Starting a new user-research project can sometimes be intimidating—especially if you are a junior UX researcher. When I worked on my first UX research project, I battled impostor syndrome along with the anxiety of being a newcomer at my company. My intent for this article is to help other UX researchers—especially those who are early in their career—plan and conduct an effective UX research kick-off meeting—the first step in the research process.

What Is a UX Research Kick-off Meeting?

A research kick-off is a meeting that you should conduct prior to launching a UX research project. It involves all of your key stakeholders who can help you determine the scope of and plan your research project. Read More

After attending Qual 360 North America (NA)—which took place in Washington DC, in March 2022, and at which I was a speaker—I would like to share my key takeaways from the conference with UXmatters readers.

My fellow UX and CX (Customer Experience) professionals, as well as qualitative researchers from a variety of global brands—including TikTok, Reddit, Microsoft, Mars, Marriott, Indeed, Pinterest, and PepsiCo—joined me at this event, where we discussed recent trends and changes in the practice of qualitative research. Read More

The product experience, or PX, refers to what customers or users experience when they use a product—that is, their motives, emotions, and thoughts. It plays a critical role in the customer and user experience.

When we consider that we would be nowhere without our users, it is not hard to understand why the product experience is so critical. After all, if users do not enjoy using your product and the emotions they feel do not line up with what you’ve anticipated, you would have a problem on your hands. In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at the product experience. Read More

During the initial stages of computing, developers were the users and created punch cards to give commands to mainframe computers. Once they entered their programs, they got the results back on tape or paper printouts. Then technology advanced and personal computers (PCs) with screen displays and keyboards took their place.

With the Macintosh computer, pointing devices and GUIs, or graphical user interfaces, entered the scene in 1984. Since 2007, we’ve seen a succession mobile phones and tablets with touch user interfaces. Fast forward to 2022 and we’ve been interacting with PCs through external devices such as wearable sensors, smartphones, and wireless sensors for about 30 years.

In recent years, touchless user interfaces have become a popular means of human-computer interaction. Read More

In my previous article for UXmatters, “Why UX Research Repos Fail at Democratizing Insights,” I discussed how collaborative user research Is becoming the new paradigm for UX research. When you involve the entire product team and other stakeholders in user-research activities—especially in interactions with users—you can seamlessly integrate user insights into your product-development sprints. This leads to better customer focus and, in the end, better products.

The practice of continuous research—a lightweight set of user research methods that you conduct at regular intervals—complements this collaborative approach to user research very well. When collaborative and continuous research go hand in hand, you’ll be able to gather a steady stream of customer insights on the fly, at a lower cost. Therefore, this approach to user research can be especially beneficial for growing technology startups who are greatly in need of customer insights, but do not have a wealth of resources on which to draw. Read More

The ultimate challenge for any product leader is to ensure that customers not only try, but keep using your product over time. This is the heart of a product-led growth (PLG) strategy. A great product can be a fast path to revenues, brand loyalty, word-of-mouth, and durable business growth.

Product-led growth is a go-to-market (GTM) approach that transforms the way we design products and deliver them to market. PLG is about putting the product at the forefront of the customer journey to drive conversions, retention, adoption, and expansion by delivering an immersive product experience. Plus, in today’s software as a service (SaaS) environment, in which free trials, freemium experiences, and self-service onboarding are quickly becoming increasingly popular, it’s not a question of whether your company will adopt a PLG strategy, but when your company will adopt this model. While PLG is not trivial to implement, it leads to stronger economic units such as net dollar retention (NDR or NRR), gross revenue retention (GRR), and customer acquisition cost (CAC). PLG can help you unlock organic expansion and growth. Read More

In an ecommerce driven landscape, improving your organic search metrics is vital. To compete with the industry giants and social-media platforms who are ruling the roost in 2022, maintaining a high, authoritative search position within your niche is key to success.

As search-engine optimization (SEO) practice continues to change—along with the more than 200 potential ranking factors that Web sites must now take into account—it’s no surprise that smart marketers are diverging from traditional strategies and combining their team efforts to perfect their optimization.

One example of this is the partnership potential that exists between SEO and UX design. As marketers continue to prioritize the user experience as an SEO tactic, experts suggest that ranking scores could soar in response. The question is: just how powerful could this SEO/UX partnership be? How can new marketers utilize user experience in designing a strategic future? Let’s find out. Read More

Content marketing is constantly evolving. Everyone wants to get the most out of their marketing campaigns, but not everyone is able to do this. With small and large changes influencing content-marketing strategies, the best way to navigate an uncertain future is by staying up to date with the latest content-marketing trends.

Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we have seen many shifts in the workplace and the ways in which we manage our day-to-day lives. Many companies have successfully adapted to these changes because of their flexibility and by innovating new approaches that have now developed into trends that are shaping the future of content marketing. 

In this article, I’ll discuss the top 11 content-marketing trends for 2022 that you should know about. Continue reading to learn what you should be doing to reach and convert your target audience. Read More

As users, we’ve already been on the receiving end of artificial intelligence (AI). We’ve become the targeted users of ads online, had our own handwriting and sketches translated into usable digital-image files or documents, and have seen rapid changes in technology and business.

Over the past few decades, gadgets have indeed become smarter. What’s curious about this evolution of AI—and its continuous development—is that it’s making waves across every industry we can think of. In this article, I’ll discuss several industries in which AI is making a big impact. Read More