What’s the Difference Between Quantitative and Qualitative UX Research?
1 June 2024 - By N. Hoeberichts
In our current era of product development and design, understanding the user experience (UX) has become paramount to ensure user satisfaction and a user-friendly experience.
UX research plays a key role in this understanding, making sure that invaluable insights into how users interact with a product are unlocked, and discovering what aspects they value most, and maybe most importantly, what exactly can and should be improved in the user and customer experience.
There are two main types of UX research: quantitative and qualitative research. Both are important in their own right, but each provide different types of data and insights.
In this blog post, let’s dive a bit deeper into each method, what each of them is used for, what data is collected and how combining data from both types of research will give you the most complete picture of whatever it is that your are researching about your user’s experience.
Quantitative UX Research
Quantitative UX research, as the name already suggests, comprises of collecting data that consists of numbers, trends and statistics. With the measurable data collected, you formulate concrete facts and find quantitative patterns in research. This method generally requires a large number of respondents and uses statistical analysis to make sense of the data collected. Research methodologies such as surveys, analytics, and A/B testing all fall under this type of research.
For instance, you might use quantitative research to explore how many users visited a specific feature on your website or app, how much time they spent there, or what percentage of users clicked on a particular button. This kind of data can help you understand product usage patterns, identify the most used features, and the elements of the product that aren't performing as well as expected.
Surveys are another type of quantitative UX research (although they can also be qualitative, if the questions are open-ended), whereby you can collect a large amount of meaningful data in a relatively quick way. Surveys can show statistically meaningful results that are representative of a larger target audience. They can be used, for instance, to validate a certain direction you want to take or uncover a trend.
Quantitative data will show you the trends and patterns in a large scale. However, what it doesn’t shed light on is why a patterns is happening. Such in-depth root cause analysis is done using qualitative research, which we’ll dive into next.
Qualitative UX Research
In contrast to its quantitative counterpart, qualitative UX research revolves around getting a complete and in-depth understanding the user's behaviour, motivations, and feelings. This kind of research goes deeper into the 'why' behind a user’s actions. This typically includes research methods like one-on-one interviews, contextual inquiries, direct observations such as ethnographic studies, and usability tests.
An example of this kind of research may be to find out why users are not using a specific feature on your website or product, what difficulties they are encountering when trying to use it, or how they feel about your product. These kind of qualitative insights can help you empathise with your users and customers, by better understanding their pain points and needs, which will help you make more informed product decisions going forward.
In-depth interviews, such as contextual inquiries, will help to better understand the why behind certain observations or behaviours. Understanding the why behind it, will help you understand the real need or pain point that users may have with your offering.
What this kind of research doesn’t reveal is the large-scale impact of something and if a particular insight is statistically significant, given the smaller number of research participants that
Mixed Method Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Combined
Qualitative and quantitative research methods provide different kinds of insights, and capturing both types to answer your research question will lead to a better and more comprehensive understanding of the user experience. Quantitative research helps identify what is happening with your product, while qualitative research helps you understand why it's happening.
Using a mixed method research approach will help solidify the accuracy and reliability of your data and insights. Using just one of the approaches might mean that this data source is affected by certain biases, but using two or more approaches will significantly decrease the chance of bias in your research data.
A lot of misconceptions often revolve around mixed method research: for example that it’s too expensive and that it takes too long. However, it is more about using the right research method to answer whatever question it is you have. Say that you want to improve your website conversion. For the qualitative component, you can do usability tests, which are quite easy to organise. Then for the quantitative part, you can simply look at product analytics data to understand what’s going on, on a larger scale.
When to use which method?
Which UX research method you should use, largely depends on the type of insights you want to collect and what research questions you want answers to.
Do you want to understand what features are being used the most in your product? The quantitative product analytics data will best help you out.
Do you want to understand why users are not using a certain feature or product? Or what their pain points are when using your product? Then qualitative methodologies such as interviews or usability tests will probably be the way to go.
And when should you use both methods combined? You should combine quantitative and qualitative research if is the question(s) you want answers to is complex and high level. For example, “Should we launch in a new market?” or “should we develop a separate product for a new target audience?” are all complex and highly strategic questions that will need more data inputs from different kinds of research.
Quantitative research, that shows mostly large scale data and trends, provides a bird's eye view of user behaviour. On the other hand, qualitative research delves deep into user motivations and experiences, offering rich insights that can drive user-centric design.
By using both of these methods in your UX research strategy, you can gain a well-rounded and deep understanding of your users and their needs when it comes to your product and offering*.*
This understanding, in turn, allows you to make informed and user-centric decisions to improve your product, ultimately leading to a more satisfying user experience and a successful product.
📖 Want to read more UX research blog posts? Check out all the blog posts here.