How to Get Comfortable with Quantitative UX Research
MeasuringU
UX research and software supporting all stages of the user and customer experience.
We know that for a lot of UX professionals, quantitative UX research sounds like an oxymoron. You might have been involved in a few debates that included topics like:
Whether you should even use numbers in UX research
Which is the best UX metric to use
Whether you’re using the right statistical test on your data
Whether surveys are ever an appropriate UX research method
The “right” number of points in a rating scale
And, of course, the “correct” sample size
Unfortunately, these debates and discussions can lead to discomfort and avoidance of the topics altogether. Quantitative methods and analysis can be intimidating because when there’s math, many think there should always be only one correct answer. But UX research is an applied field. There’s as much work in understanding when to quantify, how to compute, when rules can be bent, and the limitations or flexibility in interpreting the numbers. We can’t solve all your math problems, but we hope we can get you more comfortable with quantitative research. Here are five ways.
This article is a preview. Read the full article on MeasuringU's Blog.
Summary
How do you get comfortable with quantitative research? It takes patience and the right mindset. Here are our five recommendations:
Look for keywords in research questions that suggest quant over qual methods.
While there are 70+ UX metrics, getting to know four (task completion, task time, SEQ, and UX-Lite) will allow you to address most research questions.
Understand binary versus continuous data types because they guide analyses and sample size computations.
Rating scales are the gateway to measuring attitudes. There are many variations and opportunities for biases and errors, but most format differences don’t have much impact on measures of UX attitudes.
Sampling error is real but not insurmountable. Use magic ranges instead of magic numbers for sample size planning.
This article is a preview. Read the full article on MeasuringU's Blog.
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