve. These are usually asked at the earlier stages of user research, during its generative phase. They are focused on uncovering the pain-points and the needs of your future users in relation to the digital product you’re creating. How can it make their lives easier? Which one of their problems is it going to solve and how?

The last group of questions are those about the product. With their help you can find out more about users’ thoughts on product’s design, usability and functionality. Those questions will help to figure out if you’re actually solving the user’s problem and discover ways in which you can do it even better.

During the different stages of your study you’ll need to ask different questions so let’s take a look at the 4 different question types based on the stages of your UX research:

Pre-study questions

Intra-study questions, post-study questions.

Screening questions are essential in most of the UX research studies as they help to filter out the respondents that are not representative of your target audience. This is important in order to not skew the results analytics later on. One screener is usually more than enough but in some cases your study might need more. 

Write your screening questions with the target audience in mind. For example, if you’re testing an e-commerce clothing store your participants should definitely have an experience of purchasing clothes online. 

A good question in that case would be:

How often do you shop for clothes online?

• C) Every couple of months
• D) Hardly ever

In an online UX research tool like UXtweak, you can set up that the participants who choose options D or E will be redirected to the thank you page and the tool will not let them complete the study.

Before the study is the perfect time to get to know your respondents better, ask questions about their demographics, background with the product and any kind of previous experiences related to the study. 

Following up on our example with an online clothing store, here are some examples of pre-study questions:

• What is your current occupation? 
• How often do you shop online?
• Are you familiar with this brand?
• When you shop online, what is the most important feature for you to have on the website?
• What other websites do you usually buy from? What do you like/dislike about them?

The purpose of intra-study questions is to get additional information about users actions and decisions during the test and motivate them to verbalize their opinions. Here, you can ask them to explain why they took a certain action, get feedback on specific features of the product and get their honest opinion on what they’d wish to improve.

Examples of intra-study questions:

• What did you expect to happen when clicking on this item?
• How hard was it for you to complete the task? (1 = very difficult, 5 = very easy)
• What is your opinion on the product’s design?
• Do you find this feature helpful or unhelpful?
• What do you think of …
• If you were looking for …, where would you expect to find it?

After the study you can ask about the participant’s overall impressions of the test and the product, their opinion on the task difficulty. Ask if they’d use that product in real life or if they would recommend it to a friend. It’s also a perfect time to ask them questions that would generate new ideas for improvement. 

Examples of post-study questions:

• What is your overall impression of the test?
• How would you rate the difficulty of using this app on a scale? (1 = very difficult, 5 = very easy)
• What did you like the most/the least about the app?
• Did you feel confused at any point? If so, explain what happened.
• On the scale from 1 to 5 (1 = very satisfied, 5 = very dissatisfied) how would you rate your experience with the product?
• Is there anything a product lacks in your opinion?
• If you could add one feature, what would it be?

In case you are interested in learning more about all of these types of questions and hearing useful tips on when to ask them, we recommend you to watch a video from our YouTube channel where we discuss it all:

Check out our list of best UX Research tools where we explain the pros and cons of each tool and help you choose the best one for your research!

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Ux research methods, topics: ux research basics.

• 01. UX Research Basics
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How to design effective user surveys for UX research: A step-by-step guide

User surveys are an excellent method for conducting quick, affordable, and scalable UX research. With some carefully-crafted questions and the right survey tool, you can gather feedback and insights from a huge pool of participants—enabling you to make data-driven decisions for better UX.

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What is UX? Why has it become so important? Could it be a career for you? Learn the answers, and more, with a free 7-lesson video course.

User surveys are a quick, affordable, and scalable UX research method. Learn how to design effective user surveys in this step-by-step guide. 

It sounds simple enough. But, if you want to get the most out of user surveys, it’s important to employ them in the right context—and to master the art of survey design. 

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about user surveys. Keep reading to learn:

What are user surveys?

When and why should you conduct user surveys as part of your ux research, what are the pros and cons of user surveys, how to design effective user surveys (step-by-step).

• User survey best practices
• User survey tools

This guide is for UX designers, UX researchers, and anyone else who wants to leverage user surveys as part of a research project. Let’s begin! 

[GET CERTIFIED IN USER RESEARCH]

User surveys are used in UX research to gather direct input and feedback from actual or target users. 

They are unmoderated, which means you don’t supervise or observe participants as they complete them. You simply create the survey and send it out, allowing users to work through it in their own time. 

The anatomy of a user survey is pretty simple. It contains a series of questions which the user responds to, either by selecting from a range of possible answers or by typing out their own unique answer. This depends on whether the survey questions are open or closed. 

Open vs. closed questions in user surveys

Open questions give the user complete freedom and flexibility in how they respond, allowing them to answer in their own words without being restricted by a fixed set of options. Open questions are used to gather qualitative data; they cannot be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No”, so they elicit more detailed elaboration and insight. 

Here are some examples of open-ended questions:

• What was your first impression of the [XYZ] app? 
• How would you improve the experience of booking transport with the [XYZ] app? 
• What are your main priorities when it comes to booking transport?

Closed questions have predefined responses which the user must choose from. They require less thought and effort from participants, and they allow you to collect quantitative (i.e. countable) data. 

Examples of closed questions include:

• How would you rate your first impression of the [XYZ] app on a scale of 1-10?
• Would you recommend the [XYZ] app to your friends?
• Do you order takeaway more than once a week?

That’s user surveys in a nutshell. Next, let’s consider when and why you might choose this UX research method. 

[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]

User surveys are typically used in evaluative research—that is, research you conduct to evaluate (i.e. validate or invalidate) existing ideas, concepts, directions, or designs. This is different to exploratory research where the goal is to figure out what problem you need to solve before coming up with ideas. 

You might send out user surveys periodically to monitor user/customer satisfaction and to identify pain-points and areas for improvement within your existing product/service/solution. 

Perhaps you’ve got some ideas for a new product, or an iteration of an existing product. User surveys will enable you to validate those ideas with a large sample of target users before you go ahead with design and development. 

Surveys are also useful for backing up other research you’ve done. For example, if you’ve conducted user interviews with a small number of participants and now want to test your findings on a larger pool of users, surveys could be the next step. 

The main advantage of user surveys is that they are affordable and scalable. You can reach lots of people, and therefore gather a large amount of data, without spending much money—ideal for UX research on a budget. 

The main drawback is that, while they’re great for quantity, user surveys don’t always guarantee quality. Participants may complete your survey but that doesn’t automatically mean that they’re providing accurate or honest feedback. Survey data is also susceptible to bias, especially if the questions are written in a way that subtly leads or influences participants. 

Here are all the pros and cons of user surveys at a glance.

User survey pros:

• Inexpensive to run
• Quick and uncomplicated; all you need is a survey tool
• Scalable—you can easily reach lots of participants and gather a large sample of data
• You can reach users and customers anywhere as they’re done online and unmoderated
• Usually fairly quick and easy for users to complete, encouraging a high participation rate

User survey cons:

• Users may not provide honest or accurate answers
• Data gathered may be susceptible to bias (especially if survey questions are leading or ambiguous)
• Surveys are at risk of sampling bias—based on the likelihood that people who choose to complete your survey in the first place typically fall into one of two categories: either very happy customers or very dissatisfied customers 

As long as you understand the limitations of user surveys and take care to design them well, you can confidently include them in your UX research toolkit. On that note, let’s explore how to create an effective user survey. 

Want to design an effective user survey? Here’s what you need to do:

• Define your research objective
• Choose your survey tool 
• Design your survey
• Test and iterate
• Recruit participants and deploy!

Let’s go through each step in detail.

1. Define your research objective

This first step applies to all kinds of UX research. Before you can start designing your survey, you need to come up with a clearly defined research objective. 

What do you want to learn from your user survey? What data and insights do you hope to gather? 

Perhaps you released a product update a few months ago and your goal is to gather feedback from existing customers. Maybe you’re planning some product improvements and want to hear from your users about what features and functionality they’d like to see next. 

Your research goal will determine the type of survey you design—i.e. whether you’ll include open or closed questions (or both) in order to gather qualitative data, quantitative data, or a mixture. 

2. Choose your survey tool

Next, decide which tool you’ll use to create and distribute your user survey. If this is your first ever user survey, spend some time getting to know your chosen tool before you start designing your survey. 

This way, you’ll get an idea of what’s possible with your tool—for example, how many questions you can include per survey, what options you have for distributing your survey, as well as any design/formatting specifications or limitations. 

Once you’ve got the lay of the land, you can design your survey accordingly. We share some of the best user survey tools later on in this guide—check them out before you commit. 

3. Design your survey

Now for the survey itself! When creating your survey, you’ll need to write:

• An introduction welcoming the user to the survey and providing some context. What is the survey about and why are you conducting it? How long will the survey take? What can the user expect? Here you should also include information about how the user’s data will be processed, and state whether or not the survey is anonymous/confidential.
• Your survey questions . These must be clear and easy to understand, and as bias-free as possible. You can learn more about writing effective survey questions in the “best practices” section of this guide.
• Answer choices . If you’re asking closed questions that require the user to select a predefined answer, you’ll need to write out all possible options they can choose from.
• A closing statement . At the end of the survey, it’s good practice to let the user know they have successfully completed the survey—and to thank them for doing so. 

Here is an example of an introduction and closing screen taken from a user survey conducted by N26 bank:

Before you go live with your survey, it’s worth having someone else (or a few people) review it. 

This step isn’t just about checking for typos. Critically, it’s about making sure that the survey questions are clear and easy to understand, that they follow a logical order, and that the answer options make sense. 

If necessary, iterate on your survey and run another quick round of QA before you release it to your users. 

5. Recruit participants and deploy your survey!

You’re almost ready to launch! Just one more thing: recruiting participants to complete your survey. 

Your approach to finding participants will depend on the nature of your survey and your research goal. If you’re targeting existing customers, you might embed your survey within the product itself—think in-app surveys that pop up after you’ve completed a task. Otherwise, you might send your survey out via email to your customer base. 

If you’re not limiting your audience to existing users and just want to reach as large a representative sample as possible, consider using an agency to distribute your survey. Many user research tools also have a participant database you can access. 

Now, set your survey free and await that data! 

3 best practices for effective user surveys

If you can design your user surveys to be quick, simple, and user-friendly, you’ll have the best possible shot of capturing quality data. Here are three best practices to ensure your user surveys are a joy to complete.

1. Make sure your questions are crystal-clear

The key to effective user surveys is asking the right questions—and making sure they’re crystal-clear for the user. Use plain, jargon-free language and avoid over-complicated or ambiguous wording. 

And, importantly, keep your survey questions as neutral as possible. You don’t want to subtly influence the user’s answer in any way, or include questions that make an assumption about the user’s behaviour, goals, and preferences. 

2. Use skip logic to create a logical flow

Completing your survey should be a seamless experience for the user. If necessary, use skip logic to customise the flow of the survey depending on the user’s answers.

For example, if you ask the user “Which of the following best describes how you use the [XYZ] app?”, you could then present them with a follow-up question which is relevant to their choice. Likewise, if they answer “None”, you’ll want to skip the follow-up question altogether. 

