Developing your International UX Research Strategy
All research, whether it be international UX research or any other type of research, needs clear objectives to be successful. If you don’t know exactly what you are trying to find out, where and from whom you might still get some interesting, perhaps even useful results – but you won’t get the answers to the questions that you should have framed before undertaking the research.
If you follow the process below you will get the maximum amount from your international UX research for the minimum effort and cost;
- Make sure you are not already paying to find information that is already available either within your organisation or in the public domain – so do some internal and external desk research to find out what is already known and, perhaps, to give you a baseline for further information and knowledge gathering;
- Decide exactly what it is you are aiming to discover – whether it is demographics, attitudes, culture, habits, spending profiles, tech awareness – or anything else; but you need to define the precise nature of the data you are seeking;
- If you don’t have definite goals sit down and think about what you need the information for, what you are trying to achieve and what you are going to do with the knowledge once you have it; this might crystallise your thinking in terms of overall objectives;
- International research can be fraught with difficulties and unforeseen problems which can often seriously increase costs and compromise outcomes; if you arrive at a place where your budget is starting to run out, you need to have decided priorities beforehand so you can make sure the critical parts of the research are delivered intact and you get the most useful and relevant data from whatever activity is possible in the circumstances;
- You also need to decide exactly how much information you need about the various aspects and categories of information and what form you want the information gathered and presented eg narrative or simple closed or multiple choice question; quantities or qualitative opinion; responses to propositions or products or generic attitude or knowledge surveys.
- The format of the feedback from your international UX research could take the form of a written report, video or sound recording, transcripts, heatmaps, keystroke, mouse and eye movement analysis, charts and tables or all or a combination of these. By giving detailed consideration to the aims of the exercise, the type of information and the use it will be put to you should be able to determine the best formats and methodologies for collecting and retrieving the data.
For more information on research strategies go to our report on International user research.
Getting the strategy right is absolutely critical in gathering worthwhile and relevant research results. If you would like to talk about any aspect of international UX research strategy why not give us a call on +44(0)800 0246 247, or email hello@ux247.com.
