We publish community guidelines, learnings, insights and practical tips to help you do good user research. This is for researchers and teams.
Guidance and articles
For researchers
What makes good user research and how to apply this to your work, with principles from our research project across the industry.
Principles of good user research
In progress
Tips for keeping people safe during research
Practical things to consider to protect participants and researchers at each stage of the research process.
In progress
Learnings from accessibility testing
Recent learnings from recruiting, facilitating and analysing research with people who have access needs.
In progress
Guidance and articles
For teams
Principles you can use to evaluate a website and make sure it works for the people using it (e.g. users).
What makes a good website
In progress
Information Architecture: What is it and why is it important?
The structure and foundations of your website and why it’s important to get this right.
In progress
How to approach testing your website with users to discovery how to improve the user experience
Testing your website
In progress
Principles of Good User Research
Good Research is…
Ethical research means considering the moral implications of research and taking care of the welfare and well-being of all people before, during and after sessions.
Research that’s ethical gives people freedom and choice to take part, respects privacy and does not cause harm or put people at risk. This includes participants, researchers and the team.
We can be more ethical by:
Collecting informed consent upfront, before booking people in
Not having observers in the research session itself
Debriefing at the end of every session, with researcher and the team
💡 Examples of ethical research
⚙️ Tools to help you do ethical research
Ethical
2. Rigorous
Rigorous research means being thorough, considered and appropriate in our research methodology and approach.
Research that’s rigorous applies the appropriate methods and sample size to answer the research objectives; so that we can trust the quality of research and rely on it to make evidence-based decisions.
We can be more rigorous by:
Combining our methods - not relying on one method to tell us everything
Peer reviewing research plans
Adopting good practice in our interview questions
💡 Examples of rigour in research
⚙️ Tools to help you do rigorous research
3. Inclusive
Inclusive research is making sure we value and include people with different characteristics in our research and that everyone can access research sessions, regardless of their needs.
Research that’s inclusive includes people from minority groups and adapts the research approach to work for everyone, equally.
We can be more inclusive by:
Giving participants the choice on how they’d like to take part
Making sure we include a good mix of participants from different demographics, prioritising those with access needs and from minority groups
Adapting consent materials to suit different needs
💡 Examples of inclusive research
⚙️ Tools to help you do inclusive research
4. Managing bias
Managing bias in research means being aware of the different biases in research and putting actions in place to avoid or minimise them
Bias exists in all research to some extent and there are many different types. Bias can unintentionally affect the research outcome to be misleading, distort the findings or lead to false conclusions. This relates to rigour, ethics and inclusion principles too.
We can manage bias in our research by:
Familiarising with types of bias during research planning and putting actions in place to minimise each of them
Peer review and observation - encouraging open and honest feedback from fellow researchers and designers
Noting down any particular assumptions or anticipated findings upfront and an ‘ice-box’ for any ideas
💡 Examples of bias in research
⚙️ Tools to help you manage bias research
5. Actionable
Actionable research means communicating research so that something happens with it, making sure findings land and have impact
Research that’s actionable is easy for teams to digest and turn into something that impacts the design of the product or service. This can be difficult to do, depending on the context and how the research was set up.
We can make our research more actionable by:
Taking time to understand the needs of the team we are working with and our stakeholders - eg. their needs, fears, priorities, any constraints, so we can adapt our approach and communication style
Working with designers, content, product managers or developers to translate research findings into ideas we can explore and test
Quality over quantity in our research reports - storytelling and measuring different ways of making findings more digestible to teams
💡 Examples of actionable research
⚙️ Tools to help you make your research actionable
We are adding more to this list based on the findings - collaborative, transparent, open to challenge and efficient.
Share your thoughts?
Do you have feedback or suggestions on the principles of good user research?
Please get in touch to share them with us below
