First Quartz Pty Ltd

What UX maturity looks like in an organization that embraces field studies.

Qualitative research offers a foundation for for empathy. It’s the basis of understanding meaning in the world and how people perceive things and work together. With quant research, you can identify the ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘who’ in the data, but with qual research, you can find out the ‘why’. Statistical significance of quant data isn’t everything - it depends on what you are trying to research. Qual data lets you understand what’s behind all those numbers. We need both of qual and quant to have an in-depth understanding of our customers.

Qualitative research is important for doing quality UX design work because we shouldn’t have wait for a prototype to take to them as a first point of engagement and evaluation of our design. The design can only be better and ‘fit for purpose’ - from the start - with qual data informing the design, before prototyping even begins. It starts with understanding how people do things today - the very things that our design solution will impact - hopefully in a positive way. You can only do that from outside-in. And you do that with qual research.

Product managers and Dev teams are often concerned with costs and delays. It can be demonstrated that qual research, while taking time and costing money up front, will reduce or eliminate the need higher cost rework late and start the design solution on firm analytical foundations. A UX team can align each feature to evidence gleaned from qual research. Qual research can also become the foundation fo the definition of done and the Acceptance Criteria for each feature or interaction, as qual research reveals the jobs that users want the design to help them achieve. In other words, it putting qual language into Agile and product management language.