This helps to ensure that the questions flow in a logical and sensical order, encouraging the user to stick with your survey right through to the end. 

3. Keep your survey short (and include a progress bar)

If we’re honest, completing user surveys can quickly get tiresome. You want to keep your users engaged for the duration and avoid them “falling off” halfway through—so keep your survey as short and sweet as possible. 

It’s also worth including a progress bar to reassure the user that the end is in sight. You might even have some fun with your in-survey messaging, for example, “Stick with it! Just three more questions left.” 

If it’s really necessary to create longer, more time-consuming surveys, consider rewarding participants for their time with a voucher or discount code. 

What are the best user survey tools?

Some of the most popular user survey tools include:

• SurveyMonkey
• SurveySparrow
• OptimalWorkshop
• GetFeedback

For more tools, check out this guide: The 9 Best UX Research Tools for Designers and Researchers .

In this guide, you learnt how to design effective user surveys. Once you’ve created and distributed your survey, the next step is to analyse the data you’ve gathered and use it to inform your design decisions. You can learn how to analyse and synthesise your user research data in this guide . And, once you’re ready to present your findings, check out this post on how to write a UX research report .

And remember: User surveys are just one of many UX research methods. Effective user research relies on a variety of techniques—from user interviews to card sorting to A/B testing . Do your research on UX research and be sure to choose the most appropriate method for your goals! 

• user research
• user survey

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4 June 2024

UX research questions

• Modern science relies on research problems, questions, hypotheses, experiments, replication of research, and meta-analysis.

Research methods, UX research, and usability testing (qualitative research, quantitative methods) are based on research questions.

To conduct UX research , first and foremost, we must ask good research questions.

• Relevant problems and research questions are the starting point and form the horizon of our knowledge of the world and phenomena.

Problems and research questions organize knowledge and establish research trends for years to come (including within user experience research), bringing to life entire schools of research or more detailed approaches.

They provide valuable user insights regarding their behavior, needs, pain points, preferences, or mental models.

They are necessary.

This is no different in UX research — the academic studies conducted within the broader field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) — and the more business-oriented, pragmatic ones.

In this article, we'll look at the "scientific background," how knowledge is created, how research is born, and what role research questions play in investigation, definition, discovery, and understanding.

We'll highlight best practices for formulating research questions and explain the differences between research problems, questions, and hypotheses.

Finally, we'll present examples of user research questions, focusing on those posed in the context of user experience.

If you are interested in qualitative research, quantitative research, UX audits, usability testing, benchmarking, A/B testing, or other types of UX research (e.g., eye-tracking), you need to know about the issue of research questions.

The following article contains everything you wanted to know about research questions but were afraid to ask.

We invite you to read on!

Do you want to perform UX Research?

What are the research questions?

A research question (a user research question) is the focus of the research. It organizes, structures, and directs the research. The research problem and the choice of research method influence the research question.

Research questions are the foundation; as such, they're the starting point and the point of arrival because every study uncovers something, reveals something, and allows for a better understanding. On the other hand, it points out the "unknown" area and subsequent research problems and inspires new research questions and hypotheses. The cyclical nature of this process is the essence of science. It's the driving force behind the development of the world of knowledge.

In his book "Research Design. Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches," John W. Creswell distinguishes between research questions in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods because of their differences.

In qualitative methods:

• Research questions are posed, but no assumptions (the research project is conducted without expectations) or hypotheses (no predictions that take into account variables and statistical tests) are made.
• Questions are posed in the most general way possible (we should avoid leading questions).
• Research questions are asked in two forms: a main question and additional questions (follow-up questions).
• Researchers seek to know as many factors as possible that can influence and condition a phenomenon.

The purpose of posing research questions (including in the design process) in qualitative research is to "discover," "explain," or "explore" also during usability testing (e.g., of mobile apps for the target audience).

Catherine Marshall and Gretchen B. Rossman, in their book " Designing Qualitative Research ," distinguished and divided research questions in qualitative research, and based on that, we can separate them into various categories.

Types of research questions:

• Contextual questions seek to describe the nature of what already exists.
• Descriptive questions try to describe a phenomenon.
• Emancipatory questions aim to generate knowledge to help people, especially the underprivileged, engage in social action.
• Evaluative questions assess the effectiveness of existing methods or paradigms.
• Explanatory questions seek to explain a phenomenon or explore the causes and relationships of what exists.
• Exploratory questions deal with lesser-known areas of a given topic  (e.g., the different viewpoints represented by various target groups).
• Generative questions aim to provide new ideas to develop theories and activities.
• Ideological questions are used in research aimed at developing specific ideologies of a stance.

In quantitative research:

• Very detailed research questions are posed (regardless of who we want to study).
• Research questions are much more specific.
• Hypotheses are made based on a small number of variables.
• Having expectations is common.
• Quantitative hypotheses are used to capture the relationship between variables.

An important characteristic of questions in quantitative research is their precision.

Quantitative questions can't be answered in the affirmative ("Yes") or negative ("No"); hence, we cannot use words such as "is," "are," "do," or "does."

As Imed Bouchrika notes in his article " How to Write a Research Question: Types, Steps, and Examples ," quantitative research questions can be divided into three types: descriptive, comparative, and relationship research questions.

Descriptive research questions usually start with the interrogative word "what" and are intended to provide answers to a single variable.

Comparative research questions aim to discover differences between groups where a given variable occurs.

Relationship research questions investigate and define trends and interactions between two or more variables.

In mixed methods:

• Specific research questions that are appropriate for mixed research methodology should be used.
• Both quantitative and qualitative research questions are used.

We should also add Uwe Flick's remarks in his book "Designing Qualitative Research." According to him, research success depends on the quality of the research question, which should be clear and emphatic.

We'll write in a moment about the ways of formulating research questions.

The quality of the research question determines what data we'll collect and what aspects and problems will be analyzed and interpreted. According to Uwe Flick, a good research question defines the scope of necessary data that must be included in the research process.

How to formulate the right user research questions?

Formulating user research questions and asking research questions (e.g., during user interviews) are two of the most critical issues addressed when discussing the researcher's workshop.

A properly posed question makes it clear what we want to study — and, indirectly — why we want to study it.

User research questions, including UX research questions, should be:

• Clear. The more detailed and specific the question, the easier it will be to understand and identify what problem it indicates and what its scope is.
• Concise. A research question should be appropriately balanced in terms of length. It should be long enough not to leave out any important issues and brief enough not to lose its point and clarity.
• Complex. So, the simplification expressed in "Yes/No" answers is impossible.
• Argumentative. So, they open a discussion and incite honest answers rather than offer definitive conclusions.
• Focused. Concentrated on a given problem, they should be devoid of digressions and unnecessary elements.
• Realistic and rational. So that it is possible to conduct research within the given time, context, budget, logistics, and organizational frame.

Most often, research questions are aimed at the following research objectives:

• Description
• Exploration
• Explanation
• Testing, including usability testing

In the case of description and exploration, most often, a research question takes one of the following forms:

• What are the characteristics of X (for example, a user interface )?
• How does X change over time (for example, users and their expectations)?

In the case of explanation and testing, a research question, most often, takes one of the following forms:

• What is the relationship between X and Y (for example, visible during eye-tracking studies with users)?
• What role does X play in Y (for example, a mobile application in the user's life)?

In the case of evaluation and action, a research question, most often, takes one of the following forms:

• What are the advantages of X (for example, a graphical user interface)?
• How effective is X (for example, usability testing of digital products for a user)?

Imed Bouchrika, quoted above, provides a very practical method for checking whether a research question is relevant.

A research question must meet five fundamental criteria.

A research question must be:

• Feasible. Both in terms of realism, which we already mentioned, and the limitations of the researchers themselves, such as whether they can face the challenge.
• Interesting and/or useful. Especially in the case of UX research questions regarding usability. The practical dimension of the knowledge obtained during the research is vital — although science should not have boundaries, not everything is worth knowing. Anti-awards are the best example of this (for instance, the Darwin Awards).
• Novel. It should bring something new to the subject, to the knowledge about the problem in question.
• Ethical. It cannot violate legal norms, informal social norms, rules, or ethical norms that apply to researchers.
• Relevant. Novelty and freshness are important, but it is equally essential that the research provides value to the researcher and all or at least the majority of stakeholders.

Questions and research problems

A research problem is a much broader concept than a research question.

It's defined as a problem, issue, phenomenon, or mechanism that must be investigated, described, explained, understood, categorized, and embedded in the structure of existing knowledge.

As a part of research problems, research questions are formulated to concretize the research problems.

In the field of social sciences, six types of research problems are distinguished:

• Theoretical

A research problem defines what we still don't know and what we should find out because of various objectives and benefits (teleological and practical).

• A research problem focuses on pointing out what we already know and, even more importantly, what we still don't know.

Research problems have two sources:

• Heterogeneous — it's a reality itself in which something feels incomprehensible and needs explanation.
• Autogenic — it's a community of scientists who, based on the subject literature, see gaps in the knowledge that need to be filled.

Moreover, research problems based on the criterion of their usefulness and the purpose of a study can be divided into:

• Theoretical research problems that are fundamental problems solved to develop research and provide tools for solving practical problems.
• Practical research problems — their purpose is primarily to realize important social goals; they are intended to improve the functioning of the social world (e.g., more useful user interfaces).

Research questions and hypotheses

While the research questions and hypotheses may look no different to a layperson at first glance, they aren't the same.

In his study " Jak stawiać hipotezy i pytania badawcze? Teoria, wyjaśnienia, przykłady " (How to write hypotheses and research questions? Theory, explanations, examples), Andrzej Jankowski defines a research hypothesis as a statement in which a supposition is expressed about (operation, structure, influence, dependence) some phenomenon, which should be confirmed or disproved by statistical analysis.

Hypotheses organize quantitative research, define its scope, and provide a link between theory, research methods, and research itself.

A research problem, research hypotheses, and research questions are the triad (UX research is no exception) that forms the core of any study.

We can organize these three critical elements of every research (including user experience research) according to the criterion of their generality, and thus:

• A research problem is the most general.
• Research questions are more specific.
• Hypotheses are the most concrete.

We should also add that research hypotheses are made for a particular purpose—to be confirmed or refuted using statistical tools and methods.

Hypothesis verification — if it is methodologically correct and no error has been made — means that we have (relative) certainty that a supposition is "true" or "false."

The relationship does or doesn't occur.

That said, the certainty level depends on the generality of the hypothesis itself.

As a rule, the more specific, concrete, and narrow the hypothesis, the more reliable the verification result (positive or negative).

Research questions and interview questions

Research questions describe the objectives we want to achieve during a research project. They influence the rest of the study's aspects, such as the research method or research participants.

An example of a research question might be: What percentage of e-commerce mobile customers abandon shopping carts?

Interview questions are the questions that we ask the participants during a study. They are broader than research questions and leave more room for answers.

Based on the above example, the interview question can be: How often do you abandon purchasing in an online store while using a mobile device?

UX research questions — examples

We can find the best examples of research questions by reading research reports. It's also worth practicing posing research questions because it's very easy to make mistakes, especially if we're a novice researcher.

Quantitative research questions examples

For example, a research question — formulated for quantitative research — that is too general, vague, or unspecific might read as follows:

How do people react to the interface?

