User experience research is a discipline aimed at uncovering hard truths behind the usability of design. According to Meta, in today's age products are designed for the global diversity of human needs. This requires us to deeply understand the behaviours of the people behind them. UX researchers are called to tackle some of the most complex challenges to gain deeper insights into how people interact with each other and the world around them.

What are the methodologies and how do they work

There are two main methods UX Researchers use: Qualitative and Quantitative

 data. This method is used when trying to understand concepts, opinions, and experiences. Researchers use this method when trying to gather insights on a problem or discover new ideas for a product.

 data to uncover patterns and averages through statistical, mathematical, and computational analysis. Researchers use this method to understand user behavior on a larger scale and ensure that insights are not random but rooted in data-driven evidence.

What’s the difference between quantitative and qualitative data?

Countable and measurable, relating to numbers.

Tells us how many, how much, or how often.

Gathered by measuring and counting things

Descriptive, relating to words and language.

Describes certain attributes, and helps to understand the “why” or “how” behind certain behaviors.

Dynamic and subjective, open to interpretation

Gathered through observation and interviews.

Analyzed by grouping the data into meaningful themes and categories.

User Experience Research (UXR) misconceptions

With any discipline, there are often myths that are associated with them. UX Research too has its own misconceptions, I seek to add some contexts and understanding to these misunderstandings.

User research is an investment into your product that aids in delivering measurable and sustainable returns over the long term. As early as possible you should try to identify features and interactions that hinder customers from completing the tasks they are aiming for. This will benefit your product in the long run by saving time and costs on features that do not actually improve the experience.

By asking users what they want there is a misconception that creativity is restrained because the team needs to design what the user wants, however this is untrue. User research highlights valuable information about the users, their context of use, and their needs. It is up to the designer to see how they cater to this information through a creative and innovative approach.

UX Research takes more time when It isn’t an established part of project, when it is a last minute thought. The researcher is not given enough time to plan ahead and deliver on time. However when it is properly factored into the project as a method to learn continuously the ROI of UX Research outpaces the time invested in no time.

User Experience Research tries to incorporate human psychology, behaviour, and innate needs into the product, to ensure that the product is user-friendly. But how does this aim meet business goals you may ask? Let me explain.

The Benefits of User Testing for Your Business

User testing helps to identify usability challenges early in the development cycle, reducing the need for costly fixes later on. It ensures that you allocate your resources efficiently, avoiding unnecessary spending on features or elements that don't resonate with customers.

Testing different versions of your website or marketing materials with actual customers will help determine which designs and messages are most effective at converting visitors into customers. This will lead to improved sales and revenue generation.

Countless times UX Research has inspired new ideas and innovations as users provide insights into their pain points and desires. This can lead to the development of new products or features that are more likely to succeed in the market.

At Dinghy we are using a scientific method to collect, organize, and prioritize these opportunities. More on this in an upcoming post on the power of the opportunity solution tree.

UX Research generates valuable data and feedback that inform strategic decisions. It provides concrete evidence for making changes or improvements, reducing the reliance on intuition or guesswork. Thus allowing businesses to invest in what the customer actually needs.

An active example of UX Research benefits discussed above is the 

Teehan+Lax set out to test a test hypothesis:

 Companies that invest in their User Experience will have a direct reflection on their stock market.

$ 50,000 was invested into 10 companies like Apple, Google and Netflix. Within one year the investment had grown to $70 000. It was deduced from this experiment that well-designed products and services that solve real problems, for real people lead to a direct increase in profit. It’s amazing how massive the ROI can be on properly conducted UX Research and consumer experience optimization.

Even from a purely profit-driven point of view, valuing UX always plays well in the long run. The value of UX can be measured by increased revenue and it is not simply an add-on. Users tend to lean towards products with better user experience even if the price is higher.

Bad UX has made good products fail, and good UX has made average products huge successes.

Incorporating continuous UX Research into your business processes is a wise investment that can yield numerous benefits. It ultimately leads to happier customers, improved products or services, and a stronger competitive edge in the market. By prioritizing user feedback and making data-driven decisions, your business can thrive and grow in today's customer-centric landscape.

What is UX Research and why does your business need it?

