FAQs

UX research is a process of learning about customers’ needs, behaviours, and motivations to understand their lived experience with brand services and is often more focused on digital platforms. It aims to improve the overall experience created by a brand by ensuring the organisation is not only solving a customer need but also in a way that is easy and delightful. 

There are two main areas of UX research: evaluative and generative.

Evaluative looks at existing ideas or products and gathers feedback on them. Usability testing is an example of this. It evaluates a concept, design or implementation.

Generative research looks forward and gathers data about what could be to help come up with new ideas. This is sometimes called discovery research or, as we like to call it, customer research.

UX research can help increase revenue and lower expenses. It’s usually quite hard to work out the exact RIO of research, but when you have experienced products not meeting customer expectations or software projects fail to launch, it’s a very easy investment.

Improves conversion rates

Getting humans to take action is one of the most important aspects of UX research. If you want customers to convert, you need to understand every level of the behaviour change funnel. It’s not possible to do this in a boardroom; not all people are the same, and as they say, “you are not your users.” If the people in the boardroom are your users, then less research is needed.

Increases customer retention

Using best practices can only take your customer experience so far. If you want to differentiate your offering, you need to offer an experience that does not just follow what everyone else is doing.

UX research will help you understand what behaviour change techniques will work and what value needs to be created to get customers to keep coming back.

Reduce development costs

Don’t waste time building the wrong thing or building it in a way that customers can’t use, so more time is needed to fix the UX issues after launch. 

Lowers customer support expenses

One way to lower support calls is to hide the contact number from the website, but that will also mean customers will not hang around. A far more effective way to reduce service calls, it allows customers to answer questions and complete tasks on thier own.

Effective UX research reveals the finer points of how users interact with products, helping to create solutions that genuinely resonate with the target audience, leading to a harmonious user experience. 

If you consider development to be releasing features and stop timing after launch, then yes, it could slow down the development process. But if you consider development to be releasing customer value and include the time needed to fix issues after launch, then no, it definitely does not slow down your development time; in fact, it speeds it up.

Customer research helps to ensure you are building the right thing, but also building it right. If a team is releasing features without customer research, there is a high risk that changes will need to be made after launch or, even worse, that no one will see the value in the feature at all.

Another way to look at customer research is as a risk mitigation process. Generative research helps to ensure you understand the real job that customers are hiring your product to solve, and evaluative research helps uncover any potential issues customers might face using the product. It moves the time spent from the end of the development process (fixing issues) to the beginning.

Conducting user testing and customer research in South Africa and broader Africa requires a knowledge of the local market inside and out. The unique mix of cultural, tech and economic factors at play here can hugely influence how users interact with digital platforms. That’s where we come in. With our deep-rooted understanding of the South African market and good partners in other countries in Africa, How Might We can help you get your usability testing just right. 

We’re clued up on the unique user behaviours and preferences that shape the digital landscape in South Africa. Armed with this knowledge, we can make sure your UX really hits the mark with your target users, leading to more reliable and valuable outcomes. 

Absolutely. Remote UX research has become a valuable and often preferable method for us to gather insights, especially when working with geographically dispersed users or limited budgets.

Remote research can reduce observer bias, feel more natural to participants, and still allow for rich qualitative insight, provided it’s planned well. While in-person sessions offer more control and the ability to read body language more easily, remote sessions often lead to more authentic behaviour because participants are in familiar environments. At How Might We, we offer both in-person and remote research and can help you choose which one is best for you based on your research question and respondent group.

For a more detailed answer, read Remote vs in-person UX research.

Usability testing is a lot like giving your digital product a trial run. It’s an essential part of UX (User Experience) research that ensures your website or app isn’t just good on paper – it’s user-friendly in real life, too.  

It’s all about letting actual users take your product for a spin and seeing how they find the experience. But it’s not just about finding issues – it’s about finding solutions. We’re here to turn those insights into action, making your customers’ user experience even better.  

