UX Research is an exciting and challenging field with lots of opportunities for deeply engaging work. Broadly speaking, UX researchers use both qualitative and quantitative techniques to help discover new insights on how humans interact with technology. While many UX Researchers come from academia, an advanced degree is by no means a requirement to break into the field. We've put together this list of resources to help you master the fundamentals of the field in no time.
Here are some key resources to help you get up-to-speed on the basic of UX Research. We've organized them by skill, so you can bone up on the areas where you're less confident. Check them off as your go!
Your background is in gathering and making sense of empirical data. Maybe your focus is on designing experiments, working with test subjects, or analyzing the results of experiments after they’ve been run. You’re familiar with experimental methods, be they qualitative, quantitative, or some combination of both. Whatever your specialty, you know how to find grains of truth in a confusing world.
Your background makes you intimately familiar with the "research" part of "UX research." At a fundamental level, there are commonalities among all formal investigations, and you're ready to apply your related expertise to investigate questions pertaining to UX.
You know how to reach people. Your core strength is getting information in front of potential customers and communicating vital information about the products or features offered by whatever company you represent. Not only do you have experience positioning ideas in attractive ways and presenting material in an easy-to-digest format that tells an emotionally-compelling story, you’ve also picked up a thing or two when it comes to implementing go-to-market strategies.
Your background had taught you how pitch products to potential users; now you're looking to study how users interact with products and what changes might improve their experience. Both require a strong understanding of people: you know how to consider their needs and model how they instinctively interact with the outside world. This puts you in position to approach UX research from a uniquely human perspective.
You're a master of bringing ideas to life, either functionally or aesthetically. When you work, considerations regarding the way the end result will be used and how it will impact users are at the forefront of you mind. Form determines function, after all, and the difference between good design and bad is often in the subtle details.
Your background has accustomed you to thinking deeply about how people interact with the outside world, whether they're working with physical objects or pixels on a screen. Previously, you've applied this to your own designs, but your insights into common human behavior will also serve you well in the world of UX research: you'll have a valuable ideas as to what might improve the user experience and therefore what experiments ought to be run.
You are a master of written communication, and the written word is your primary tool. No matter what subject you’re tackling, you know how to organize complicated information into an interesting, easy-to-understand narrative that speaks to the audience you intend to reach. Your background has taught you how to organize information and communicate it compellingly – even if it's first presented to you in a way that obscures the underlying narrative. This makes you uniquely suited to decipher and describe the results of UX experiments. It's one thing to see the hard numbers; you'll readily know how to tell the story behind them.