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Exploratory Research

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Exploratory Research is used to discover the needs, behaviors, and goals of users of web and mobile applications that the designers and researchers did not know before the study.

The primary purpose of Exploratory Research is to gain a more profound, multidimensional understanding of end users — their problems, needs, behaviors, preferences, experiences, and emotions.

By allowing you to understand the user, Exploratory Research gives you a chance to create a digital product that is better tailored to meet user goals and objectives in a more satisfying, enjoyable, and attractive way.

Exploratory Research allows you to understand not only what need the product is supposed to satisfy but also how and whose need it is supposed to fulfill.

In this sense, it is strategically vital research that should be a permanent element in creating product strategy and implementation and development plans.

What is Exploratory Research? What types of UX Research hide behind this name?

How to conduct Exploratory Research? When should it be used?

If you are curious about the answers to the above questions, be sure to read this article!

Do you want to perform UX Research?

Exploratory Research — what is it?

Exploratory Research is most often recommended when business owners, UX/UI designers, and UX researchers notice that there are more unknowns than actual data, information, and knowledge that are relatively certain.

Exploratory Research - what is it

No single method or research technique is really hidden behind the term Exploratory Research.

It is a collective name for any combination of methods and techniques that a research team (UX Research) wants to use to deepen its understanding of product usage methods or end users' previously unknown needs.

While Exploratory Research can be done at any stage of digital product development, it is definitely worth using it as early as possible.

This makes it possible to build a product focused on the end user's needs, capabilities, expectations, and experiences from the beginning.

Exploratory Research allows you to discover, understand, explore, learn, and search for better solutions, fields, and areas with new opportunities.

In other words, it makes it possible to improve products and enhance the user experience.

UX tests, Exploratory Research

They are also a source of inspiration and discoveries of new perspectives that help compete more effectively in the market, maintain position, and develop digital products.

The Value of Exploratory Research

The broad problematic scope of this type of research  (for example, expressed in the question: How do people learn to play instruments?) is an opportunity to understand the broader context.

By embedding the product in a grid of needs, values, goals, and expectations much more complex and of greater importance to the user.

Value of Exploratory Research

Moreover, Exploratory Research is a tool capable of the following:

  • Identifying and defining new research problems
  • Establishing research priorities
  • Formulating hypotheses
  • Setting a long-term research strategy.

The great advantage of Exploratory Research is the ability to pose any research question and to find the most appropriate method possible to obtain an answer to it.

Exploratory Research is also helpful for generating new ideas (in terms of design, functions, research, and business).

It also provides a kind of map through which it is possible to:

  • Gain more profound insights
  • Prioritize work
  • Justify decisions (design and business decisions)
  • Empathize — to deeper understand users' emotions, positions, and conditions.

It allows UX/UI designers to understand better the problem they are trying to solve. It is a fundamental basis for formulating design hypotheses, which can then be subjected to verification.

Thus, the design process is not haphazard but structured, purposeful, and more rational.

What is Exploratory Research UX

Exploratory Research can also be a starting point for conducting quantitative research, allowing you to test solutions and identify the most effective ones.

Starting from generally formulated problems (using the questions such as: What? How? Where? Why? When? In what way?) and narrowing down aspects of the problems so you can reach more specific and concrete issues.

A common reason for using Exploratory Research is the desire to discover a new field of innovation, a niche, or new areas into which a digital product can fit.

The main difference between Evaluation and Exploratory Research is also reflected in this aspect.

Evaluation Research  (e.g., usability testing) determines the level of satisfaction of user needs by a digital product (expressed, for example, in ease of navigation).

Exploratory Research is used to create new ideas by seeking answers to questions with a high level of generality.

The most commonly used research methods in Exploratory Research

Flexibility, which we have already mentioned, is expressed in the absence of rigid rules for selecting single or combined research methods and techniques.

The ability to be creative in the choice of methods is a significant advantage of Exploratory Research.

Examples of Exploratory Research

Exploratory Research is usually conducted using the following:

Individual In-Depth Interviews and Focus groups are heavily formalized methods. They consist of conversations with respondents who are asked to express their opinions, comments, and observations regarding the digital product under study.

