Conducting user research takes a significant amount of preparation before you even begin asking users anything. However, the time you spend creating alignment and developing a research plan pays off tremendously because it keeps you on track as you carry out your research.
Starting with a good question and the right question will ensure you end up with a useful answer. A good research question is specific, actionable, and practical. That means:
Only after you have identified your research question(s) can you select the best way to answer the question (for example, which research method to use.
As the figure below shows, there are 5 main steps to creating research hypothesis, goals, and objectives.
Start thinking of a problem | Questions we need answers to | Hypothesis | Goal | Objectives |
---|---|---|---|---|
Let’s imagine that a hotel chain has noticed they have had a lower number of bookings in the last few quarters, but they are unsure why. |
Start thinking of a problem | Questions we need answers to | Hypothesis | Goal | Objectives |
---|---|---|---|---|
Let’s imagine that a hotel chain has noticed they have had a lower number of bookings in the last few quarters, but they are unsure why. | Are people not booking because they don’t like the hotels we have? Do we have issues with the website or app? Are our prices too high? Are we missing hotel amenities that customers are looking for? |
The research hypothesis is simply the assumption you have about the product/feature/experience.
Read more about how to write a strong hypothesis.
Use the questions you listed in step 2 to guide you.
Start thinking of a problem | Questions we need answers to | Hypothesis | Goal | Objectives |
---|---|---|---|---|
Let’s imagine that a hotel chain has noticed they have had a lower number of bookings in the last few quarters, but they are unsure why. | Are people not booking because they don’t like the hotels we have? Do we have issues with the website or app? Are our prices too high? Are we missing hotel amenities that customers are looking for? | We believe that by improving the experience of selecting and deciding which of our hotels to stay at for users of our website will result in an increased number of hotel bookings . |
Start thinking of a problem | Questions we need answers to | Hypothesis | Goal | Objectives |
---|---|---|---|---|
Let’s imagine that a hotel chain has noticed they have had a lower number of bookings in the last few quarters, but they are unsure why. | Are people not booking because they don’t like the hotels we have? Do we have issues with the website or app? Are our prices too high? Are we missing hotel amenities that customers are looking for? | We believe that by improving the experience of selecting and deciding which of our hotels to stay at for users of our website will result in an increased number of hotel bookings . |
Understand how people make their travel plans. |
Start thinking of a problem | Questions we need answers to | Hypothesis | Goal | Objectives |
---|---|---|---|---|
Let’s imagine that a hotel chain has noticed they have had a lower number of bookings in the last few quarters, but they are unsure why. | Are people not booking because they don’t like the hotels we have? Do we have issues with the website or app? Are our prices too high? Are we missing hotel amenities that customers are looking for? | We believe that by improving the experience of selecting and deciding which of our hotels to stay at for users of our website will result in an increased number of hotel bookings . |
Understand how people make their travel plans. | Identify ways people start planning their travel and the tools they use. Understand what elements make it easy for people to plan travel and what elements make it difficult. |
The chart below shows the relationship between your research goal and the tasks and questions you will ask your participants in usability tests.
This chart shows the relationship between your research goal and the interview questions you will ask your participants in user interviews.
As you can see, the more objectives you start out with, the more questions you will need to ask and the longer your research session will be. It's a good rule of thumb to not have the user session last longer than 1 hour. Our typical research sessions at GitLab last 30-45 minutes.