UX 201: Intro to User Research

Learn how to understand your website audience's needs through user research.

There are lots of steps in creating a website, but before designs are put to paper or code, you have to know your audience. In this class, we'll focus in on how you can research and interview potential users, and create content that is direct and meaningful to your audience.

Before you can create a website, you must clarify who your users are and what they need. With user research, you and your team will be able discover what your target audience desires and expects from you -- so you can build a successful product for your customers.

User research will also be able to provide data for any design decisions made throughout the project, hereby helping you tackle the “If I were the user…” comment from others on your project team because we are not our users.

This class is for anyone who is interested in exploring user research techniques and diving deeper into the user experience design process. All technology specialties are welcome.

In this course we will cover:

• What user research is and why it is important and valuable
• How is user research different from usability testing
• How to plan a research study
• Types of user research techniques, focusing primarily on interviewing
• How to write interview questions
• How to fit user research into your process
• Getting buy-in from your colleagues and clients

Prerequisites:

We recommend Intro to User Experience (UX) as a prerequisite to this course. Otherwise a baseline understanding of user experience (UX) principles is recommended, but not required.

About the teacher:

Alicia Raciti is a User Experience Designer based in Philadelphia. She transitioned from music school student to UX designer in the middle of her collegiate career. Now, she specializes in UX design for international business and the complex problems of enterprise systems. Previously an Information Architect at Vanguard and UX Strategist at The Archer Group, she is now a freelance UX designer in the area. You can regularly find her dancing around the hallways or at her desk. Her thoughts can be found on Twitter as @acr523 (https://twitter.com/acr523).