Project kick-offs are hard. There are many unknowns and everybody has their own idea of the end result. Discussing these ideas is a delicate and complex task. Ideas are fragile, everybody rightfully wants to add their point of view and often there are preconceptions of how things 

From experience there’s a real danger of this mutating into lengthy meetings to collect all requirements, ideas and requests. All of which are then taken into the creative lab to be amalgamated into a user experience … This can be frustrating as it requires a lot of back and forth to reach consensus on the basic requirements. It considerably slows down the project before it even started.

In a “funnel mapping” we collaboratively connect users, desired business outcomes and relevant content blocks on a virtual whiteboard to define established “trodden paths”. The steps required might sound obvious at first. Especially to longstanding shareholders: simply follow the footsteps in the sand and reach the desired outcome. Voilà!

But something magically happens, once the funnel map is drawn out: the act of seeing these paths evolve visually helps to question long held assumptions of how customers might go about interacting with content. This is great as at this point the user journeys are still very abstract and easy to re-arrange. Once the core journeys are sufficiently sane we leverage the draft states further!

We get our clients to join us working in our toolkit. We prepare boards for each page and request as much of their “final” or real life content from our clients as they can possibly come up with on the spot. Obviously its not final and many ideas are born and or left behind along the way but overall the interactive nature of these sessions help clients to open up to the idea of collaborative ideation.

What starts out as post-it pile often turns into live wireframing sessions to quickly “napkin sketch” the ideas and have everyone comment and update or annotate the drafts. We rarely announce “a great workshop” but instead drag clients into a Figjam and point their cursors at wireframes which help to visualize a common understanding of what will be built with every iteration.

This process leads to several impactful side-effects that help us get these kinds of projects done considerably faster than we previously thought possible.

The product or service in the clients mind is often a story they have started to tell to people and with each time the have told them the story became more convincing. Feedback has helped to even out irritation and friction is simply being left out to deliver a more compelling storyline to potential new customers and investors. We put these stories to the test. Mapping out the clients story into a sequence of interactions quickly reveals points for friction or unclear next steps.

Many of the client’s domain experts new to the process of creating digital interfaces are not aware of the variety of interactive UI elements that can be leveraged to solve a specific use case. By offering abstract (non interactive) versions of these UI elements we open clients up to the concept of thinking about the desired outcome first and then selecting the right type of interaction to enable an appropriate and delightful interaction.

During the session we frequently ask about the goals or desired outcomes of the users or customers of the product. Identifying these main outcomes and offering a clear call to action for the user to act upon ensures that the product fulfills its basic promise. 🤝 Focusing the experience on these main call to actions reduces overhead and rage clicking to find key actions fast.

Defining the content blocks in wireframes allows everybody to chime in and add their perspective. Having the user journeys mapped out before and the calls to action defined ensures that the content is goal driven and actionable. It’s really the easiest and most efficient point in the website building process to come up with great content: everything else will be build around the consistent stories created here.

This is also the first stage in a project where 

 comes into play. We love testing these first set of wireframes with real users. It is a fast and highly efficient feedback collection process that allows us to skip multiple iterations and refinements until we have more clarity on the basic usability of the experience.

We learned that content driven wireframes typically go through less cycles of revision and eventually become the guiding star for the project. 

They help to align stakeholders constantly around the common themes of navigation, content and conversion. 

And best of all? We’re skipping the part where the website setup is sitting readily available on a test deployment for weeks, till the content is signed off and added to the content management system!

We made building marketing websites a breeze for our clients, the marketeers and for ourselves. Big shout-out to our clients who are willing to take part in this process!

We’re curious about your perspective as a client: Have you participated in the early conceptual steps of product design through wireframing? How did this collaboration impact your understanding and the product’s final result?

Compiling the actual content of marketing websites first gave us an extremely fast process with supreme stakeholder alignment among plenty other surprising benefits. Here’s to wireframing with real content and 

Start with the hardest part

The challenge of creating a website is much MUCH more than just creating a visually appealing layout – at least this is how we understand the task here at Dinghy. It requires a deep understanding of the client's goals, target audience, and the content that will be displayed on the site.

In this article, I’ll present where we came from, will explain why we consider client involvement in the concept phase an essential requirement for the success of such a project and suggest ways how to do this successfully.

During design we never knew what the real content would really be.

