Sapien who has spent more than three years now, working as a Researcher. Started as a qualitative researcher where I majorly worked in collecting and analyzing data for primary research works. To current day, where I decide upon choosing methods and tools to use for different problem statements. I have grown as a Researhcer who has firsthand information about the evolution of the UX Research industry in my country, (especially – pre and post covid times).
This is my first blog, and I am here to discuss my insights about how the UX Research world that has changed around me. And what it currently means to be working in this industry.
To begin with, UX Research has become significantly important post Covid in India. Common reasons are – Boom in the digital spaces, everyday tasks being completed online – grocery shopping, getting doctors appointment, office meetings, mental health checkups, dating, reunions with friends and family through digital mediums, increasing reach of small businesses through social media and so much more. Its not just the companies who want a user – centric for deigning their products and services to function smoothly and make profits. But people in general need internet, apps and websites to complete their basic responsibilities. All of this leading to a greater demand for UX Researchers to find problems statements, user pain points, challenges. Henceforth, UX Research have become an important subset of UX Design practice.
Second of all, the evolved technology components in research field have changed the game. Increasing number of work -from – home jobs, online teaching and learning, new wave of social media influencers and many new remote working occupations have become common today. In this ‘new – normal’ world conducting remote usability testing with methods such as – surveys, eye -tracking, heatmaps, quessionare, first click analysis are the usual practices. That are positively, giving us user segmentation from a diverse set of cohorts, irrespective of their geographical presence.
Furthermore, a notable shift in the profession is the growing emphasis on data-driven decision-making. User research has majorly been about understanding users’ wants (qualitative in nature). But today with rapid growth in a fast moving world, we are in urgent need to quantify those wants, demands and make data-driven product designs. This is resulting in, a rising demand for UX researchers that are experienced in both data analysis and data synthesizing who can make sense of large data sets.
Last but most important, realizing the value of ’embracing the hetrogentity’ of participants set for any research study. Strongly assuring diffrences like user’s gender, social, cultural, political, economical backgrounds, linguistics variations, accesibility and approachibility use cases as parameters into consideration. Impling to go an extra mile to look out for participants apart from the conventional users while user recruitment process.
As a final point, I would end by stating – ‘UX Research have enormously flourished in the last three years’. As UX Resaerchers, we need to stay up to current trends, technologies, tools and methods so that we can diagnose and treat every problem with the best possibile research results. And by keeping the above pointers in mind, let keep innovating and creating products and services that meets every user’s needs and navigate towrads clients and business’s success.