The question needs to be more specific because it operates with a category of people that can't be studied. It's physically, time-wise, organizationally, financially, logistically, etc., impossible to study several billion people.

The question needs to be clarified, as it is unknown to whom and to what it refers.

It's unclear what type of reaction is of interest to the researcher, such as whether they mean emotional, behavioral, conscious, involuntary, or automatic reactions.

The question is also unclear because it doesn't specify the concept of an interface. What kind of device is this interface on?

On what application? What type of interface? Reaction to which interface element is going to be measured?

Finally, the question doesn't imply the problem's importance. It's impossible to deduce why such a problem is worth the effort.

The above research question, to sound much more concrete, understandable, clear, and realistic, should read like this:

How long does it take American men between the ages of 25 and 30 to find an ADDE chair in Ikea's online store using an internal search engine?

Qualitative research question examples

In qualitative research, research questions are often formulated to explore, evaluate, probe, discover, and describe research participants' expectations, impressions, and problems.

For example:

How would you rate your shopping experience in Ikea's online store?

Express your opinion using a scale of 1-10, where a rating of 1 means Very Bad Experience and 10 means Fantastic Experience.

How strongly do you agree with the following statement: "The ordering process at the Ikea store was easy."

Express your attitude with one of the statements from the following scale:

• I strongly disagree
• I neither agree nor disagree
• I strongly agree

Of course, this is only a small sample of research questions. They will vary considerably depending on the research method, the purpose of the study, the research problem, the methodology, and the respondents.

UX research questions. Summary

• User research questions provide valuable insights into user preferences, behavior, pain points, needs, and mental models.
• How to formulate research questions — the purpose of posing research questions in qualitative research is to "discover," "explain," or "explore."
• Quantitative questions can't be answered in the affirmative ("Yes") or negative ("No"); hence, we can't use words such as "is," "are," "do," or "does."
• Research questions can be divided into descriptive, comparative, and relationship questions. Different types of questions will help us achieve different research goals.
• Research questions should be clear, concise, complex, argumentative, realistic, and rational.
• A research problem is a much broader concept than a research question. It's defined as a problem, issue, phenomenon, or mechanism that needs to be investigated, described, explained, understood, categorized, and embedded in the structure of existing knowledge.
• A research problem, hypotheses, and questions are the triad that forms the core of any study.
• The research process and the design process are intertwined, and their common link is the research questions.

Next article

How to create a UX research plan?

• Research question
• How to create a research question
• Research Questions Overview
• Problem, goal and research question
• Research questions and types of hypotheses. What can we expect and how to define our predictions?
• User Research Questions

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What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

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Essential elements of an effective UX research plan (examples + templates)

Conducting UX research without a plan is like moving to another country without knowing the language—confusing and exhausting.

To avoid wasting time and resources, it’s crucial to set achievable research goals and work on developing a research plan that’s clear, comprehensive, and aligned with your overarching business goals and research strategy.

A good UX research plan sets out the parameters for your research, and guides how you’ll gather insights to inform product development. In this chapter, we share a step-by-step guide to creating a research plan, including templates and tactics for you to try. You’ll also find expert tips from Paige Bennett, Senior User Research Manager at Affirm, and Sinéad Davis Cochrane, Research Manager at Workday.

What is a UX research plan?

A UX research plan—not to be confused with a UX research strategy or research design—is a plan to guide individual user experience (UX) research projects.

It's a living document that includes a detailed explanation of tactics, methods, timeline, scope, and task owners. It should be co-created and shared with key stakeholders, so everyone is familiar with the project plan, and product teams can meet strategic goals.

A UX research plan is different to a research strategy and research design in both its purpose and contents. Let’s take a look.

Research plan vs. research design vs. research strategy: What’s the difference?

While your UX research plan should be based on strategy, it’s not the same thing. Your UX strategy is a high-level document that contains goals, budget, vision, and expectations. Meanwhile, a plan is a detailed document explaining how the team will achieve those strategic goals. Research design is the form your research itself takes.

In short, a strategy is a guide, a plan is what drives action, and design is the action itself.

What are the benefits of using a UX research plan?

Conducting research without goals and parameters is aimless. A UX research plan is beneficial for your product, user, and business—by building a plan for conducting UX research, you can:

Streamline processes and add structure

Work toward specific, measurable goals, align and engage stakeholders, save time by avoiding rework.

The structure of a research plan allows you to set timelines, expectations, and task owners, so everyone on your team is aligned and empowered to make decisions. Since there’s no second guessing what to do next or which methods to use, you’ll find your process becomes simpler and more efficient. It’s also worth standardizing your process to turn your plan into a template that you can reuse for future projects.

When you set research goals based on strategy, you’ll find it easier to track your team’s progress and keep the project in scope, on time, and on budget. With a solid, strategy-based UX research plan you can also track metrics at different stages of the project and adjust future tactics to get better research findings.

“It’s important to make sure your stakeholders are on the same page with regards to scope, timeline, and goals before you start," explains Paige Bennett, Senior User Research Manager at Affirm. That's because, when stakeholders are aligned, they're much more likely to sign off on product changes that result from UX research.

A written plan is a collaborative way to involve stakeholders in your research and turn them into active participants rather than passive observers. As they get involved, they'll make useful contributions and get a better understanding of your goals.

A UX research plan helps you save time and money quite simply because it’s easier and less expensive to make design or prototype changes than it is to fix usability issues once the product is coded or fully launched. Additionally, having a plan gives your team direction, which means they won’t be conducting research and talking to users without motive, and you’ll be making better use of your resources. What’s more, when everyone is aligned on goals, they’re empowered to make informed decisions instead of waiting for their managers’ approval.

What should a UX research plan include?

In French cuisine, the concept of mise en place—putting in place—allows chefs to plan and set up their workspace with all the required ingredients before cooking. Think of your research plan like this—laying out the key steps you need to go through during research, to help you run a successful and more efficient study.

Here’s what you should include in a UX research plan:

• A brief reminder of the strategy and goals
• An outline of the research objectives
• The purpose of the plan and studies
• A short description of the target audience, sample size, scope, and demographics
• A detailed list of expectations including deliverables, timings, and type of results
• An overview of the test methods and a short explanation of why you chose them
• The test set up or guidelines to outline everything that needs to happen before the study: scenarios, screening questions, and duration of pilot tests
• Your test scripts, questions to ask, or samples to follow
• When and how you’ll present the results
• Cost estimations or requests to go over budget

Collect all UX research findings in one place

Use Maze to run quantitative and qualitative research, influence product design, and shape user-centered products.

How to create a UX research plan

Now we’ve talked through why you need a research plan, let’s get into the how. Here’s a short step-by-step guide on how to write a research plan that will drive results.

• Define the problem statement
• Get stakeholders’ buy-in
• Identify your objectives
• Choose the right research method
• Recruit participants
• Prepare the brief
• Establish the timeline
• Decide how you’ll present your findings

1. Define the problem statement

One of the most important purposes of a research plan is to identify what you’re trying to achieve with the research, and clarify the problem statement. For Paige Bennett , Senior User Research Manager at Affirm, this process begins by sitting together with stakeholders and looking at the problem space.

“We do an exercise called FOG, which stands for ‘Fact, Observation, Guess’, to identify large gaps in knowledge,” says Paige. “Evaluating what you know illuminates questions you still have, which then serves as the foundation of the UX research project.”

You can use different techniques to identify the problem statement, such as stakeholder interviews, team sessions, or analysis of customer feedback. The problem statement should explain what the project is about—helping to define the research scope with clear deliverables and objectives.

2. Identify your objectives

Research objectives need to align with the UX strategy and broader business goals, but you also need to define specific targets to achieve within the research itself—whether that’s understanding a specific problem, or measuring usability metrics . So, before you get into a room with your users and customers, “Think about the research objectives: what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what you expect from the UX research process ,” explains Sinéad Davis Cochrane , Research Manager at Workday.

Examples of research objectives might be:

• Learn at what times users interact with your product
• Understand why users return (or not) to your website/app
• Discover what competitor products your users are using
• Uncover any pain points or challenges users find when navigating with your product
• Gauge user interest in and prioritize potential new features

A valuable purpose of setting objectives is ensuring your project doesn't suffer from scope creep. This can happen when stakeholders see your research as an opportunity to ask any question. As a researcher , Sinéad believes your objectives can guide the type of research questions you ask and give your research more focus. Otherwise, anything and everything becomes a research question—which will confuse your findings and be overwhelming to manage.

Sinéad shares a list of questions you should ask yourself and the research team to help set objectives:

• What are you going to do with this information?
• What decisions is it going to inform?
• How are you going to leverage these insights?

Another useful exercise to help identify research objectives is by asking questions that help you get to the core of a problem. Ask these types of questions before starting the planning process:

• Who are the users you’re designing this for?
• What problems and needs do they have?
• What are the pain points of using the product?
• Why are they not using a product like yours?

3. Get stakeholders buy-in

It’s good practice to involve stakeholders at early stages of plan creation to get everyone on board. Sharing your UX research plan with relevant stakeholders means you can gather context, adjust based on comments, and gauge what’s truly important to them. When you present the research plan to key stakeholders, remember to align on the scope of research, and how and when you’ll get back to them with results.

Stakeholders usually have a unique vision of the product, and it’s crucial that you’re able to capture it early on—this doesn’t mean saying yes to everything, but listening to their ideas and having a conversation. Seeing the UX research plan as a living document makes it much easier to edit based on team comments. Plus, the more you listen to other ideas, the easier it will be to evangelize research and get stakeholder buy-in by helping them see the value behind it.

I expect my stakeholders to be participants, and I outline how I expect that to happen. That includes observing interviews, participating in synthesis exercises, or co-presenting research recommendations.

Paige Bennett , Senior User Research Manager at Affirm

4. Choose the right research method

Choose between the different UX research methods to capture different insights from users.

To define the research methods you’ll use, circle back to your research objectives, what stage of the product development process you’re in, and the constraints, resources, and timeline of the project. It’s good research practice to use a mix of different methods to get a more complete perspective of users’ struggles.

For example, if you’re at the start of the design process, a generative research method such as user interviews or field studies will help you generate new insights about the target audience. Or, if you need to evaluate how a new design performs with users, you can run usability tests to get actionable feedback.

It’s also good practice to mix methods that drive quantitative and qualitative results so you can understand context, and catch the user sentiment behind a metric. For instance, if during a remote usability test, you hear a user go ‘Ugh! Where’s the sign up button?’ you’ll get a broader perspective than if you were just reviewing the number of clicks on the same test task.

Examples of UX research methods to consider include:

• Five-second testing
• User interviews
• Field studies
• Card sorting
• Tree testing
• Focus groups
• Usability testing
• Diary studies
• Live website testing

Check out our top UX research templates . Use them as a shortcut to get started on your research.

5. Determine how to recruit participants

Every research plan should include information about the participants you need for your study, and how you’ll recruit them. To identify your perfect candidate, revisit your goals and the questions that need answering, then build a target user persona including key demographics and use cases. Consider the resources you have available already, by asking yourself:

• Do you have a user base you can tap into to collect customer insights ?
• Do you need to hire external participants?
• What’s your budget to recruit users?
• How many users do you need to interact with?