A while back – before all this enlightenment – we were designing a website as we always did:

Kick-off meeting with the client, create first designs with dummy content which fitted our design vision perfectly, present to client, client is super happy, gives us the green light and we start to code that thing, hook up the CMS and ask the client for content.

… and suddenly there was a pause in the project. Because of course, the client didn’t know how to create “content” to just copy and paste into the CMS. That was the part of every project that we dreaded and that we accounted for in our initial quote with a huge budget because we knew that the back and forth with the client would cost us time. Furthermore, once we finally got real content we usually re-designed half of the website to accommodate for the actual structure and length of that content.

Of course, we could’ve worked with a copywriter but the problem would’ve been the same: During design, we never knew what the real content would really be.

Clients are prepared to pay but they underestimate how much of their own time is required during the project.

One of the most important aspects of any website is the content and not the design.

… Let’s let that sink in for a couple of seconds …

In my career as a web designer for over 10 years, many things have changed but one thing for sure always stayed the same: A client approaches us to design a new website, usually with a rather challenging timeline. They want the design to be “top notch”, “cutting edge” and it’s supposed to “help the company jump to the next curve”. And I get that! That’s absolutely what I think the goal of a website redesign should accomplish.

But part of this one thing that never changed in my career is that actual content – more often than not – is the afterthought. Clients are prepared to pay but they underestimate how much of their own time is required during the project.

🤯 I’m here to tell you, if you get the structure, the user journey and the content right that the design can be black Helvetica on white background with your logo on the top – and the whole site will work 100 times better than if the design is amazing and the content meeh.

 only key stakeholders inside the client’s team know what it is that needs to go on the website to make the visitor understand the product or service.

If you can manage to align the whole team there will be zero pushback regarding design decisions.

Each stakeholder brings a unique view to the project, and this can be used to your advantage. It is important to identify the roles of each stakeholder up front and maybe even draw a little map of who belongs to whom and why they’re important for the project. With this map, you can then involve them in the project accordingly.

Involving all the stakeholders is very important because of the following reasons:

The CEO is just one stakeholder. Product managers, marketing, sales, and internal design team are equally qualified and have their perspectives on the product/service. If you manage to align all of them there will be zero pushback of the project internally, which is of course important for your success

Getting everyone’s take and priorities moves you into a more central role in the project: suddenly you’re not just the “web design person” but the person everyone internally turns to for the website project because they know you can get their interest worked into the final website.

Decision makers are used to agencies doing exactly what they asked for. If you can manage to validate that ask with real feedback from their customers and involve all key stakeholders inside their organization along the way – then you’re building a far deeper, trusting relationship. They will see you as the one who helps their business win.

A website is the face of the company to the outside world and as such it’s a mirror of that company.

The story is what ties everything together on a website. It is the narrative that leads the customer to the desired action. It is important to align stakeholders to write a consistent story that includes an underlying plan of calls to action. Once the stakeholders align on the story, the design becomes much easier. And not only that, if you can manage to align the stakeholders as described above you contributing to a bigger company value than just the website. You’ve helped to make connections internally that might not have been active enough before.

A website is the face of the company to the outside world and as such it’s a mirror of that company. An abstracted and idealized mirror, one that makes the company look good like the ones in retail stores but a mirror non the less. This in turn means that if the story being told on the website works and is made up of stakeholders internally aligning, then this can only be beneficial for future work.

The overall look of the site is important, but the story and the flow of information are crucial.

Picking up from the story of where we came from in which the majority of the project budget was allocated to design and development, we have a totally different situation now.

Now design and development can together take up around half of the total budget because designers and developers know exactly what they’re making. It’s also much more enjoyable for them because requirements don't change drastically anymore with real content coming in late.

It is important to ensure that the design serves the content and not the other way around. The overall look of the site is important, but the story and the flow of information are crucial.

There are several techniques that can be used to effectively involve clients in the concept phase of a website project. These include:

Define conversion goals: Define the desired conversion goals early on in the process and involve stakeholders in the decision-making process.

Wireframing: This is a common method that has been around for years. It is a great way to communicate design ideas and get feedback from stakeholders.

Funnel mapping: The map creates a bird’s eye overview of how leads connect with conversion goals through key pieces of content.

Sitemaps: These are known from the technical side of web design and can be used to communicate the overall structure of the site.