With so much competition in the modern market, usability testing isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a must. It’s the secret sauce that allows you to really get to grips with your users’ needs and preferences, helping you create digital solutions that are functional, intuitive, and enjoyable.  

Without usability testing, it’s like designing in the dark. You could create a product that looks great in theory but falls flat in practice due to poor usability. Usability testing is the torch that lights the way, helping you design with confidence and making sure your product is in tune with your users’ needs.

Each round will be different depending on what the main challenge is that we are testing, but usually, there are four main phases to a 60-minute usability test

Warmup and background 

First, we will ask general questions about the respondent. This is not only an icebreaker but also to confirm which personas they might belong to as well as confirm some of the items they answered on the screener.

In-depth customer interview

We don’t just test the interface in a usability test. In the beginning, we spend time understanding your customers’ behaviours, motivations and feelings. We can delve into the nuances of why they chose a certain product or how they feel about a brand.

Task-based scenarios 

We will ask them to complete certain tasks we have decided on in the testing plan. While they complete these tasks, we’re keenly observing, taking note of any problem areas or places where users get stuck. For example, test users might struggle to find the CHECKOUT button. In these instances, our team members ask guiding questions such as “What’s going on now?” or “Where to next?” to elicit more information about the user’s experience. These questions are not designed to frustrate the test user but rather to investigate tricky spots which may have been overlooked.

Wrap-up

We will ask for final thoughts about the overall experience. Usability tests can’t prove if customers will definitely use something outside of the test, but it’s sometimes rather interesting to ask them to imagine themselves using it tomorrow to see what they come up with.

Depending on what we want to learn and the fidelity of the designs we are testing, there are a few techniques we can use within usability testing.

Concept test

We use this when we want to test a concept of a solution, rather than the interface itself. The concept test is the closest to generative research we have in usability testing. It does not require a fully designed prototype, and arguably it should not be too ‘designed’. We just need something to help explain the general idea of the solution. This could be a video, an advert, a simple drawing or a storyboard.

Prototype test

This is the most common type of usability test and usually includes some of the concept areas as well as larger interactions on the interface. With a prototype test, we focus on comprehension, learnability, information hierarchy, choice architecture, and value proposition. Even within prototype testing, we can have different fidelity levels of prototypes depending on what we learn. The more conceptual we need to test, the lower the fidelity needs to be, but the more detailed and interaction-based the test is, the higher the fidelity needs to be.

Live site test

This is the most statistically driven test with detailed task analysis. We look at the time it takes to complete specific actions and the success vs failure rate. This is the most accurate representation of what your customers will actually be experiencing with load times, real data, and a fully functional front end.

Usability tests are great at finding out problems in a design or customer journey. What it can’t do is prove that a customer will definitely use it or how much they will pay for it, outside of the test.

Usability testing will ensure that you don’t have obstacles in the way of a customer completing their transaction. It will help you understand why customers are behaving a certain way, or why they are dropping off at a certain point of your journey.  It’s possible to deduce how customers, similar to the ones we tested, will behave in these scenarios, but because we don’t know how large the target market is, we can’t guarantee that behaviour will happen in your entire customer base.

Usability testing, like all qualitative research, pairs very nicely with quantitative data. Your analytics can tell you what customers are doing and usability tests will tell you why, as well as give suggestions to improve their behaviour. Your analytics will then validate if your iterations are successful.

No. You don’t need to usability test every screen or feature. Instead, usability testing is most valuable when used intentionally. On areas where the stakes are high, where users are likely to get stuck, or where your team is uncertain about a design decision. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s to reduce the risk of poor user experiences where they matter most. At How Might We, we help teams figure out what to test, when, and why, so you’re investing research effort where it delivers the most value.

For a more detailed answer, read our post Should I usability test everything?

Customer research is a systematic process that involves gathering and analysing first-hand information about a company’s target market, including customer preferences, needs, behaviours, and motivations. The aim of customer research is to gain insights into the factors that influence the actions of potential customers so that businesses can tailor their products and services to meet the needs of their target audience better. 