When selecting participants, make sure they represent all your target personas. If different types of people will be using a certain product, you need to make sure that the people you research represent these personas. This means not just being inclusive in your recruitment, but considering secondary personas—the people who may not be your target user base, but interact with your product incidentally.

You should also consider recruiting research participants to test the product on different devices. Paige explains: “If prior research has shown that behavior differs greatly between those who use a product on their phone versus their tablet, I need to better understand those differences—so I’m going to make sure my participants include people who have used a product on both devices.”

During this step, make sure to include information about the required number of participants, how you’ll get them to participate, and how much time you need per user. The main ways to recruit testers are:

• Using an online participant recruitment tool like Maze Panel
• Putting out physical or digital adverts in spaces that are relevant to your product and user
• Reaching out to existing users
• Using participants from previous research
• Recruiting directly from your website or app with a tool like In-Product Prompts

5.1. Determine how you’ll pay them

You should always reward your test participants for their time and insights. Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because if they have an incentive they’re more likely to give you complete and insightful answers. If you’re hosting the studies in person, you’ll also need to cover your participants' travel expenses and secure a research space. Running remote moderated or unmoderated research is often considered to be less expensive and faster to complete.

If you’re testing an international audience, remember to check your proposed payment system works worldwide—this might be an Amazon gift card or prepaid Visa cards.

6. Prepare the brief

The next component of a research plan is to create a brief or guide for your research sessions. The kind of brief you need will vary depending on your research method, but for moderated methods like user interviews, field studies, or focus groups, you’ll need a detailed guide and script. The brief is there to remind you which questions to ask and keep the sessions on track.

Your script should cover:

• Introduction: A short message you’ll say to participants before the session begins. This works as a starting point for conversations and helps set the tone for the meeting. If you’re testing without a moderator, you should also include an introductory message to explain what the research is about and the type of answers they should give (in terms of length and specificity).
• Interview questions: Include your list of questions you’ll ask participants during the sessions. These could be examples to help guide the interviews, specific pre-planned questions, or test tasks you’ll ask participants to perform during unmoderated sessions.
• Outro message: Outline what you'll say at the end of the session, including the next steps, asking participants if they are open to future research, and thanking them for their time. This can be a form you share at the end of asynchronous sessions.

It’s crucial you remember to ask participants for their consent. You should do this at the beginning of the test by asking if they’re okay with you recording the session. Use this space to lay out any compensation agreements as well. Then, ask again at the end of the session if they agree with you keeping the results and using the data for research purposes. If possible, explain exactly what you’ll do with their data. Double check and get your legal team’s sign-off on these forms.

7. Establish the timeline

Next in your plan, estimate how long the research project will take and when you should expect to review the findings. Even if not exact, determining an approximate timeline (e.g., two-three weeks) will enable you to manage stakeholders’ expectations of the process and results.

Many people believe UX research is a lengthy process, so they skip it. When you set up a timeline and get stakeholders aligned with it, you can debunk assumptions and put stakeholders’ minds at ease. Plus, if you’re using a product discovery tool like Maze, you can get answers to your tests within days.

8. Decide how you’ll present your findings

When it comes to sharing your findings with your team, presentation matters. You need to make a clear presentation and demonstrate how user insights will influence design and development. If you’ve conducted UX research in the past, share data that proves how implementing user insights has improved product adoption.

Examples of ways you can present your results include:

• A physical or digital PDF report with key statistics and takeaways
• An interactive online report of the individual research questions and their results
• A presentation explaining the results and your findings
• A digital whiteboard, like Miro, to display the results

In your plan, mention how you’ll share insights with the product team. For example, if you’re using Maze, you can start by emailing everyone the ready-to-share report and setting up a meeting with the team to identify how to bring those insights to life. This is key, because your research should be the guiding light for new products or updates, if you want to keep development user-centric. Taking care over how you present your findings will impact whether they’re taken seriously and implemented by other stakeholders.

Your UX research plan template: Free template + example

Whether you’re creating the plan yourself or delegating to your team, a clear UX research plan template cuts your prep time in half.

Find our customizable free UX research plan template here , and keep reading for a filled-in example.

Example: Improving user adoption of a project management tool called Flows

Now, let’s go through how to fill out this template and create a UX research plan with an example.

Executive summary:

Flows aims to increase user adoption and tool engagement by 30% within the next 12 months. Our B2B project management software has been on the market for 3 years and has 25,000 active users across various industries.

By researching the current product experience with existing users, we’ll learn what works and what doesn’t in order to make adjustments to the product and experience.

Research objectives:

Purpose of the plan and studies:.

The purpose is to gather actionable insights into user needs, behaviors, and challenges to inform updates that will drive increased adoption and engagement of 30% for the B2B project management tool within 12 months.

Target audience, sample size, scope, and demographics:

Expectations, deliverables, timings, and type of results:, research methodologies:.

*Some teams will take part in more than one research session.

Research analysis methods:

We are doing a mixed methods study.

User interviews are our primary method for gathering qualitative data, and will be analyzed using thematic analysis .

• Quantitative data will be pulled from usability tests to evaluate the effectiveness of our current design.
• Research set up and guidelines:
• Create baselines surveys to gauge current usage and pain points
• Develop interview/discussion guides and usability testing scenarios
• Pilot test materials with two teams
• User interviews: 60 mins, semi-structured; usability tests: 90 mins
• Findings will be presented in a research report for all stakeholders

Research scripts, questions, and samples:

User interview questions:

• What’s your experience with Flows?
• How does Flows fit into your workflow?
• What is your understanding of Flows’ features?
• What do you wish Flows could do that it currently doesn’t?

Usability test sample with Maze:

Cost estimations or budget requests/pricing:

Total estimated budget: $8,000

More free customizable templates for UX research

Whether you’re creating the plan yourself or are delegating this responsibility to your team, here are six research templates to get started:

• UX research plan template : This editable Miro research project plan example helps you brainstorm user and business-facing problems, objectives, and questions
• UX research brief : You need a clear brief before you conduct UX research—Milanote shares a template that will help you simplify the writing process
• User testing synthesis : Trello put together a sample board to organize user testing notes—you can use this as a guide, but change the titles to fit your UX research purposes
• Usability testing templates : At Maze, we’ve created multiple templates for conducting specific UX research methods—this list will help you create different remote usability tests
• Information architecture (IA) tests template : The way you organize the information in your website or app can improve or damage the user experience—use this template to run IA tests easily
• Feedback survey templates : Ask users anything through a survey, and use these templates to get creative and simplify creation

Everything you need to know about UX research plans

We all know that a robust plan is essential for conducting successful UX research. But, in case you want a quick refresher on what we’ve covered:

• Using a UX research strategy as a starting point will make your plan more likely to succeed
• Determine your research objectives before anything else
• Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Come up with clear personas so you can recruit and test a group of individuals that’s representative of your real end users
• Involve stakeholders from the beginning to get buy-in
• Be vocal about timelines, budget, and expected research findings
• Use the insights to power your product decisions and wow your users; building the solution they genuinely want and need

UX research can happen at any stage of the development lifecycle. When you build products with and for users, you need to include them continuously at various stages of the process.

It’s helpful to explore the need for continuous discovery in your UX research plan and look for a tool like Maze that simplifies the process for you. We’ll cover more about the different research methods and UX research tools in the upcoming chapters—ready to go?

Elevate your UX research workflow

Discover how Maze can streamline and operationalize your research plans to drive real product innovation while saving on costs.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between a UX research plan and a UX research strategy?

The difference between a UX research plan and a UX research strategy is that they cover different levels of scope and detail. A UX research plan is a document that guides individual user experience (UX) research projects. UX research plans are shared documents that everyone on the product team can and should be familiar with. A UX research strategy, on the other hand, outlines the high-level goals, expectations, and demographics of the organization’s approach to research.

What should you include in a user research plan?

Here’s what to include in a user research plan:

• Problem statement
• Research objectives
• Research methods
• Participants' demographics
• Recruitment plan
• User research brief
• Expected timeline
• How to present findings

How do you write a research plan for UX design?

Creating a research plan for user experience (UX) requires a clear problem statement and objectives, choosing the right research method, recruiting participants and briefing them, and establishing a timeline for your project. You'll also need to plan how you'll analyze and present your findings.

How do you plan a UX research roadmap?

To plan a UX research roadmap, start by identifying key business goals and user needs. Align research activities with product milestones to ensure timely insights. Prioritize research methods—like surveys, interviews, and usability tests—based on the project phase and objectives. Set clear timelines and allocate resources accordingly. Regularly update stakeholders on progress and integrate feedback to refine the roadmap continuously.

Generative Research: Definition, Methods, and Examples

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Writing an effective guide for a ux interview.

February 28, 2021 2021-02-28

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In This Article:

Introduction, step 1: write your research questions, step 2: brainstorm interview questions, step 3: broaden your questions, step 4: fill in for unaccounted research questions, step 5: arrange your questions, step 6: prepare additional probing and followup questions, step 7: pilot your guide.

In the discovery phase of product development, user interviews are often used to capture important information about users: their backgrounds, beliefs, motivations, desires, or needs. Typically, the interviews carried out at this stage are semistructured (referred to as “depth interviews” by market researchers) — they generally have a predefined structure, but also allow the interviewer the flexibility to follow up on significant statements made by participants.

In a semistructured interview, the interviewer uses an interview guide (also referred to as a discussion guide). Unlike an interview script — which is used in structured interviews — an interview guide can be used flexibly: interviewers can ask questions in any order they see fit, omit questions, or ask questions that are not in the guide.

A good interview guide paves the way for a deep, free-flowing conversation with participants. (Obviously, the way you conduct the interview will also be important, but that’s another article!) Interview guides should include a few concise, open-ended questions to encourage participants to tell their stories. These will be followed by carefully crafted, probing questions to uncover motivations or beliefs behind certain reported behaviors or utterances.

Constructing a good interview guide can be tricky and time-consuming. It’s not uncommon to spend a full day crafting one. However, it’s important to have one to ensure you get the most out of your interviews. Without an interview guide you run the risk of:

• Asking leading questions as you try to think of questions on the spot
• Not covering topics relevant to your research questions in each interview

Ultimately, without an interview guide, you are in danger of compromising the validity of your data. Here are some steps meant to help you create an interview guide if you’re new to this practice.

Sometimes the research questions are clear and obvious. However, sometimes they’re not. Maybe you’ve realized you need to speak to users because you don’t know anything about them. Good! But what do you want to find out from them? These are your research questions. Write these out first before working on your interview guide, as they will shape your interview questions. Below are some examples of research questions:

• What are users’ expectations in this situation?
• How do users make a decision in this situation?
• How have users managed to solve this problem in the past?
• What aspects of this product do users care most about, and why?

Next, note down all interview questions that come to mind. It doesn’t matter whether they are good or poor — you’ll deal with that later. You can use mind maps , digital whiteboards, or a simple list — whatever works for you! Sometimes, further research questions pop up here. That’s fine; add them to your list of research questions.