Designing a website is a collaborative effort that involves multiple stakeholders. It is important to involve clients in the concept phase of the project and ensure that their goals and expectations are aligned with the final product. By following the techniques discussed in this article, you can effectively involve clients in the process and create a website that meets their needs and exceeds their expectations.

Creating really good websites is tough nut to crack! The key is to understand what the client really needs and wants. This article gives a little insight into how you get exactly that information.

How to Involve Clients in the Concept Phase of a Website Project

In today's ever-changing web landscape, small companies like ours need to weigh options when switching out parts of their established technology stack. The challenges are similar to those faced by bigger companies when it comes to adopting new technologies.

Limited time for training, established processes, and ongoing maintenance of legacy projects limit what can be done. In smaller companies these challenges are emphasized by the need for every team member to constantly deliver productive work. Also our clients often are rightfully reluctant to invest in mostly invisible updates of the tech-stack. While we as an agency strive to stay current and competitive, utilizing the best and most relevant technologies.

So whenever there are new tools available and in discussion we try to ensure that:

it reduces complexity, brings new features, has reasonable popularity, and will be accepted by current and potentially future clients.

legacy projects can transition without unreasonable efforts.

The new technology excites and enables the team to experiment and innovate.

There’s probably more elaborate, thorough and sensible criteria for selecting a new tech stack out there. As a small and fast paced company these acceptance criteria seem to work reasonably well for us, though.

SvelteKit had our attention for a while and checked many of these boxes. A new project with some unique requirements and a looming deadline left little time to spare for the tech decision. Driven by several key factors, we took a leap of faith to go with SvelteKit:

 This was vital, as we were uncertain about hosting providers at the onset.

 SvelteKit's efficiency gave it an edge over React.

 SvelteKit's animation tools suited our project's interactive graphics needs, especially given our mixed experiences with React and its options in third-party animation libraries.

Our decision to go with SvelteKit was more of a hunch than a well-thought-out plan. But it worked! The above mentioned reasons to go with SvelteKit played to our advantage to deliver the project on time, also the positive reports about the developer experience were spot on. However, apart from all the technical advantages of SvelteKit the most surprising aspect was something else entirely:

The speed at which our developer without prior experience with SvelteKit could be onboarded.

Switching to a new framework often leads to a steep learning curve, consuming valuable time and energy due to the idiosyncrasies and nuances of each system. But our transition to SvelteKit defied all expectations.

What could have been a bottleneck — a tedious and time-consuming process — turned into an extraordinary revelation. SvelteKit's alignment with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, coupled with comprehensive documentation, allowed the developer to implement a large portion of the marketing website swiftly and without further training.

Working with SvelteKit was more than a technology switch; it enabled us to deliver a project on a tight schedule with elegance and efficiency. This kind of update to our technology stack had failed us once before, but SvelteKit allowed us to get things right in areas that would have been more complex otherwise.

The resulting codebase is more concise and readable – even to the untrained eye. The resemblance to traditional web technologies, along with well-structured documentation, erased typical barriers to entry, paving the way for swift onboarding of new developers.

The lesson here is not just about a particular framework but about flexibility, adaptability, and being open to surprises in the ever-changing landscape of modern web development. It's a unique insight into how a decision, driven more by intuition and immediate need than thorough planning, led to a better product in the long run.

On top of this we are happy with Svelte in the broader picture of the web’s transition. While the big JavaScript frameworks bring a lot of fancy opportunities they also come with an overhead in complexity. Overall Svelte feels more true to the web than React (not only because we can finally just use class instead of className). With recent advancements in web technology the gap between static HTML plus CSS and full-blown JavaScript frameworks closes and we cannot wait to build our first MPA in a while. Soon! For now we try to keep with our updated technology stack and new found favorite framework for a while.

Interested in experiencing the speed and simplicity of SvelteKit for your next project? Let’s talk! Contact us today for a free consultation, and let's build something amazing together.

Our leap to SvelteKit found more than the obvious benefits of superb DX and built-in animations. It led to unforeseen successes in swift adoption and innovation in our development team.

Switching Frameworks Yet Again

When is the right moment to test whether a design solution will be appreciated and understood by your users? Spoiler alert: It is much earlier than you might think.

User experience research can be information dense and time consuming to produce, here’s how we produce research that is both lean, rigorous and actionable.

