Goals and Focus

The first and most important step in conducting user research is to have a crystalized vision of your goal. Before proceeding with the research, you should be able to answer these questions:

• How will findings from research help your product design and product development objectives?
• How will you utilize these new insights to drive decision-making?

After this, the next step of your research is defining the focus of your research.

Defining Goals

Internationalization vs. Localization

Researchers must be very intentional about what the user research is trying to help the product designer accomplish - internationalization or localization. Here are their differences:

Internationalization would require you to conduct usability testing with a larger variety of international participants, while localization will require you to focus more on investigating specific preferences and understanding user behavior.

Defining Focus

Exploratory vs. Evaluative

If you lean toward internationalization, you will need to take a more evaluative route. If you lean toward localization, you will need to take a more exploratory route.

Exploratory Research

If your objectives include gaining insight into the lives of the participants, then do exploratory research. This form of research focuses on diving deep to understand user behavior to add context to the product’s design.

• Method: This type of research can have ethnographic elements where the researcher attempts to understand many aspects of the participant’s daily life, culture, mental models, and preferences. Thus, this stage of international research consists of qualitative research through interviews and contextual inquiry. It is beneficial to have a moderator who understands local culture and norms or to partner with locals who can help facilitate conversations.
• Timeframe: This step is done early in the design process so that designers can adjust based on the findings and insights about the user.
• Location: In-person interviews and conversations help us understand the participant’s context and behaviors.

Evaluative Research

If your objectives involve evaluating how users experience the product and its components, then do evaluative research. This form of research focuses on evaluating the user experience of the user interface.

• Method: This research mainly consists of usability testing to observe how users are interacting with the website or application. Quantitative surveys can also be used to get user feedback on the product experience. The findings from the research will help decision-making when it comes to specific design and feature improvements.
• Timeframe: This step can be done later in the design process so that designers can get feedback from users on their designs.
• Location: Since this step is more focused on evaluating the user experience rather than studying the lives of users, we can use remote research methods to save capital and time while getting the insights we need. However, in-person sessions might be needed depending on the user’s level of digital literacy and technology usage preferences.