Practical User Research: Everything You Need to Know to Integrate User Research to Your Product Development

Explore how User Research has been influenced over the years by a range of disciplines, such as HCI, usability, anthropology, cognitive psychology, ergonomics etc. This book aims to contribute to the User Research community and covers topics that will help UX professionals, students and stakeholders to gain a better understanding of what User Research is.

Throughout the book you will acquire a practical skill set, ranging from how to get the research going, to building a case in order to receive the budget and resources needed. It will provide you with a clear account of how to organise your research, how to plan it, and how to manage stakeholders' expectations throughout the project. You'll see how to fit User Research into your organization and incorporate it through the different product development phases (Discovery, Alpha, Beta until Live), as well as how to grow a User Research team.

Practical User Research reviews the methodologies used for User Research, looks at how to recruit participants along with how to collect and analyse data, finally focusing on how to interpret and present your findings. Cross-cultural research, accessibility and assisted digital research will also be discussed throughout this book. The final chapter gives you 10 project briefs, with which you will be able to apply your new skill set and put into practice what you have learnt.

What You'll Learn

• Integrate user research into your business
  
• Apply user research to your product development cycle
• Review the appropriate processes necessary to carry out user research
  
• Take a pragmatic approach to user research, method by method
  

Who This Book Is For

Anyone that wants to understand more about user research.

Dr. Emmanuelle Savarit has a strong academic background and has worked closely with leaders in qualitative research methodology at UCLA. She has worked on a freelance basis with several companies in the Silicon Valley area, and has worked at the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC) in France, one of the leading French engineering universities, as well as the Clinical Safety Research Unit at Imperial College, London. In 2010 Emmanuelle left academia and decided to focus exclusively on her consulting work and set up Analyse-Concept Ltd, which is specialised in user research. She offered her services in the private sector for companies such as Betfair, HSBC, Thompson Reuters, Graze, Odigeo, Adecco etc. as well as in the public sector for the Home Office, Department Work and Pension, Department for Education, etc. Emmanuelle is also frequently invited to talk at conferences around the world and organizes workshops to upskill and train people to become user researchers. You can find her on Twitter @eSavarit and find out more about her company on the website: www.analyse-concept.com.