Introduction to Evidence-based Design

Making the design process simple and transparent while shifting the focus away from the product team and the business toward the user. It's important to emphasize that design isn't just about aesthetics—such as colors, typography, graphics, or form. Design is measurable. This measurability allows us to analyze and address challenges more effectively, leading to better solutions that directly serve the user's needs.

Core UX Research Methods

1. Empathy Mapping

A visual representation of an empathy map showing four quadrants: Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels. The map is filled with colorful sticky notes representing user insights.
Empathy Map showing user insights across different dimensions

Visualizes the needs, feelings, thoughts, and challenges of users to create a shared understanding.

  • Identifies user pain points and motivations
  • Creates a shared understanding among team members
  • Helps in making user-centered design decisions

2. User Journey Mapping

A detailed user journey map showing different touchpoints and emotional states over time. The map includes user actions, thoughts, and feelings at each stage.
User Journey Map illustrating the user's experience over time

Analyzes and visualizes user experiences and interactions along a defined action to identify pain points and improvement potentials.

  • Maps user interactions across different touchpoints
  • Identifies emotional highs and lows
  • Reveals opportunities for improvement

3. Persona Creation

Three detailed persona cards showing different user types with their characteristics, goals, and pain points. Each persona has a name, photo, and key attributes.
Persona cards representing different user types

Helps create detailed profiles of typical users to ensure user-centered design and align decisions with real user needs.

  • Provides clear user archetypes
  • Guides design decisions
  • Keeps the team focused on user needs

4. Rapid Prototyping

Various paper and digital prototypes showing different stages of design iteration, from low-fidelity sketches to interactive mockups.
Different stages of rapid prototyping

Enables quick, iterative testing of concepts with simple prototypes to gather early user feedback and validate design decisions transparently.

  • Quick iteration and testing
  • Early feedback collection
  • Cost-effective validation

5. Usability Testing

A user testing session setup showing a participant interacting with a prototype while being observed by researchers.
Usability testing session in progress

Measures how users actually interact with the product, capturing both quantitative and qualitative user experience data to optimize design decisions objectively and measurably.

  • Direct user observation
  • Quantitative and qualitative data collection
  • Objective performance metrics

Advanced Research Approaches

6. Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)

A JTBD framework diagram showing the relationship between user goals, motivations, and desired outcomes.
Jobs-to-be-Done framework visualization

Analyzes and identifies precisely what users want to achieve (what tasks they want to complete), focusing on user needs and measurable successes.

  • Focuses on user goals rather than features
  • Identifies unmet needs
  • Guides innovation opportunities

7. Lean UX – Hypothesis Testing

A Lean UX canvas showing hypotheses, assumptions, and experiments planned to validate design decisions.
Lean UX hypothesis testing framework

Makes assumptions about the impact of specific design decisions and quickly validates them through user experiments, making design measurable and improvable.

  • Rapid hypothesis validation
  • Data-driven decision making
  • Iterative improvement

8. Heuristic Evaluation

A checklist of Nielsen's heuristics being applied to evaluate a user interface.
Heuristic evaluation checklist

Systematically evaluates based on clear usability criteria (e.g., according to Jakob Nielsen) the quality of a product, making design transparent and verifiable.

  • Systematic evaluation
  • Standardized criteria
  • Quick identification of issues

9. Kano Model

A Kano model diagram showing the categorization of features into basic, performance, and delight factors.
Kano model feature categorization

Identifies user requirements and categorizes them into basic, performance, and delight features, helping prioritize design decisions based on user needs.

  • Feature prioritization
  • User satisfaction analysis
  • Resource allocation guidance

10. A/B Testing

A/B testing dashboard showing comparison metrics between two design variants.
A/B testing results visualization

Compares measurable different design solutions based on concrete metrics (e.g., conversion rate, click rate) and enables data-based design decisions with clear focus on user preferences.

  • Data-driven decision making
  • Statistical validation
  • Continuous optimization