In Focus group research, a researcher moderates their course. The interaction between respondents helps discover more problems and their popularity.

Ethnographic Research allows you to observe application users in their natural environment, in a familiar context, which enables you to observe behaviors that are more natural, typical, and habitual.

Diary Studies enable the systematic collection of data in a special questionnaire, in which a respondent writes down all actions related to the subject of a study.

Examples of Exploratory Research

Contextual Research consists of conducting a structured interview and observing users and their behavior in their natural environment. Its goal is to discover how and under what conditions users use a digital product.

How to conduct Exploratory Research?

In the age of the pandemic and the growing popularity of research platforms, studies conducted in the remote formula are slowly becoming a norm. This also applies to Exploratory Research.

Exploratory Research conducted in a remote formula allows you to, in an equally reliable, accurate, and credible way, collect data and discover behaviors, reactions, opinions, and attitudes of users of digital products.

An appropriate approach to techniques of carrying out a study enables you to obtain valuable data.

When conducting Exploratory Research, it is necessary to ensure the following:

  • Credibility and trust (toward research, researcher, and the subject of research)
  • Appropriate, multi-channel building of a relationship with a respondent, thanks to which the study will be much more comfortable and understandable for them
  • Multidimensionality of research, a combination of methods to guarantee a more profound, broader, and exhaustive study of the problem
  • Proper preparation and guidance of research participants
  • Familiarization of respondents with a tool that is used for communication and performing research tasks

In general, it is essential to appropriately prepare for conducting research by finding answers to the following questions:

  • What is the primary purpose of the study?
  • What are the most critical research questions?
  • Which research methods will provide the most accurate and exhaustive answers?
  • What kind of groups of respondents should be studied?
  • Where and how to recruit research participants?
  • With what tools should the research be conducted?
  • What is the minimum and maximum time available for research?

Remember that Exploratory Research primarily serves the following purposes:

  • Getting to know the customer groups — or to discover new, not previously considered
  • Obtaining a broader picture of the market — Big Picture
  • Creating and testing new ideas
  • Looking for opportunities
  • Finding new opportunities, economic situations, niches, trends, and tendencies.

Exploratory Research. Summary

  1. The development of Exploratory techniques has resulted in Exploratory Research being used to discover unknown needs, behaviors, and goals of users of web and mobile applications.
  2. The primary goal of Exploratory Research is a more profound, multidimensional understanding of end users — their problems, needs, behaviors, preferences, experiences, and emotions.
  3. Exploratory Research allows you to understand not only what need the product is supposed to satisfy but also to pre-test how and for whom it is supposed to satisfy that need.
  4. It is often recommended when an organization measures or feels a deficit of certainty, reliable data, information, and knowledge, which can provide a decisive argument.
  5. Exploratory Research includes a variety of research methods, and its distinguishing feature is flexibility.
  6. Exploratory Research is the name used for any combination of methods  (e.g., ethnographic UX research) and techniques, excluding UX usability testing, website usability testing, application usability testing, laboratory usability testing, remote usability testing, interface, and usability testing in general.
  7. The broad problem scope of Exploratory Research is an opportunity to understand the broader context and embed the product in a grid of needs, values, goals, and expectations that is much more complex and of greater importance to the user.
  8. UX Research and Exploratory Research are used to generate new ideas.
  9. They are a fundamental basis for formulating design hypotheses, which can then be subjected to verification.
  10. Evaluation Research (e.g., Usability Testing) is used to determine the level of satisfaction of user needs provided by a digital product. Exploratory Research is used to create new ideas by seeking answers to questions with a high level of generality.
  11. Qualitative UX Research, UX Research with users, including Exploratory Research, are often conducted through Individual In-Depth Interviews, Focus groups, Ethnographic observation methods, Diary Studies, and Contextual Research.
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Journal / Redaktor
Author: Radek
UX Writer and researcher by education + experience. Collects The Story's knowledge and shares it on the Journal.
Reviewer: Dymitr Romanowski

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