It’s typical after step 2 to have a long list of mostly closed questions. Those kinds of questions wouldn’t make for a good interview because they won’t allow for unanticipated stories and statements to emerge and can limit your ability to build rapport with the participant. (Rapport is important if you’re looking to gather accurate, in-depth information from your participants.)

Review your list of questions and ask yourself, for each interview question, is there a broader, more open-ended version of that question that you can ask instead?

For example, consider the following closed questions that could be asked in an interview with an employee.

• Do you work in an office?
• Is the work mostly desk-based or paper-based?
• Do you have to attend meetings during the workday?
• Do you work in a team?

The above questions could be answered by asking the participant to describe a typical day at work. It’s likely that in doing so, the participant may cover all or many of the above. If the participant has not covered everything, then some of these can be asked as follow-up questions.

Example questions, that prompt the user to recall a certain event and are similar to those used in the critical-incident method , are excellent for gathering stories and unanticipated statements. For instance, imagine you’re conducting an interview to learn about people’s experiences cooking at home. The following example questions provide the opportunity for participants to tell many different stories and give you a glimpse into their lives.

• Tell me about the last time you cooked at home.
• Tell me about a time where you cooked something new.
• Tell me about a time when you cooked something that turned out well.
• Tell me about a time when you cooked something that didn’t turn out as you hoped.
• Tell me about a time when you were thinking about cooking something but decided to get takeout instead?

Align each interview question to your research questions. If you have research questions that are not addressed by any of your interview questions, fill in the gap by crafting some more interview questions. Repeat step 3 if needed.

The interview guide can include your research questions. Some researchers like to remind themselves of the aims of the research by displaying these either at the top of the guide or alongside the interview questions.

To make the conversation flow in a logical order and seem natural think about the best order for your questions . For example, if you’re talking about an experience people have had, it makes sense to move in a chronological order. If the experience has set phases (such as discover , choose , purchas e, use , review ) that you might have documented in a user-journey map , service blueprint , or experience map then you may want to align your questions to these phases. That’s not to say you can’t depart from this order in the interview if you need to!

You should also think about preparing some warmup questions that are open-ended and easy to answer to build rapport at the beginning of your interview. For example, “Tell me a little about yourself” is a typical opening question which gets the participant talking. Any questions that require reflection should be featured later in your guide; introducing them too early could be overwhelming and you might get stereotypical responses, as participants haven’t had a chance to recall events, feelings, and form judgments.

Once you’ve ordered your questions, go through each one and prepare followup questions meant to provide you with additional detail and clarification , such as “Where were you when this happened?”, “When did that happen?”, “Tell me why you did that?”, and so on.

You can include probing questions , too, to help you to remember to ask them — for example, “Tell me more about that”, “Tell me why you felt that way”, “Why is that important to you?”

Piloting your guide will give you an idea of:

• Questions you should ask but aren’t yet included in your guide
• Questions that need rewording
• Whether the question order works
• Whether you will have time for all your questions

Recruit a pilot participant and give yourself enough time to make some changes. It’s okay to make updates to your guide throughout your interviews, but the point of piloting your guide is to fix any glaring issues before commencing research.

A guide will provide focus to your interviews and ensure that they are successful. Your interview guide should consist of broad, open-ended questions that allow participants to tell you about their experience in detail. These questions will be accompanied by many probing and followup questions, used to capture further details and gain clarification. You can download an example of an interview guide to refer to as you create your own interview guides.

Example Interview Guide (PDF)

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• October 22, 2021

UX Research for Beginners

UX research is a massive subject, so where do you start as a beginner? Right here, with this article! We’ve gathered everything you need to know to get going.

Shortcuts: Jump straight to

What is ux research.

Put simply, UX research is a discipline that studies the user experience of a product or service by investigating and observing how users interact with it. The goal is to define problems and find solutions that can be used to improve the product. 

UX research is far from a new profession, but it’s only become more mainstream in the last 10 years or so. The term user experience probably goes back to the 1990s and UX legend Don Norman, who worked at Apple as a User Experience Architect (yes, that’s the same Norman as in the great Nielsen Norman Group that he co-founded with Jakob Nielsen). You can read more about it in the articles Where UX comes from and A 100-year view of user experience —it’s interesting stuff!

Why is UX research important?

At an early stage of product development, the purpose of UX research is to find out if there is an interest in your idea. It’s so easy to make assumptions about what people out there like or need. As UXers like to repeat, “you are not your user”. If done well, UX research has the power to prevent nasty surprises that can wreck a startup or new product.

Once the product need has been validated, there are lots of benefits to making UX research an ongoing habit. It is used to investigate and test new features before they are released, but also to test and improve existing products. 

The focus for a UX researcher is to improve the user experience, but it has been well-documented that better UX can increase conversions . So it makes sense from a business perspective too . Still, UX research is far from being universally embraced. It can be hard to persuade the people in charge that it is worth the effort.

What does a UX researcher do?

A UX researcher tries to understand users’ needs and pain points . Based on research data and insights, they can then suggest improvements to the user experience. UX researchers spend a lot of time setting up user interviews, surveys and usability tests . They work closely with clients, designers, and other stakeholders and have direct contact with users and test participants. As you can tell, it’s a pretty social job where you interact a lot with people.

Here are examples of tasks you may be involved with as a UX researcher:

• Create time and budget estimates for research projects
• Hold workshops to understand research needs
• Map research needs and identify hypotheses to test
• Write research questions and select the best research method
• Recruit participants for testing
• Conduct tests and analyze the results
• Transform your conclusions into concrete insights
• Write research reports
• Present your findings to designers, developers, and other stakeholders
• Last but not least, a UX researcher always asks lots of questions

If your job title is UX designer rather than UX researcher, you will also create wireframes to illustrate your findings and revise user journeys. This brings me to the next point—what’s the difference between UX research and UX design?

Are UX research and UX design the same thing?

What’s the relation between UX research and UX design? If you have befriended any UX designers, you know that user research is part of their job. So what’s the difference? Is there a difference?

Well, it depends. In large corporations, there’s most likely a UX research team and a UX design team. They collaborate closely for sure, but would divide the tasks between them . The UX designer may come up with a research task and request the researcher to do it (there will often be a discussion here about the best method and other details). The UX designer can use the results to create wireframes or prototypes, or revise a current user flow in a design tool like Figma.

In smaller companies and startups, you may well be a UX designer and researcher baked into one .

Another difference is that a UX designer is more involved with information architecture and interaction design.

Do I need to do research as a UX writer?

Again, it depends! If you land a UX writing or content design job in a large company like Google, Uber, or Amazon, you will be able to reach out to the UX research team for guidance and to find the insights you need. In a startup, you may do research yourself and/or collaborate with the UX designer.

In any case, research is fundamental for UX writing. Even if you’re not responsible for doing it yourself, be sure to consult any relevant research that has been done by others , and suggest research that may be missing. The more you learn about UX research, the better you will become in your job as a UX writer.

It is also good to remember that UX writers and content designers have specific research needs . Insights about our users’ language help us make informed decisions about things like tone, voice, grammar, style, and word choice.

There are even research methods that are unique to UX writing and content design—see the conversation mining  example below!

User research related to language will come in handy when creating or revising a style guide or voice and tone, too.

Types of UX research

Quantitative and qualitative research.

One of the first things you learn when you get into UX research is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research.

Quantitative research is about the bigger picture . It’s based on large numbers of data and statistics and answers the question “what’s going on here?” Examples of quantitative research are user surveys and A/B tests . For digital products, some quantitative research may be the responsibility of an SEO expert or data analyst. 

Quantitative research doesn’t tell you why something happened, however. And this is why we also need qualitative research.

Qualitative research digs into personal experiences and opinions . By delving deep into what users think about a product or service, or finding out how they feel when they use it, the goal is to answer the question “why is this happening?” Examples of qualitative research include user interviews and usability tests .

Do you need both? Ideally yes, as they complement each other nicely. 

And which one should you start with? It depends! Quantitative research can be a good starting point to get a general idea of what’s going on. You can then follow up with qualitative research to get a deeper understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve. But if you’re working on a new product, you probably don’t have access to substantial quantitative data yet.

Attitudinal and behavioral research

It’s also common to distinguish between attitudinal and behavioral research. The basic difference is that attitudinal research listens to what users say (i.e. finds out how they feel about a product), and behavioral research observes what users do (i.e. finds out how they use a product).

Proactive and reactive research

One more important thing to keep in mind is the difference between proactive and reactive research. UX veteran Jared Spool knows a thing or two about this topic. He explains that while reactive UX research is more common, it makes much more sense to anticipate user concerns with proactive research . 

UX research methods

Card sorting.

Card sorting is used to arrange elements on a screen in the most logical and intuitive way. In brief, you create a bunch of cards with different categories or topics. Ask the participants to arrange the cards into groups and label them in a way that makes sense for them.

Competitor research

Whether you’re working on a new or established product, it’s really helpful to check out the competition. Not to copy what they do, but to decide how you’re going to distinguish yourself from them. What do they do well? What are they lacking? What’s your competitive advantage?

Usability testing

Usability testing means that you observe participants as they navigate through an interface or user flow. It’s common to ask them to talk their way through the task and comment on anything they find odd or difficult or unclear.

User and stakeholder interviews

Is there a better way to understand what people think and feel about a product than to sit down and talk to them? Probably not, as long as we’re aware of all the pitfalls: People are people, and in an interview situation we tend to reveal what we *think* we will do, not what we actually end up doing. It’s also crucial to avoid leading questions, which can be easier said than done.

Besides chatting with users, it can be really insightful to speak to other stakeholders. The customer service department is usually a goldmine for identifying issues users experience.

If you interview people in [small] groups, it’s often called a focus group .

Surveys are usually considered a quantitative research method, and they can be great for collecting data. But you can also include open-ended questions for a qualitative study.

A/B testing

With A/B tests you can use two versions of a screen for different sets of users. It’s then easy to see which version converts better than the other. Great for testing CTAs—just remember that an A/B test will never tell you how the users felt when they chose one button over another.

Personas are created to give a picture of your target audience. They often include details like a made-up name, picture, age, income, education, profession, hobbies, pain points, challenges and goals. The idea is that a detailed description will help you strike the right tone when writing copy.

It’s good to know that personas have had a bit of a bad rep recently. Some people even think that they can do more harm than good. There’s a risk that they reinforce static stereotypes about your ideal customers instead of saying something useful about the people that actually use your product.

An alternative is to work with so-called persona spectrums instead. Check out Microsoft’s Doug Kim’s article Kill your personas for more on the subject.

At the end of the day, the important thing is to develop deep empathy with your users!

Conversation mining

The idea behind conversation mining is to scan public forums, social media groups and online reviews to find out how people talk about your product or similar products. You can also make notes of words and phrases used in user interviews. 

By noting and wisely re-using the vocabulary they use, we can then create copy that is more likely to resonate with them .

It’s not just about finding good one-liners, though. It’s also a fab way to understand how users communicate in writing (tone, level of formality, use of emojis, etc.) plus their specific pain points and goals . As such, conversation mining can give our content strategy direction.

Take a look at conversation mining in practice in this article by Kevin Pichinte, a UX Writing Academy alumnus.

