UI/UX Design User Research & Strategy Syllabus

User Research & Strategy syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for User Research & Strategy in UI/UX Design, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Research Planning

   4 topics

   • Research Goals and Questions
   • Qualitative vs Quantitative Research
   • Generative vs Evaluative Research
   • Recruiting and Sampling Participants
2. 2

   Research Methods

   5 topics

   • User Interviews
   • Surveys and Questionnaires
   • Contextual Inquiry and Field Studies
   • Diary Studies
   • Card Sorting and Tree Testing
3. 3

   Synthesizing Research

   4 topics

   • Affinity Mapping
   • Thematic Analysis
   • Identifying Insights and Pain Points
   • Research Repositories
4. 4

   Personas & Empathy Maps

   4 topics

   • Building User Personas
   • Proto-Personas vs Research-Based Personas
   • Empathy Maps
   • Jobs To Be Done Framework
5. 5

   Journey & Experience Mapping

   4 topics

   • Customer Journey Maps
   • Service Blueprints
   • Experience Maps
   • Identifying Moments of Truth
6. 6

   Competitive & Market Analysis

   3 topics

   • Competitive Audits
   • Heuristic Evaluation of Competitors
   • SWOT Analysis for Products

User Research & Strategy flashcards for UI/UX Design

24 of 50 cards from the User Research & Strategy deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. In UX research, what is the difference between a research goal and a research question?

   A research goal is the broad purpose of the study — what the team wants to learn or the decision it will inform (e.g., "understand why users abandon checkout"). Research questions are the specific, answerable questions derived from that goal that guide method selection and analysis (e.g., "At which checkout step do users hesitate, and why?").

2. Why should research questions never be asked directly to participants?

   Research questions are for the team — they define what the study must answer. Asking them verbatim invites speculation and biased self-reporting. Instead, they are translated into interview or task questions about concrete past behavior and experiences whose answers, once analyzed, address the research questions.

3. What criteria make a good UX research question?

   It should be specific, actionable (informs a real design or product decision), answerable with available methods and resources, focused on user behavior or needs rather than solutions, and neutral (not leading toward a desired answer).

4. What is qualitative research in UX, and what kind of question does it answer?

   Qualitative research gathers non-numerical data (words, observations, behaviors) from small samples to answer "why" and "how" questions — uncovering motivations, mental models, and context. Typical methods: interviews, contextual inquiry, diary studies, usability observation.

5. What is quantitative research in UX, and what kind of question does it answer?

   Quantitative research gathers numerical, measurable data from larger samples to answer "how many," "how much," and "how often" questions — measuring behavior at scale and testing statistical significance. Typical methods: surveys, analytics, A/B tests, benchmark usability metrics like task success rate and time on task.

6. Compare qualitative and quantitative UX research on sample size, data type, analysis, and typical output.

   Qualitative: small samples (about 5–12 participants), open-ended verbal/observational data, thematic or interpretive analysis, output is insights into motivations and problems. Quantitative: large samples (often $n \geq 30$, ideally hundreds), numerical data, statistical analysis, output is measurements, benchmarks, and validation of hypotheses.

7. What is generative (discovery/exploratory) research and when is it done?

   Generative research is conducted early, before a solution exists, to understand users, their context, needs, and problems — generating opportunities and informing what to build. Methods include field studies, user interviews, diary studies, and secondary research.

8. What is evaluative research and when is it done?

   Evaluative research assesses an existing design, prototype, or product to test how well it works and whether it meets user needs — informing how to improve what has been built. Methods include usability testing, A/B testing, heuristic evaluation, and surveys about a live product.

9. A team has a working prototype of a booking flow and wants to know if users can complete a reservation. Is the appropriate research generative or evaluative, and why?

   Evaluative — a solution already exists and the goal is to assess its performance (task success, errors, satisfaction). Generative research would apply if the team were still exploring what problems travelers have before designing anything.

10. What is a screener survey in participant recruiting?

    A short questionnaire given to potential participants to filter for those who match the target user profile (behaviors, demographics, product usage) and exclude unsuitable ones — including "professional participants" — before inviting them to the study. Good screeners ask about actual behavior and hide the qualifying criteria to prevent gaming.