It starts with talking with real customers about their experiences with a brand and the larger industry. For example, if a business has a financial product, we will talk to customers and potential customers about their experience with the product, but also about their larger financial understanding, needs, and concerns.

Where customer research is different to ‘just chatting with customers’ is the way in which the interviews are conducted and the data is processed. We can’t just ask customers what they want. We need to figure out the unmet need by exploring the whole customer landscape, uncovering what currently works and doesn’t work, what areas are missing and what potential desires customers have that they might not know they have.

There are many different techniques in customer research that we use, but all of them are 1-on-1. We prefer these methods over group research, like focus groups. Find out more about our in-depth customer research.

Customer research allows businesses to tailor their customer service offerings to better meet their clients’ needs. By understanding the pain points and challenges that customers face, businesses can develop solutions that address these issues and improve the overall customer experience. Customer service research can also identify areas where businesses can differentiate themselves from their competitors and establish themselves as leaders in their field. 

But the most important reason for customer research is that customers are human. They don’t always act logically or in the way a business would like them to, even if customers want what the business is offering. We know that being healthy is better for people, but many people don’t always look after their health in the best way possible. It’s not because people don’t want to be healthier or feel that being healthy is a lie; it’s because of a host of human factors that sway behaviour. Customer research focuses on why customers behave a certain way and what motivates them to ensure that the business iterates its offering to best serve these human factors.

Focus groups have their place in market research and can be extremely valuable, but we have found that we gain a far deeper understanding of customers when we interview them individually. This is mainly because of the types of questions we need to answer. We are not asking which design they like more or what their opinion is on a certain subject. We need to discover the nuances of a customer’s decision-making process and dive deep into potentially sensitive topics that take time to uncover.

We also need a customer’s story to be unaffected by other people’s opinions or even silenced by someone with a louder personality. For these reasons, we specialise in one-on-one, in-depth UX research sessions.

A UX audit is a systematic expert evaluation of a digital product, such as a website, app, or prototype. It’s designed to uncover usability problems, possible friction points, and areas where the experience might not align with user expectations.

For our UX audit, we analyse each page of a flow, looking for basic UX and accessibility issues, such as “do clickable elements look clickable?” but also comprehension and value proposition issues, such as “what is this page telling its customers?” and “what is the motivation to a user to take action?”

The goal is to provide actionable recommendations that help teams improve usability, increase conversion, and reduce frustration. At How Might We, we use UX audits as a strategic tool to guide better design decisions and prioritise fixes that will have the biggest impact on users.

A UX audit is most helpful when you need quick feedback on what big issues might be holding back your product’s user experience, but don’t yet have the time or budget for in-depth user research. It’s particularly useful before a redesign (to avoid carrying over problems), after launch (to identify quick wins), or when user feedback or analytics point to issues with task completion or conversion.

Whether your product is live or still in development, a UX audit can provide targeted insight into what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus design improvements for maximum value.

Yes and no. AI tools are excellent for spotting accessibility issues or comparing UI elements against documented best practices extremely quickly. We actually recommend running an AI UX audit before adding the human element to pick up any big, obvious issues. At the moment, however, AI tools lack the contextual judgment and empathy that a human brings. It’s very hard for an AI to imagine how a human will interpret what the digital product is saying or asking for.

Strategic UX insight requires understanding business goals, interpreting user behaviour, and knowing when to break or bend “best practices.” That’s where experienced researchers still make all the difference.

We have developed 50 heuristics covering Learnability and affordance, Accessibility and inclusion, UI design, Responsiveness, Navigation and feedback, Value proposition, comprehension, and trust. These heuristics result from combining Nielsen’s 10 usability principles, Baymard’s e-commerce guidelines, Google’s mobile e-commerce heuristics, and hundreds of hours of one-on-one usability tests with real customers.