UX methods are the practical techniques teams use to understand people, frame problems, and evaluate whether a design works.
Turning understanding into practice
UX methods are the practical techniques we use to understand people, frame problems, explore possibilities, and evaluate experiences. They turn assumptions into questions, and questions into evidence.
While theories and principles help us reason about an experience, methods help us investigate what actually happens when people encounter it.
Methods differ in the kind of evidence they produce. Some are attitudinal, capturing what people say, such as interviews and surveys. Others are behavioral, capturing what people do, such as usability tests and contextual inquiry. Some are qualitative, explaining why something happens, while others are quantitative, measuring how much or how often.[1][2]
Choose the method for the question
There is no single UX method for every problem. Choose methods based on what you need to learn.
To understand behaviors and motivations, interviews or contextual inquiry may help. To understand an experience over time, journey mapping can expose transitions and critical moments. To find out whether people can complete a task, usability testing provides the most direct evidence.[3]
What people say and what they do often differ, so the strongest conclusions usually combine both kinds of evidence.[2] Be cautious, too, when a single number becomes the goal; see Campbell’s Law.
Methods are most useful when connected to the ideas behind them. For example:
Cognitive Load → Hick’s Law → Constraints → Usability Test
Cognitive Bias → Peak-End Rule → Feedback → Journey Mapping
Start with the question, then choose the method that gives you the evidence you need.
How the collection fits together
The four sections of this collection build on one another. Each reference page links to related pages in the other sections, so you can follow an idea from human behavior to a design decision and the evidence behind it.
- Psychology Concepts — how people perceive, remember, decide, and feel
- UX Theory — recurring patterns that explain why designs work or fail
- Interaction Principles — what a well-designed interaction should do
- UX Methods — how to gather evidence about real experiences
Concepts in this section
Understand people and context
- User Interview — one-on-one conversations about goals, needs, and frustrations
- Contextual Inquiry — observing real work in its real environment
- UX Survey — measuring attitudes and satisfaction across many people
- Card Sorting — revealing how people expect information to be organized
Make sense of what you learn
- Affinity Mapping — grouping observations into themes
- User Personas — research-based profiles that represent groups of users
- Journey Mapping — each step, thought, and feeling on the way to a goal
- Design Principles — shared statements that guide decisions when trade-offs arise
Evaluate designs
- Usability Test — watching people attempt realistic tasks to see where a design helps or hinders them
References and further reading
- Nielsen Norman Group. When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/
- Nielsen Norman Group. Attitudinal vs. Behavioral Research in UX. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/attitudinal-behavioral/
- Nielsen Norman Group. UX Research Cheat Sheet. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-research-cheat-sheet/
- Yablonski, J. Laws of UX (format inspiration for this series). https://lawsofux.com/