Cloze tests and readability checks

Cloze tests and readability checks are two ways to evaluate how people read your copy. They’re quite different: A text’s readability score shows things like structure (for example if you overuse the passive voice) and word choice (highlighting difficult words that have a simpler alternative). There are many great tools that can help you with that (for example the free Hemingway Editor ). A cloze test on the other hand checks if your copy is easy to understand . In other words, it tells you if people can easily grasp the meaning of your words.

Test participants are shown a text where some words have been removed and are asked to fill in the blanks .

Nielsen Norman Group recommends removing every 6th word of the text . If participants guess 60% or more right words on average, you can assume that the text is reasonably comprehensible. 

Tools UX researchers use

As you can imagine, there are tons of cool tools out there that help researchers map user behavior. Here are a few examples that come in handy when you’re starting out:

• Airtable for collecting and organizing your data. We’re so fond of this tool at the UX Writing Hub that we have a separate article about how to make the most of it for research—check it out: Getting started with UX research and Airtable  
• Typeform or SurveyMonkey for creating surveys
• Miro for remote workshops
• Hotjar and Google Analytics for heatmaps and statistics
• Whimsical , Miro , or Figma for wireframes and mockups
• Zoom for remote user testing
• Simon Says for creating transcriptions
• Platforms like UXtweak , usertesting.com and userzoom.com for finding participants and carrying out tests
• Optimal Sort for help with card sorting and other research tasks

Get more inspiration from this article that analyzes 25 research tools for product design teams .

Challenges with UX research

UX research is both an art and a science, and it can be pretty challenging. It’s a well-known fact that people who know that they are part of a research study will provide answers they *think* we want to hear rather than what spontaneously comes to mind. As this article from the Nielsen Norman Group says, what’s the first rule of usability research? Don’t listen to users . This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do research, only that we have to be very careful how we phrase our research questions and how we interpret research results.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when you start doing research:

• Where do you find participants?
• How do you know that your participants are relevant to your study?
• How do you avoid asking leading questions?
• What do you do if the people you’re interviewing are reluctant to talk?

Essential UX research resources

Just enough research by erika hall.

If you’re short on time, start with a recorded presentation! This one, for example: Erika Hall—Just enough research (YouTube)

Podcast episodes

How to plan research with Erika Hall The evolution of UX writing with Jared Spool Content prototyping and UX research with Steve Curran

3 insights on UX content testing Guide to user interviews (Nielsen Norman Group) Tips for writing interview questions (Nielsen Norman Group) The first rule of usability (Nielsen Norman Group) What proactive UX research looks like (Jared Spool) Undervaluing user research is a deadly disease (Jared Spool) Kill your personas (Doug Kim)

That’s it for today! Research is a crucial part of UX, whether it’s done by a dedicated researcher or by a UX designer or writer. We hope this article has given you a decent overview of the subject. 

Want to learn more about UX research?

Try out the most common UX research methods for yourself with our UX writing courses . If you’re brand new to the field and don’t know where to start, you can’t go wrong with our free UX writing course .

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23 Best User Experience Research Tools of 2024

14 min read

What if you could get into your user’s brain? Would you have a better understanding of how they interact with your product? You bet!

Unfortunately, that technology isn’t here yet, so UX research tools are the next best thing.

These tools can provide you with the qualitative and quantitative data you need to understand how your customer behaves in your product, so you can make the necessary changes to improve their experience.

This article will highlight 23 of the best UX research tools available in 2024.

• UX research tools help collect and analyze data on user interactions to improve product usability and satisfaction.
• Choose UX research tools with essential features , collaboration, reliable support , user-friendliness, scalability , integrations , and strong security.
• Userpilot enhances user experience through in-depth UX research, offering features to gather, analyze, and act on customer feedback.
• Typeform offers engaging, interactive survey tools that make collecting user feedback conversational and enjoyable.
• Qualtrics is known for its robust and versatile capabilities in collecting and analyzing feedback.
• Hotjar helps understand customer behavior and gather qualitative research to improve website user experience.
• Mixpanel is a top analytics platform known for powerful user analytics and detailed reporting on product usage.
• User Interviews simplifies recruiting participants and streamlines conducting user interviews and gathering user feedback .
• Sketch is a widely recognized design tool for creating wireframes and prototypes, known for its simplicity and efficiency.
• InVision is a powerful design platform known for robust wireframing and prototyping, enabling interactive and collaborative prototypes.
• Figma is a cloud-based design tool for collaborative features, real-time wireframing, and prototyping capabilities.
• UXPin is a comprehensive design tool for creating interactive wireframes and prototypes, offering a seamless design-to-development workflow.
• Mockflow is a versatile design tool for wireframing and prototyping, offering an intuitive platform for designing user interfaces.
• UIzard is an innovative design tool that enhances wireframing and prototyping with AI-powered features for accessibility and efficiency.
• Maze is a customer testing platform that gathers actionable insights by rapidly tree-testing designs and prototypes with real users.
• Userlytics is a user testing platform offering deep insights into customer behavior through usability testing with global participants.
• Lyssna is a customer testing platform providing in-depth insights through comprehensive feedback to understand customer behavior and improve usability.
• Lookback is a user research platform capturing in-depth insights through real-time and recorded sessions, enhancing understanding of user interactions and usability issues.
• UserTesting is a leading platform for on-demand user insights . It enables quick, actionable feedback on real user experiences via tactics like tree testing.
• Useberry is a customer testing platform offering intuitive insights through prototype testing and feedback, helping teams quickly validate ideas .
• Notion combines note-taking, project management, and collaboration features to unify your team’s work.
• Airtable is a collaboration platform merging database features with spreadsheets for powerful team collaboration and project management.
• Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that enables teams to brainstorm, plan, and work visually.
• Slack is a leading communication platform that facilitates team collaboration through real-time messaging, file sharing, and integrations to enhance productivity.
• Asana is a project management tool known for its user-friendly interface and robust features. It helps teams organize, track, and manage work.
• If you want to find out more about how Userpilot can help you with your UX research, book a demo now !

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What is a user research tool?

A user research tool is a platform that helps you understand how users interact with your product.

These tools allow you to collect data, analyze behaviors , and gather insights to improve the user experience.

By using UX tools and conducting thorough user research , you can make informed decisions that enhance usability and satisfaction.

How to choose the right user experience research tools?

Choosing the right UX research method and tools is crucial for improving your product. Here are some factors to consider:

• Necessary features : Look for tools that offer essential features like user testing, heatmaps, and surveys. These features help you gather valuable insights and improve the user experience effectively.
• Collaboration : Your tool should support collaboration among team members. This ensures everyone can share insights and contribute to the UX research process , making it more efficient and comprehensive.
• Ease of use : A user-friendly tool is vital for smooth operation. It should be intuitive , so all team members can use it without extensive training.
• Customer support : Good customer support is crucial. Ensure the tool offers reliable end-user support to assist with any issues or questions.
• Scalability : Choose a tool that can grow with your business. It should be able to handle increased data and user load as your needs expand.
• Integrations : Ensure the tool integrates well with other software you use. This helps streamline your workflow and improves efficiency.
• Security : Security is essential for protecting user data. Look for tools with strong security measures, such as SOC 2 Type 2 certification, to protect data.

23 best UX research tools of 2024

To help you choose the right tools for improving your user experience, we’ve compiled a list of the 23 best UX research tools of 2024. These tools offer various features to help you understand and enhance how users interact with your product.

Tools for user research

Such tools help you gather user research on how your users interact with your product. This stage involves various user research methods, such as in-app surveys and user interviews, to understand user needs, preferences, and behaviors.

1. Userpilot

Userpilot is a powerful tool designed to enhance user experience through in-depth UX research. It offers a range of features that make gathering, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback easier.

• User feedback surveys for quantitative and qualitative research : Conduct surveys that can be localized for global segments to get relevant insights from different regions.
• Recruiting participants for interviews : Userpilot allows you to segment the right users and invite them to participate in interviews through modals or surveys. One UX researcher witnessed 4X more response rates than email invites when inviting users in-app through Userpilot .
• Measuring user behavior data to identify patterns and trends : Userpilot lets you analyze user behavior data using funnel, path, retention, trend , and heat map analyses. These tools help you identify patterns and trends to improve the user experience.

• Visualizing quantitative data through dashboards : Userpilot offers premade dashboards and the ability to create custom ones, making it easy to visualize quantitative data. These dashboards can be easily shared with stakeholders to keep everyone informed and aligned.

2. Typeform

Typeform is a UX research company known for its engaging and interactive survey tools that transform how you collect customer feedback. Their platform is designed to make surveys conversational and enjoyable for users.

Here are its top features:

• User surveys : Create interactive surveys that feel like conversations. Hence, improving response rates and data quality.
• Customizable templates : Use various templates to quickly design surveys tailored to your needs.
• Analytics and reporting : Access detailed analytics to understand user responses and gather insights.

3. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a leading provider of advanced survey and UX research features. These tools are widely used for collecting and analyzing customer feedback. Their platform is known for its robust and versatile research methods.

• Customer feedback surveys : Conduct detailed surveys to gather valuable customer insights and improve user experience.
• Concept testing : Test new product ideas and concepts to understand user preferences and potential success.
• Advanced survey logic : Design complex surveys with branching logic and conditional questions.

Hotjar is a popular UX research tool for understanding customer behavior and gathering qualitative research. It provides insights into how users interact with your website, helping you improve the overall user experience .

• Heatmap analysis : Visualize user interactions on your site to see where they click, scroll, and spend the most time.
• Session recordings : Watch recordings of real user sessions to understand their navigation patterns and identify pain points .
• Feedback polls : Collect instant feedback from users directly on your website.

5. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a leading analytics platform that helps you understand customer behavior and measure product usage. It is renowned for its powerful user analytics and detailed reporting capabilities.

• User analytics : Track and analyze user interactions in real time to gain insights into customer behavior.
• Custom reports : Create detailed reports to visualize user data and identify trends and patterns.
• Integrations : Easily integrate with other tools and platforms to streamline data collection and analysis.

6. User Interviews

User Interviews is a platform that simplifies the research process of recruiting participants. It streamlines how you conduct interviews and online surveys and gather user feedback .

• Participant recruiting : Easily recruit the right research participants for your UX research studies.
• Automated scheduling : Simplify the research process of scheduling interviews with automated tools.
• Surveys : Create and distribute surveys to collect detailed user research and feedback.

Tools for wireframing and prototyping

Wireframing and prototyping tools are essential for designing the structure and functionality of your product before development begins.

This stage involves creating visual blueprints (wireframes) and interactive models (prototypes) to test and refine ideas . These tools help you visualize the user interface, test user flows, and gather feedback early in the design process, ensuring a more user-friendly final product.

Sketch is a popular design tool for creating wireframes and prototypes . It is widely recognized for its simplicity and efficiency in the design process and for its usefulness in UX research.

• Vector editing : Easily create and edit vector graphics, perfect for detailed wireframes.
• Symbols and reusability : Create reusable design elements (symbols) to maintain consistency across your designs.
• Prototyping : Build interactive product prototypes to test user flows and interactions.
• Collaboration : Share designs and prototypes with team members for feedback and reviews.

