User Experience Design Research & Evidence-Based Practice 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A startup wants to validate product-market fit before investing in full UX research. Which lightweight research technique is most appropriate?
- Full ethnographic study over 3 months
- Concierge MVP with structured user interviews (Correct answer)
- Eye-tracking with 50 participants
- Quantitative survey with 1,000 respondents
Correct answer: Concierge MVP with structured user interviews
A Concierge MVP paired with structured interviews quickly validates whether a concept solves real user problems before significant investment.
Question 2: Which of the following is a key characteristic of guerrilla usability testing?
- It requires a dedicated observation room and one-way mirror
- It is conducted quickly in public spaces with readily available participants (Correct answer)
- It produces statistically significant results across large samples
- It requires participants to sign non-disclosure agreements
Correct answer: It is conducted quickly in public spaces with readily available participants
Guerrilla testing recruits participants on the spot in coffee shops or public areas for fast, low-cost, informal feedback.
Question 3: When should a UX researcher stop recruiting additional participants for a qualitative study?
- After exactly 5 participants, per Nielsen's rule
- When new interviews no longer surface novel themes (theoretical saturation) (Correct answer)
- After the research budget is exhausted
- When the project deadline arrives regardless of findings
Correct answer: When new interviews no longer surface novel themes (theoretical saturation)
Theoretical saturation — the point at which additional data yields no new insights — is the principled stopping criterion in qualitative research.
Question 4: A UX researcher notices that participants behave differently when they know they are being observed. This phenomenon is called:
- Confirmation bias
- The Hawthorne effect (Correct answer)
- Anchoring bias
- The observer effect in physics
Correct answer: The Hawthorne effect
The Hawthorne effect describes the tendency of people to alter their behavior when they know they are being watched.
Question 5: Which type of research question is best answered by a System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire?
- Why do users abandon the checkout flow?
- What is the perceived overall usability of the product? (Correct answer)
- Which icon label is most intuitive?
- How do users organize their mental model of navigation?
Correct answer: What is the perceived overall usability of the product?
The SUS is a validated 10-item scale that produces a single perceived-usability score, making it ideal for benchmarking overall usability.
Question 6: In UX research, what is a 'screener' used for?
- Filtering out offensive content from survey responses
- Selecting participants who match the target user profile before a study (Correct answer)
- A tool for hiding the researcher's identity during observation
- A checklist for reviewing wireframes for accessibility
Correct answer: Selecting participants who match the target user profile before a study
A screener is a set of qualifying questions used during recruitment to ensure study participants match the intended user population.
Question 7: A researcher presents findings to stakeholders who push back saying 'our users are different.' The most effective evidence-based response is to:
- Concede the point to maintain stakeholder relationships
- Present specific participant quotes, behavioral data, and patterns that support the findings (Correct answer)
- Agree to run another study to re-validate the same findings
- Defer the finding to the next product cycle
Correct answer: Present specific participant quotes, behavioral data, and patterns that support the findings
Anchoring pushback in concrete evidence — quotes, video clips, and observed patterns — makes findings harder to dismiss and grounds discussion in data.
User Experience Design Research & Evidence-Based Practice 5
A startup wants to validate product-market fit before investing in full UX research.
Which lightweight research technique is most appropriate?