As a UX Research team of one, working for a lean – fast paced fully remote agency, I was tasked with my first usability study task. I had spent hours writing the perfect research plan fit for a Phd dissertation. I presented it to my team and was met with squinted eyes and polite ‘looks good’. They were looking at a long-drawn-out documented that perfectly coincided with my academic training that encourages rigorous preparation and procedures that in an economic context of a small agency just weren’t feasible.

Many academic transitioners, including myself, often find themselves trapped in the mindset of adhering strictly to our academic training, resulting in outputs that are labor-intensive, information-heavy, and painfully fixated on perfection.

I struggled to deliver my findings fast enough to provide value within our outcome driven internal design process. The relevant insights had to be available to the team at a much earlier point in time to influence design decisions. So, I developed a method to identify crucial assumptions that had to be validated early on. These research sprints can be conducted early and as often as required.

How early you may ask? As soon as the design team is satisfied with their initial low-fidelity mock-up, it promptly undergoes user testing. This phase involves addressing various questions concerning the concept, information architecture, and overall layout of the website. During the user testing, my main focus lies in capturing users' first impressions and expectations to assess whether their mental model aligns with the design. Additionally, I delve into users’ priorities, as it significantly shapes the information architecture of the site. By conducting tests with real users, we can pinpoint potential needs or conceptual flaws, enabling us to pivot the product or service in a new direction while still retaining the flexibility for change.

Once the test feedback is provided to the team, it is implemented before being returned to the user for further testing. Throughout the process of preparing the high-fidelity mockup, the team and business gain confidence due to the close involvement of the user. This approach allows us to understand the target audience better and effectively cater to their needs, while also preventing significant conceptual and design hurdles that could set the team back during the launch phase.

Preparation of research plan and discussion guide.

The research plan should be short and concise, often times this is a document to guide you and the designers on your team. It should highlight:

Business objectives and KPIs and Usability metrics

When creating the discussion guide develop a set of tasks or scenarios that users will perform during the test. These tasks should align with your goals and focus on key features or aspects of your product. Keep the tasks realistic and avoid leading participants with biased instructions.

This phase is often the lengthiest and as a researcher one can feel isolated from the team, it is crucial to maintain team involvement in the process. To achieve this, consider the following steps:

Take notes during the session, and if there are team members moderating, encourage them to do the same.

Immediately after each session, document the notes in the design file, linking them to specific areas of reference.

Organise the raw data into relevant themes to facilitate analysis.

Include small video snippets as visual references to enable team members to relate to the person better.

The goal should be to complete this phase as soon as possible, as quicker turnaround times are more advantageous to the design team so that they are able to implement real user feedback as opposed to their own assumptions. It's essential to remember that research should inform the design process, preventing the design team from growing impatient and making assumptions about the users.

By adopting these practices, the design team gains 'almost' real-time insights into user opinions, easily identifying themes and pain points in the prototype. Moreover, the team becomes actively involved in the process, leading to more interactive feedback sessions where recurring issues witnessed in real time can be discussed.

At Dinghy, we promote the simultaneous coexistence of research and design. As the research team gathers insights, the design team instantly incorporates these findings into their iterations, creating a collaborative and efficient product development process.

The speed and efficiency of this approach enable teams to gather valuable user feedback early in the design cycle, leading to more informed and user-centric decisions.

By involving users at an early stage, teams can identify usability issues, pain points, and potential roadblocks before substantial resources are committed to higher-fidelity designs.

This proactive approach mitigates the risk of investing in the wrong direction and ensures that the final product aligns with user needs and preferences.

Rapid user testing on low-fidelity prototypes serves as a powerful tool in the product development toolkit. It empowers teams to quickly iterate on design ideas, gather user feedback, and make informed decisions.

By integrating user input early in the process, teams can create products that genuinely resonate with their target audience, leading to higher user satisfaction and increased chances of success in the market.

Want to know how this works for your idea, product or service?

If you’re up for it we get you from project plan to implementation in 4 weeks or less.

The Dinghy Blog

What is UX Research and why does your business need it?

Start with the hardest part

How to Involve Clients in the Concept Phase of a Website Project

Switching Frameworks Yet Again

Early User Insights: Navigating Change via Low-Fidelity Prototype Testing