8. InVision

InVision is a powerful design UX research tool known for its robust wireframing and prototyping capabilities. It helps designers create interactive and collaborative prototypes.

• Interactive prototypes : Create clickable and interactive prototypes to simulate user experiences.
• Wireframing : Design detailed wireframes to outline the structure of your product.
• Collaboration tools : Share prototypes with team members and stakeholders for real-time feedback and collaboration.
• Version control : Keep track of design changes and maintain version control throughout the design process.

Figma is a cloud-based design tool that excels in wireframing and prototyping . It’s known for its collaborative features and real-time design capabilities.

• Real-time collaboration : Work simultaneously with team members on the same design, perfect for remote teams.
• Wireframing : Create detailed and interactive wireframes to visualize the structure of your product.
• Prototyping : Build interactive prototypes to test user flows and gather feedback.
• Design systems : Maintain consistency with reusable components and design systems.

UXPin is a comprehensive UX research tool that creates interactive wireframes and prototypes, offering a seamless design-to-development workflow.

• Interactive prototypes : Build high-fidelity prototypes with advanced interactions and animations.
• Wireframing : Design detailed wireframes to map out the structure and flow of your product.
• Design systems : Create and manage design systems to ensure consistency across projects.
• Code components : Integrate live code components into your designs for more realistic prototypes.

11. Mockflow

Mockflow is a versatile design UX research tool that specializes in wireframing and prototyping. It provides an intuitive platform for designing user interfaces.

• Wireframing : Create detailed wireframes to visualize the layout and structure of your product.
• Prototyping : Build interactive prototypes to test user flows and gather feedback .
• Component libraries : Access a vast library of pre-built components to speed up your design process.
• Collaboration : Share designs with team members for real-time collaboration and feedback.

UIzard is an innovative UX research tool that makes wireframing and prototyping accessible and efficient through AI-powered features.

• AI-generated wireframes : Quickly convert sketches into editable wireframes using AI technology.
• Prototyping : Create interactive prototypes to test and refine user flows.
• Design templates : Utilize pre-made templates to jumpstart your design process.
• Collaboration : Share projects with team members for real-time feedback and collaboration.

Tools for user testing

User testing tools are essential for evaluating how real users interact with your product . This stage involves observing and analyzing customer behavior to identify usability issues and areas for improvement.

Using the research methods these tools offer, you can gather direct feedback, conduct A/B testing , and run usability tests to ensure your product meets user needs and expectations.

Maze is a customer testing platform that helps you gather actionable insights by tree testing with real users. It simplifies the process of validating designs and prototypes through rapid testing.

• Rapid testing : Set up and conduct user tests to gather feedback quickly.
• Usability testing : Evaluate how users interact with your product to identify usability issues via tree testing.
• A/B testing : Compare different versions of your designs to see which performs better.
• In-depth analytics : Access detailed reports and analytics to understand user behavior and test results.

14. Userlytics

Userlytics is a customer testing platform that provides deep insights into customer behavior through usability testing. It enables you to conduct tests with users worldwide.

• Remote usability testing : Conduct usability tests with participants globally, observing their real-time interactions.
• Multi-device testing : Test on various devices, including desktop, mobile, and tablet, to ensure a consistent user experience.
• Advanced targeting : Recruit specific user demographics to get relevant and accurate feedback.
• In-depth analytics : Access detailed metrics and video recordings to analyze customer behavior and identify usability issues.

Lyssna is a customer testing platform that focuses on providing in-depth insights through comprehensive customer feedback. It helps you understand customer behavior and improve product usability.

• Remote usability testing : Conduct user tests remotely to gather feedback from diverse user groups.
• Session recordings : Record user sessions to observe interactions and identify usability issues.
• Surveys and feedback forms : Collect detailed customer feedback through customized surveys and forms.
• Behavior analytics : Analyze user behavior with advanced analytics to gain insights into user experience .

16. Lookback

Lookback is a UX research and testing platform that captures in-depth insights through real-time and recorded user sessions. It facilitates a better understanding of user interactions and usability issues.

• Live user testing : Conduct live user tests with real-time observation and interaction.
• Session recordings : Record and replay user sessions to analyze behaviors and identify usability problems.
• Remote testing : Perform usability testing with participants from anywhere in the world.
• Collaborative features : Invite team members to observe and collaborate during live sessions.
• In-session note-taking : Take notes and timestamp observations during live sessions for easy reference.

17. UserTesting

UserTesting is a leading platform for on-demand user insights , enabling companies to understand how real users experience their products. It helps you gather actionable feedback quickly.

• Live conversations : Engage with users in real-time to observe their interactions and gather immediate feedback.
• Video feedback : Receive video recordings of users navigating your product, providing valuable insights into their behavior.
• Targeted demographics : Recruit users based on specific criteria to ensure relevant and accurate feedback.
• Usability testing : Conduct comprehensive usability tests to identify pain points and improve the user experience via tree testing.
• Customizable tests : Design and deploy tests tailored to your research needs and objectives.

18. Useberry

Useberry is a customer testing platform that provides intuitive and actionable insights through prototype testing and customer feedback. It helps designers and product teams validate their ideas quickly.

• Prototype testing : Test interactive prototypes to gather customer feedback before development.
• Task scenarios : Create specific tasks for users to complete, helping you identify usability issues.
• Heatmaps : Visualize user interactions with heatmaps to see where users click, scroll, and spend the most time.
• Analytics and reports : Access detailed analytics and reports to understand customer behavior and test results.
• Remote testing : Conduct user tests remotely to reach a diverse user base.

Tools for collaboration

Collaboration tools are essential for teams to work together efficiently and effectively, especially in design and development projects. These tools facilitate communication, project management , and file sharing among team members, regardless of location.

This section includes platforms for team communication, project tracking, and document collaboration, and each contains a great user research method.

Notion is a versatile collaboration tool designed to organize your team’s work in one place. It combines note-taking, project management, and collaboration features into a single platform.

• Workspace collaboration : Share documents, notes, and projects with your team in real-time.
• Task management : Organize tasks and projects with to-do lists, kanban boards, and calendars.
• Document collaboration : Create and edit documents together with real-time updates and comments.
• Integrations : Connect with other tools like Slack , Google Drive, and Trello to streamline your workflow.
• Customizable templates : Use and create templates to standardize processes and save time.

20. Airtable

Airtable is a collaboration platform that combines a database’s features with a spreadsheet’s simplicity, making it a powerful tool for team collaboration and project management.

• Customizable workspaces : Create tailored workspaces to organize and manage projects according to your team’s needs.
• Real-time collaboration : Share and edit databases with team members in real-time, ensuring everyone stays updated.
• Views and filtering : Use grid, calendar, kanban, and gallery views to visualize your data in various ways.
• Integrations : Seamlessly integrate with popular tools like Slack, Google Drive, and Zapier to enhance your workflow.
• Templates : Access a wide range of templates to quickly set up projects and processes.

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform designed to help teams brainstorm, plan, and work together visually. It is widely used for its interactive and engaging collaboration features.

• Real-time collaboration : Progress on work simultaneously with team members on a shared canvas, providing instant feedback and updates.
• Visual brainstorming : Use digital sticky notes, diagrams, and drawing tools to brainstorm and organize ideas .
• Templates : To get started quickly, access a variety of pre-built templates for workflows, mind maps, and project planning.
• Integrations : Connect with tools like Slack, Trello, and Google Drive to streamline your collaboration processes.
• Interactive workshops : Conduct engaging virtual workshops and meetings with built-in facilitation tools.

Slack is a leading communication platform that facilitates team collaboration through real-time messaging, file sharing, and integrations. It streamlines communication and enhances team productivity.

• Channels : Create dedicated channels for different projects, teams, or topics to keep conversations organized.
• Direct messaging : Communicate instantly with team members through private messages.
• File sharing : Easily share documents, images, and other files within conversations.
• Integrations : Connect with numerous apps and services like Google Drive, Trello, and Asana to centralize your workflow.
• Searchable history : Search past conversations and files to find important information quickly.

Asana is a project management and collaboration SaaS tool designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. It is known for its user-friendly interface and robust feature set.

• Task management : Create, assign, and track tasks to ensure everyone knows their responsibilities and deadlines.
• Project timelines : Visualize project timelines with Gantt charts to keep track of progress and dependencies.
• Team collaboration : Collaborate with team members by sharing updates, attaching files, and commenting on tasks.
• Custom workflows : Customize workflows to fit your team’s needs and processes.
• Integrations : Integrate with tools like Slack, Google Drive, and Microsoft Teams to streamline your workflow.

Even using a handful of these tools will provide you with UX research insights like getting inside your customer’s head. These tools are essential if you want to improve your product and craft the best possible experience so your customers have the best experience, ultimately leading to retaining more customers.

If you want help getting started with your UX research, Userpilot can help. It lets you collect customer feedback, assist you in gathering customers for interviews, and analyze customer behavior to identify patterns and trends. Find out more by booking a Userpilot demo now .

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A Definitive Guide on How To Use Figma

• Written by John Terra
• Updated on March 12, 2024

If a business wants people to use their application or software or visit and interact with their website, it must have an appealing, easy-to-use interface. The user interface is the medium that delivers the all-important first impression.

And the way to have an excellent interface is to design one, and the easiest way to design one is to have access to a great design tool.

That’s why we’re here today. This article highlights Figma, including how it works, how to use Figma for web design, and how to utilize it to create different elements. We’ll also share online UI UX training that provides practical experience with this powerful design tool.

So, before we show you how to use Figma for UI design, let’s first get acquainted with it.

What is Figma?

Figma is a popular collaborative interface design tool that enables you to create designs for web and mobile interfaces or other sorts of designs you can think of. Figma is designed as a collaboration tool for individuals and teams to develop and share high-quality work.

You can use Figma to design interfaces and animate transitions, prototype interactions, animate vectors with timeline-based animations, add multiple artboards, add live previews during editing (and publish your changes), and add commenting and feedback features, all in real-time.

Now, let’s get into how to use Figma.

Also Read: A 2024 Guide to UX UI Design Companies

How Do You Use Figma?

Before you start using Figma to design a website or an app, you must set up an account. Activate your web browser and visit Figma’s home page. Click “sign up” in the page’s upper right corner.

Now, enter your chosen e-mail address, create your password and enter your name when asked to. After clicking “create account,” you must confirm your e-mail before entering Figma.

Choose the starter (free) or professional (paid) plan and enter your team name. You can just enter your own name if you want. The page will then ask you if you’re going to create designs with the standard Figma app or if you wish to use FigJam, the online whiteboarding tool. If you click “I’ll get started on my own,” it will take you straight to Figma’s main dashboard.

Click “team project” under your selected team name on the page’s left-hand navigation bar. This action takes you to the project’s page. Click “new design file” in the upper left corner to create your first design. If you’re using the latter, this will open a new tab in the upper nav bar of your browser’s window or Figma’s desktop app. You can easily click back to the home menu at any point.

