User Research Essentials
3 day training course
Practical hands-on training to ensure your team has the knowledge and skills to inform the design of successful products and services.
Course overview
Day 1: User research foundations
Understand the origin and importance of user research: Recognise the difference between user research and market research, and appreciate the value user research brings to product design and development.
Gain insights into human behaviour: Grasp the basic psychological principles and cognitive biases that influence user behaviours and decision-making processes in the context of product interactions.
Write user needs statements: Formulate user needs statements and their success criteria.
Implement research throughout the product development phases: Understand how to integrate research into the various stages of a product’s lifecycle.
Adhere to ethical guidelines: Uphold principles of research ethics, including informed consent and respecting participant confidentiality.
Initiate a user research project: Plan research effectively by forming questions, choosing methods, and beginning the process of participant recruitment.
Day 2: Key research methods
Execute discovery and evaluative research: Conduct various discovery research techniques and understand evaluative methods like usability testing.
Moderate interviews with efficiency: Design effective discussion guides and moderate user interviews.
Harness continuous research tools: Recognise when to utilise analytics and surveys, taking into consideration the principles of data triangulation.
Capture and analyse research data: Skillfully note, record, and analyse user research data using various tools and techniques.
Day 3: Delivering impactful research at scale
Conduct remote user research: Utilise remote tools and methodologies for effective user research.
Facilitate stakeholder workshops: Lead and contribute to workshops using techniques like empathy mapping and assumption mapping.
Communicate research findings effectively: Present findings in a clear, compelling manner, tailoring communication methods based on the audience.
Prepare for GOV.UK service assessments: Understand the importance, standards, and best practices for presenting at GOV.UK service assessments.
Our approach
Industry-standard research techniques
Our extensive experience working on user research projects for government, public and private sectors has enabled us to develop training based on a range of real world projects.
Project-ready
By focusing on outcomes and using practical, hands-on learning and a range of teaching and assessment methods, you can be confident that your recruits will be equipped with the skills they need from day one.
Tailored to your needs
Bespoke training is tailored to your organisation’s needs, ensuring your user researchers get maximum benefit from their training and development time.
Teaching and learning standards
This course is designed using OFQUAL (The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) standards for Level 4 learning outcomes, with scope to stretch and challenge learners to higher levels.
Our education and training specialist is IQA (Internal Qualified Assurers) qualified and they have quality checked and ratified the level of assessment and learning outcomes.
We also use principles of the government’s recommended competency frameworks for further quality, specifically:
SFIA Version 8 (Skills Framework for the Information Age):
Principles of User Research Level 4
Meet your instructor
15 years in user centred-design, building user-research capacity in government and leading the user-research on a top 5 GOV.UK service.
Tom Devlin
About UserLab
We’re a dedicated user-experience (UX) research agency that specialises in mixed-methods research and practical UX training.
We work with public, private and charitable sectors, and our work is underpinned by a well developed and robust methodology.
