Seven Research Tips that Could Make Your Designs More Impactful

We know we need to conduct research before we start the design process to understand our customers better, but it's also super important to start collecting feedback as we design. In this article, I want to share research methodologies we can use during your design process to help us create more impactful designs.

Why do we need to do research during design? Have you been in a situation when you presented your or your team's designs and had a lot of pushback from stakeholders, developers, and other team members? You may wonder how to tell a better story and get a faster internal alignment. The best and easiest way to get that is to present additional data and research supporting your design decisions. It won't only help you create a more impactful design, but data will help create alignment on the team.

Additional research will help you look at your design from a different lens. We all know that we may develop blind spots when we spend too much time looking at it the same solution or screen. Stepping back and getting that additional insight helps improve the impact of the design.

You may be lucky and have a researcher on the team to help you collect that information, but in my experience, it's not the case very often. In this case, I encourage you to seek the data independently.

Here is an overview of the research methods you can use to inform you and create a more impactful design:

Before starting the design

Investigate current behavior if the equivalent of the page exists right now.

1. Consult Analytics

Analytics helps answer the following questions:

• How many people are visiting the page now?

• What devices are visitors using? This data helps identify what medium you should start designing for desktop or mobile-first.

• Are visitors doing what they are supposed to do on the page (clicking on the right button)
  

2. Check heatmaps

Heatmap tools like Hotjar or Contentsquare may be handy to dig deeper into behavior and additional metrics:

• Where are people clicking on the page

• How far are they scrolling

3. Look at what competitors are doing

How other companies solved similar problems inside or outside your industry could be very helpful. It is great for inspiration, but be careful to compare yourself with a single competitor or copy what they are doing. How sure are you that they understand their customers? 

Other industry examples can also help us understand how we can effectively position ourselves in the marketplace, understand the strengths and weaknesses of our competition, where we stand against competition, and identify gaps in the market. Ideally, this will help identify ways to differentiate ourselves from our competition and develop more innovative solutions.

4. Refer to benchmarking data

Consulting research reports that analyzed trends across different customers and industries could be very useful in understanding patterns and trends. A good example could be Baymard or Nielsen Norman group reports.

After you created a few rough designs

After we have created a design or fleshed out an idea, we can collect data. It's important to zoom out and look at the design from a different lens.

5. Customer Feedback

Meeting with customers and showing them the idea would be one of the best options for getting feedback. You can gather information on how useful the solution is for them and what needs to be clarified and added.

6. Seek rapid feedback

If you don't have time or customers, you can reach out, test the clarity of the idea by sending the link to your design to a list of recruited participants and give them a task and measure where they click. You can do it with tools like Optimal Workshop or Qualtrics.

7. Using AI to identify patterns

Use AI eye-tracking tools to simulate where customers may look on the page. It's helpful to evaluate if the action you want users to take on the page is clear and the content is in the location where it's visible.

Choose the tool and research method based on the scope of your design. The methodology may differ if you work on the marketing page, e-commerce website or software, or your B2B or B2C audience.

I hope this list of tools will inspire you to take this extra step, get additional input, and make your designs more impactful.