1. Make sure you’re clear on the end goal

There are a couple of essential steps to take before you jump straight into your research. The first is writing a brief. Having a good brief that answers the question ‘what are you doing it for?’ is necessary. There’s no point in doing research just to do it, and you need to be ready to explain the WHY to other company stakeholders.  This is also the time for you to listen to the stakeholders and understand what the business priorities are to make sure they align with what you plan on doing.  

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2. Prepared to have difficult conversations with the rest of the company

Being a use researcher is a hard job. We asked Shifra Cook, Ayda’s CEO and Founder, about the role of a researcher in a company: ‘you have to prepare to be disliked because what you come back with might be different than what your business wants to hear’. After completing your research,  you may find that the business initiatives might not fly in the real world. And while that isn’t what Sales, Marketing or Product may want to hear it’s your job to tell them.  

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3. Make sure you’re speaking to the right people

Speaking to the right people is essential. Otherwise, what’s the point of doing research? One way you can make sure you’ve chosen the correct participants is by sending out a screener before the research starts. This will help you weed out who will be useful to you in this research and who won’t. For example, if you’re doing a project about dog ownership, you might create a screen asking potential participants if they own a dog. If they say no, then you’ll know they aren’t right for this project. Ayda‘s screener feature makes creating, sharing screeners and adding the correct participants to projects easy as anything.

For tips on how to recruit users set up a call with the Ayda team or check out our posts on recruiting using LinkedIn.  

4. Analyse the research – but not alone!  

Having multiple pairs of eyes on the findings can help you make sure you have an un-bias analysis of your research and will help you make sure you don’t miss anything. Shifra Cook, Ayda CEO and researcher of 15 years suggests creating an analysis triangle where three people analyse findings to avoid biases. You’re more than likely going to miss thing while analysing your findings, but that’s normal.  

To find out more about the different kinds of bias, watch Ayda's recent webinar.

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5. Test your questions

There’s nothing worse than starting an interview and realizing your questions don’t make sense. Think back to when you were in school, and your teacher would have you test your survey questions on each other, to ensure they were easy to understand to someone who has little or no context of the wider project. Sense-checking your questions with colleagues and people outside of the organisation might seem like an added task (because they make sense to you right?!) but can make or break your research.  

To find out more about how to get great answers from user interviews, watch Ayda's recent webinar.

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6. Spend your time wisely

Did you know 92% of researchers time is spent on operational and admin-focused tasks, rather than collecting and analysing data? We created Ayda to give time and focus back to researchers. Our research operations platform streamlines and automates the entire research process from organising research participants to paying out incentives, helping to build a long-lasting and scalable process for user research.  

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Get onboarded with Ayda

Book a 20 minute call with a member of our team to supercharge your user-research