We will use different methods and tools to understand how users are actually doing their tasks and how we can improve their different processes. Our objective, as user experience designers, is to offer a solution for an existing problem. The first thing we have to do is to learn as much as possible about the experience of our users when doing their tasks, in order to know which points are especially tedious and which are simple and productive.

In this chapter, we will cover everything from planning to the implementation of this process using different techniques that can be applied according to the needs of the project and the information that we want to obtain.

Our system needs...

There are a lot of methods that you can use to gain a deeper understanding of how your users think. In this chapter, we will explain how to apply different methods to understand your user's mental model. Different techniques will give different results; therefore, some methods will be more useful for some objectives than others. Practice with all of them and create your own set of tools.

In this chapter, we will go through the most common methods used by many user experience designers. They are easy to implement and the investment in time will be justified by the quantity of information you will get.

These methods consist of small tasks to give to your participants. Allowing them to use their own terminology will help us understand how they think and how they expect the system to interact with them.

We will go over some of the most used documents in the research stage. These documents will make the gathered information accessible and easy to use for the whole team, so all the different people included in the development process will benefit from them. Connecting with your users' needs is easier when you can imagine them as real people, and therefore these documents will try to create a real person in the development team's mind.

Once we have collected all possible information from our users, we will try to classify and represent our users as real people with needs and circumstances. The same application will not be used in the same way by all our users, so we have to try to understand the different contexts that affect the user experience we are designing. We will work with different types of users in our head, trying to make our solution effective...

Performing research tasks may be unworkable at first because of the lack of resources or budget. However, some of the proposed processes can be carried out without investing a large amount of resources.

Without knowing the problem well, it is very difficult to provide an adequate solution. If it is not possible to perform a detailed study of the tasks for which we will provide solutions, try to analyze the behavior of a small group of users. A fieldwork vision is always fruitful and helps us understand the way the user thinks, avoiding solutions that, while they may be effective, are not suitable for the specific environment of your users.

A competition study will be very useful for all departments besides the design department. It will give us an interesting insight into the effectiveness of certain types of solutions and helps us place ourselves in the market...

In this chapter, we talked about the need for carrying a good study of the mental model of your users in order to create effective solutions, that is, how discovering patterns and conventions helps the designer take better decisions later when exploring the possible design solutions.

We also presented some useful research methods and documents to present your findings. The whole team will benefit from this information, making it easier to create a user-friendly application.

In the next chapter, we will talk about sketching, a technique that will allow us to explore possible solutions and present ideas quickly and efficiently.