You will see a large, gray area in your blank design screen; this is your canvas, and it’s the background for everything you subsequently do, things like:

• Importing desired images any way you want
• Adding geometric shapes
• Drawing with the pencil tool
• Adding multiple frames, allowing you to make multiple designs on one canvas
• Combining layers with Groups and Frames
• Creating vector networks
• Using the Text tool to make the designs textual as well as visual
• Using object masks to control what’s hidden and what’s visible
• Using the Arc and Ellipse tools to change shapes
• Using Boolean operations to combine shape layers using whatever method you want

That was a brief overview of how to get started with Figma. Now, let’s look at how to use Figma for UI design.

How To Use Figma for UI Design

Figma is a web-based user interface creation tool that features an intuitive interface and a library of components, including shapes, symbols, and components that cover most of your design needs. And if you can’t find what you want in Figma’s library, you can upload your designs and place them inside the prototype. You can even search through the diverse resources and plugins of the design community to help make the design process more manageable.

Figma’s interface revolves around real-time collaboration, so it’s perfect for keeping all your design team members on the same page. Additionally, Figma uses vector graphics instead of pixels, so you can resize items without sacrificing quality.

Let’s continue learning how to use Figma by exploring website wireframe creation.

How to Create Website Wireframes

If you’re learning to use Figma for web design, you must understand how to create website wireframes. Website wireframes map out your new website design’s main features and navigation. They give an idea of the site’s functionality before considering visual design elements like content or color schemes. Wireframes are also called screen blueprints and page schematics. You’re visually mapping out your website’s navigation and features.

The simplest way to begin making wireframes is by downloading Figma’s free wireframe kits. You will find templates for page features, buttons and cards, hero images, web social posts, footers, and more. But if you prefer the more “hands-on” approach, you can use Figma’s built-in drawing and shaping tools and create your wireframes.

Also Read: Top UX Designer Interview Questions and Answers for Freshers and Experienced in 2024

How to Add Images in Figma

Adding images is easy. You can place images from an online source or your own machine on your page. Images are vital to website design, particularly for the hero section. Here’s how you do it:

• Drag and drop the desired image from your local computer or import an image from the shapes image upload option
• Resize and place the image directly on the design

How to Create Shapes in Figma

Why limit yourself to just standard images? Use Figma’s shapes and elements to create circles, lines, squares and more. For example, here’s how to make a square. Just follow these easy steps:

• Select the Square Shape tool
• Create the square
• Shape and size it

How to Add Text to Your Design in Figma

To place text in your design, choose the text tool and position the text on the page. The font defaults to Roboto, but you can easily change the font family, size, and color at any point.

• Select the Text tool
• Add “About” text at the beginning of the navigation
• Ensure it’s rendered in your desired color, size, and font

How to Create Groups and Label Elements in Figma

If you have multiple layers in Figma, it can get confusing. Label all your elements as soon as you create them to avoid confusion. Consider grouping different shapes and sections with labels like “Navbar” or “Initial Hero Background.”

• Pick your element(s), right-click on the group, or press Ctrl + G
• Name your group
• To improve readability, place groups inside groups for each page section once your page gets too large

What is a Prototype?

Prototypes in website design are interactive web page designs where you can click on buttons, hover over links, etc. You can use Figma prototypes to preview exactly how a mobile app will look and work on a given device.

Figma’s website has detailed tutorials that show how to create prototypes.

Also Read: How to Conduct Usability Testing for UI/UX Design

How to Use Figma Offline

Although Figma is a browser-based program, it can still be used offline. The only difference is that you have access to every feature. To start, connect to the Internet. Yes, to work offline, you first need to get online! Don’t worry; it will all make sense eventually.

Once you’re online, open the file you wish to work on. Log off from the Internet. Any changes you make to your file offline will be stored and synced when you reconnect to the Internet. This save function happens whether you’re using Figma’s desktop app or on your browser.

While you’re offline, you will be unable to do these things:

• Use Figma’s file browser
• Create new files
• Open files other than the ones you currently have open
• Search for or insert instances or components from libraries
• Install new plugins or run Internet-dependent plugins

However, you still can do things like:

• Create frames, shapes, vector networks and similar items
• Insert images you already saved to your computer
• Modify each layer’s properties
• Run plugins that don’t depend on the Internet
• Save your design files to your computer’s hard drive

How to Install Figma Plugins

If you discover that Figma doesn’t have a particular functionality or feature, browse through the plugin library. There’s a strong chance that someone created a plugin that does exactly what you hoped for.

To search for plugins while working on your design, right-click the canvas and choose “browse plugins in community.” Doing this will open a separate tab where you can browse plugins. You will find that there’s a plugin for just about everything.

Once you find the plugin you want, click the “install” button. This button is located to the right of each listed plugin in the Figma website community section.

Do You Want to Master UI and UX?

Figma is a great user interface design resource, but do you know what compliments it perfectly? By acquiring a solid set of UI UX design skills! This UI UX bootcamp will teach you the skills needed to help you achieve better design results and even start an exciting career as a UI designer.

Glassdoor.com shows UI designers earning an average annual salary of $91,195, with a potential boost of $98,988 when factoring in bonuses.

The world needs more apps, web pages, and professionals to design them! Check out this online bootcamp to learn how to use Figma and much more.

You might also like to read:

Ux designer resume writing guide with template, how to learn ui ux design: a beginner’s guide.

The Importance of UI UX in Web Design

UI/UX Design Trends for 2024

What is a UI Developer? A Comprehensive Guide

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But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

• handwriting

AI-assisted writing is quietly booming in academic journals. Here’s why that’s OK

Lecturer in Bioethics, Monash University & Honorary fellow, Melbourne Law School, Monash University

Disclosure statement

Julian Koplin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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If you search Google Scholar for the phrase “ as an AI language model ”, you’ll find plenty of AI research literature and also some rather suspicious results. For example, one paper on agricultural technology says:

As an AI language model, I don’t have direct access to current research articles or studies. However, I can provide you with an overview of some recent trends and advancements …

Obvious gaffes like this aren’t the only signs that researchers are increasingly turning to generative AI tools when writing up their research. A recent study examined the frequency of certain words in academic writing (such as “commendable”, “meticulously” and “intricate”), and found they became far more common after the launch of ChatGPT – so much so that 1% of all journal articles published in 2023 may have contained AI-generated text.

(Why do AI models overuse these words? There is speculation it’s because they are more common in English as spoken in Nigeria, where key elements of model training often occur.)

The aforementioned study also looks at preliminary data from 2024, which indicates that AI writing assistance is only becoming more common. Is this a crisis for modern scholarship, or a boon for academic productivity?

Who should take credit for AI writing?

Many people are worried by the use of AI in academic papers. Indeed, the practice has been described as “ contaminating ” scholarly literature.

Some argue that using AI output amounts to plagiarism. If your ideas are copy-pasted from ChatGPT, it is questionable whether you really deserve credit for them.

But there are important differences between “plagiarising” text authored by humans and text authored by AI. Those who plagiarise humans’ work receive credit for ideas that ought to have gone to the original author.

By contrast, it is debatable whether AI systems like ChatGPT can have ideas, let alone deserve credit for them. An AI tool is more like your phone’s autocomplete function than a human researcher.

The question of bias

Another worry is that AI outputs might be biased in ways that could seep into the scholarly record. Infamously, older language models tended to portray people who are female, black and/or gay in distinctly unflattering ways, compared with people who are male, white and/or straight.

This kind of bias is less pronounced in the current version of ChatGPT.

However, other studies have found a different kind of bias in ChatGPT and other large language models : a tendency to reflect a left-liberal political ideology.

Any such bias could subtly distort scholarly writing produced using these tools.

The hallucination problem

The most serious worry relates to a well-known limitation of generative AI systems: that they often make serious mistakes.

For example, when I asked ChatGPT-4 to generate an ASCII image of a mushroom, it provided me with the following output.

It then confidently told me I could use this image of a “mushroom” for my own purposes.

These kinds of overconfident mistakes have been referred to as “ AI hallucinations ” and “ AI bullshit ”. While it is easy to spot that the above ASCII image looks nothing like a mushroom (and quite a bit like a snail), it may be much harder to identify any mistakes ChatGPT makes when surveying scientific literature or describing the state of a philosophical debate.

Unlike (most) humans, AI systems are fundamentally unconcerned with the truth of what they say. If used carelessly, their hallucinations could corrupt the scholarly record.

Should AI-produced text be banned?

One response to the rise of text generators has been to ban them outright. For example, Science – one of the world’s most influential academic journals – disallows any use of AI-generated text .

I see two problems with this approach.

The first problem is a practical one: current tools for detecting AI-generated text are highly unreliable. This includes the detector created by ChatGPT’s own developers, which was taken offline after it was found to have only a 26% accuracy rate (and a 9% false positive rate ). Humans also make mistakes when assessing whether something was written by AI.

It is also possible to circumvent AI text detectors. Online communities are actively exploring how to prompt ChatGPT in ways that allow the user to evade detection. Human users can also superficially rewrite AI outputs, effectively scrubbing away the traces of AI (like its overuse of the words “commendable”, “meticulously” and “intricate”).

The second problem is that banning generative AI outright prevents us from realising these technologies’ benefits. Used well, generative AI can boost academic productivity by streamlining the writing process. In this way, it could help further human knowledge. Ideally, we should try to reap these benefits while avoiding the problems.

The problem is poor quality control, not AI

The most serious problem with AI is the risk of introducing unnoticed errors, leading to sloppy scholarship. Instead of banning AI, we should try to ensure that mistaken, implausible or biased claims cannot make it onto the academic record.

After all, humans can also produce writing with serious errors, and mechanisms such as peer review often fail to prevent its publication.

We need to get better at ensuring academic papers are free from serious mistakes, regardless of whether these mistakes are caused by careless use of AI or sloppy human scholarship. Not only is this more achievable than policing AI usage, it will improve the standards of academic research as a whole.

This would be (as ChatGPT might say) a commendable and meticulously intricate solution.

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• Hallucinations
• Scholarly publishing
• Academic writing
• Large language models
• Generative AI

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Research: Negotiating Is Unlikely to Jeopardize Your Job Offer

• Einav Hart,
• Julia Bear,
• Zhiying (Bella) Ren

A series of seven studies found that candidates have more power than they assume.

Job seekers worry about negotiating an offer for many reasons, including the worst-case scenario that the offer will be rescinded. Across a series of seven studies, researchers found that these fears are consistently exaggerated: Candidates think they are much more likely to jeopardize a deal than managers report they are. This fear can lead candidates to avoid negotiating altogether. The authors explore two reasons driving this fear and offer research-backed advice on how anxious candidates can approach job negotiations.

Imagine that you just received a job offer for a position you are excited about. Now what? You might consider negotiating for a higher salary, job flexibility, or other benefits , but you’re apprehensive. You can’t help thinking: What if I don’t get what I ask for? Or, in the worst-case scenario, what if the hiring manager decides to withdraw the offer?

• Einav Hart is an assistant professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, and a visiting scholar at the Wharton School. Her research interests include conflict management, negotiations, and organizational behavior.
• Julia Bear is a professor of organizational behavior at the College of Business at Stony Brook University (SUNY). Her research interests include the influence of gender on negotiation, as well as understanding gender gaps in organizations more broadly.
• Zhiying (Bella) Ren is a doctoral student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on conversational dynamics in organizations and negotiations.

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