User Research in United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates (or UAE) is a federation of seven emirates including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah. By far the largest emirate is Abu Dhabi which constitutes three quarters of the federation’s total land mass. It is also the centre of its oil industry and borders Saudi Arabia. Dubai is probably the most well known of the emirates having become a popular tourist destination and housing hundreds if multi-national corporations.

The official language of the UAE is Arabic, which is taught in state schools and most native emirates speak it. However, only about one ninth of the population are citizens with remainder made up of foreign workers and their families. As a result there are a number of languages spoken including Pashto, Hindi, Balochi, Persian and of course English, which is widely spoken. But when conducting research in the UAE, and indeed any of the Arab nations, you need to consider the small proportion of the population they represent and also their wealth and whether they will be motivated to attend research – see blog on hard to find participants.

UX24/7 is a global design research agency that operates with our own team of Senior UX Researchers. All our Senior UX Researchers have been evaluated as part of their joining process to ensure they have the skills, capabilities and experience to deliver user research and UX research to the high standards we expect. Our team in United Arab Emirates is perfectly equipped to deliver research in the UAE and other Arab nations as we did for Farfetch in a large, multi-market discovery research project.