The User Experience (UX) field is continuing to grow and with that, the growing demand for UX professionals to form part of companies wishing to better engage with their audience. UX goes beyond just simply designing a website, application, or any other piece of technology. At its core, UX strives to find ways to make a product function as easily as possible so that users will want to – if you forgive the repetition, use it. 

The process of discovering how and what makes a product user-friendly requires various steps and mixes various methods. It’s important to truly understand the consumer for which the product is aimed to. What do they want? What are their motivations? What are their likes and dislikes? What is it that will make them continue to use the product? The answers to these questions come through user research. User Research or UX Research covers a wide array of methods that can involve interviews to the target group of audience for which the product is being designed, usability studies, quantitative measurements on ROI, qualitative methods, etc. The methods selected are to inspire ways to design the product, evaluate solutions and measure the impact that the product might have when used in its target audience; all of this with the common goal of putting people at the centre of the design process and products. 

The Research part of UX is often done in the early stages of the entire process and brings clarity into information or assumptions that might have come up when coming up with ways to design a process. It brings the design project into context and therefore it allows for design decisions to be made with backings from data that has been collected. A good User Research can be a valuable tool in identifying problems or challenges, find patterns or common factors within the target audience, and provide insights into who the possible users are in a holistic way. 

The observations seen during the research part are not objective if the user has preconceived notions about how things should work. This is called a bias; and occurs when a person has a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or something. Biases are cognitive shortcuts that are created from learnt patterns in early stages of cognitive development and are often reinforced by stereotypes. The basic purpose of it is to make cognitive processes easier to process in the brain, however it can often lead to preconceived notions that end up in rash decisions or discriminatory thoughts or behaviours.  

In the UX Research stage, bias can come from the user or audience group or because of the researcher. Both risk the possibility of having clear and objective data to continue the design process. Therefore, it’s important not only to understand how to conduct a proper user research from a methodological and logistical point of view but also to take into account what the presence of bias could mean for the data collection and how to minimise this from happening. One way of working in this is to understand what a bias might look like in the research stage and be able to identify it. 

• Friendliness bias: this happens when respondents tend to agree and support anything the researcher says. Therefore, the audience’s opinions may not be objective or genuine and therefore do not provide any insight into the true functionality of the product. 
• Social desirability bias: human beings have a subconscious drive to be accepted into a group. In the research context, social desirability bias happens when a person answers questions in a way in which they believe will grant them approval from the group or the researcher and not based on what the user would normally answer.
• Familiarity bias: people often understand their environment by relating or linking past experiences or past knowledge to what is happening at the moment. Familiarity bias can change a person’s perception and people are wired to choose something familiar over something unknown when creating beliefs or making important decisions. Therefore, users that are not exposed to certain products or dynamics might stray away from using certain products and that can have negative effects on the data collected. 

From the researcher’s point of view, a research process could be influenced by:

• Confirmation bias: where a researcher might start looking for evidence to prove a hypothesis or confirm their own beliefs or preconceptions
• False consensus bias: this happens when a researcher overestimates the number of people that will agree with the design or idea and are unable to accept when the data contradicts their points of view. 
• Implicit bias: often also called unconscious bias. This is a collection of attitudes and stereotypes that a person might associate with a group of people without any conscious knowledge. In research this can be seen when a researcher interviews only people with a limited set of characteristics such as race, age, gender, ability, or socioeconomic status. 

User research is an important step in the process since it provides confirmation and information as to how the product and the audience will interact in the real world. However, to develop a proper and clear research process it is important to understand and identify biases, as well as to find ways to minimise them so that they don’t skew data results. Biases are part of human cognition but it’s essential to eliminate them for a research process in order to get the most accurate results and therefore be able to create a product that correctly aligns with the audience’s profile.

Savant is informed by market research and has a specialised Digital Design team with extensive experience and expertise in UX/UI talent solutions. If you are looking to build or expand your Design function, we can support you with the best talent in the industry with experts and market leading onboarding advice and consultation. To find out more about how we can assist you, please reach out to us at technology@savantrecruitment.com