Say what? UX Research and UX Testing

UX research and UX testing are different things. Research is about understanding people and their experiences in context. Testing is about having a hypothesis about a design or experience and checking out that hypothesis. Ethnography is an example of research, and UX testing is an example of testing.

Some additional things to know about UX Research and UX Testing

• While research can involve either qualitative or quantitative data, often it’s better to start with qualitative as it provides greater insight into what quantitative data you need
• Both research and testing usefulness is highly dependent on ensuring you have chosen a representative sample of people
• There are many, many forms of testing techniques and research approaches and many ways to categorize, a common useful way is qualitative/quantitative as one dimension and perception/behaviour as another. A common mistake is to use perceptual research to make behavioural conclusions.
• By far the most common form of testing is UX or usability testing. For a reason. It’s incredibly useful and product team members quickly see its value. It can also be more easily incorporated into existing software dev processes than, for instance, contextual inquiry.
• You should do research and testing both before and while the product is being developed and after it’s been released into the market.