11. Define convenience sampling, snowball sampling, and purposive sampling in participant recruiting.

    Convenience sampling: recruiting whoever is easiest to reach (fast but biased). Snowball sampling: asking existing participants to refer others like them (useful for niche audiences, risks homogeneity). Purposive sampling: deliberately selecting participants who match specific criteria relevant to the research question.

12. According to Nielsen's classic guideline, how many participants are needed for qualitative usability testing, and why?

    About 5 participants per round. Nielsen's curve shows roughly $85\%$ of usability problems are found with $n = 5$ users, with diminishing returns beyond that — so it is more efficient to run multiple small iterative rounds than one large test.

13. What incentive-related bias must researchers manage when recruiting participants?

    Incentives can attract people who exaggerate or lie on screeners to qualify ("professional participants") and can create acquiescence — participants praising the product to please the paying researcher. Mitigations: behavioral screener questions, hidden qualification criteria, neutral facilitation, and emphasizing that honest criticism is helpful.

14. Distinguish structured, semi-structured, and unstructured user interviews.

    Structured: fixed script of identical questions for every participant, easy to compare, little flexibility. Semi-structured: a discussion guide of core questions plus freedom to probe and follow up — the most common UX format. Unstructured: open conversation guided only by topic areas, maximizing exploration but hardest to analyze consistently.

15. What is a leading question in a user interview, and how would you rewrite "Don't you find this feature useful?" neutrally?

    A leading question suggests the desired answer, biasing the response. Neutral rewrite: "How, if at all, do you use this feature?" or "Tell me about the last time you used this feature" — open-ended and anchored in actual behavior.

16. List four best practices for asking questions in user interviews.

    1) Ask open-ended questions ("Tell me about…", "How do you…"). 2) Ask about specific past behavior rather than hypothetical future behavior ("Would you use…?"). 3) Avoid leading and double-barreled questions. 4) Embrace silence and use follow-up probes ("Why?", "Can you say more?") instead of filling pauses.

17. What is the difference between open-ended and closed-ended survey questions, and what is each best for?

    Closed-ended questions offer fixed response options (multiple choice, rating scales), producing quantifiable, comparable data. Open-ended questions let respondents answer in their own words, producing richer qualitative data that is harder to analyze at scale. Surveys typically rely mostly on closed questions with a few open ones.

18. What is a Likert scale?

    A closed-ended rating scale measuring agreement or attitude across a symmetric range, typically 5 or 7 points — e.g., Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly agree. Responses are often analyzed numerically (1–5) to compare attitudes across respondents.

19. How is a survey's response rate calculated, and name two ways to improve it.

    $$\text{Response rate} = \frac{\text{number of completed responses}}{\text{number of people invited}} \times 100\%$$ Improve it by keeping the survey short, stating the expected completion time, sending reminders, offering incentives, and making it mobile-friendly.

20. Name three common survey question-writing errors that bias results.

    1) Leading questions that suggest an answer ("How much do you love…?"). 2) Double-barreled questions asking two things at once ("Is the app fast and easy to use?"). 3) Unbalanced or overlapping response scales, missing options, or jargon respondents don't understand.

21. What is contextual inquiry?

    A field research method in which the researcher observes and interviews a user in their real environment (home, workplace) while they perform their actual tasks, asking questions in the flow of work. It reveals context, workarounds, and behaviors users would not recall or report in a lab or interview.

22. What are the four principles of contextual inquiry (Beyer and Holtzblatt)?

    1) Context — study users in their real environment during real work. 2) Partnership — user and researcher collaborate, in a master–apprentice relationship where the user is the expert. 3) Interpretation — the researcher shares interpretations with the user to verify meaning. 4) Focus — a clear project scope steers what the researcher attends to.

23. Why do field studies often reveal findings that lab studies and interviews miss?

    Because behavior is shaped by real context — interruptions, physical constraints, tools, collaborators, and workarounds. Users are poor at recalling or articulating habitual behavior in interviews (the say–do gap), so direct observation in situ captures what people actually do rather than what they say they do.

24. What is a diary study?

    A longitudinal research method in which participants self-report their experiences, behaviors, and feelings over an extended period (days to weeks) in a diary — via app, messages, photos, or written logs — capturing behavior in context and over time without a researcher present.

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