Learn how to craft effective UX research questions with insights from Amy Chess of Amazon. Discover the difference between research and interview questions, the importance of methodology alignment, and the value of building trust with stakeholders. Explore the significance of evolving research questions, understanding customer needs, and sharing work early to enhance project outcomes.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Indirect Questions Reveal User Needs
Amy shared a project where a research question about the default tab couldn't be asked directly to users.
Instead, indirect interview questions explored user expectations to inform design decisions.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Research Questions Drive Methodology
Always define your research questions before choosing a methodology.
Let questions guide method selection to avoid misaligned research techniques.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Find Questions by Identifying Risks
Ask stakeholders what worries them and what decisions remain unclear to find good research questions.
Focus research on mitigating business risks and unresolved issues for significant impact.
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Your research question is where it all begins. It’s what drives your research forward, informs when you’re ready to wrap up your project, and it’s what gets everyone involved on the same page. But how do you know you’re asking the right research questions?
This week on the podcast, Amy Chess, UX Researcher at Amazon, chatted with Erin and JH about how she chooses which questions to ask in her user research projects.
Amy talked about…
The difference between research questions, research objectives, and interview questions
How to ask the right research questions
Why you can’t pick a methodology before you know your research question
How building trust with stakeholders can push your research questions further
Highlights
[1:30] What's the difference between a research question and an interview question?
[7:38] What comes first? The research question or the methodology?
[11:13] How to not to ask bad research questions.
[19:07] Go where the research leads you, even if it’s not where you planned to go.
[25:53] Structuring user interviews to answer your research questions.
[36:09] Work with user research before you have it all figured out.
About our guest
Amy Chess is a UX research leader (formerly at Amazon, Walmart) and educator. She specializes in qualitative data collection techniques and the meaningful synthesis of qualitative and quantitative user data. Amy is intensely invested in developing new methodologies to evaluate integration efforts from a UX perspective, promoting the value of UX research amongst stakeholders, and pioneering approaches for UX practitioners, technical teams, and product management to collaborate and partner together.
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