Mixed methods is the most important research skillset of the 2020s
As tech companies integrate user research as a standalone function, they are quickly rewriting the rules of the research industry as we know it.
The future of user research belongs to those that can mix qual and quant together
87% of companies say that the market today is more crowded than ever. With lower barriers to entry and more access to consumers online, the importance of delivering an incredible user experience has gone through the roof. This increased competition is what is driving the incredible growth of User Experience (UX) professionals.
This isn’t new news. UX has been on the rise for years. But there’s another change coming towards us that is going to move UX to centre stage as one of the most important parts of your company strategy in coming years. That change is called Product-Led Growth.
Rewriting the role of research
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a strategy that uses your product as the main way to grow your company. Unlike sales- or marketing-led organisations where deals are done over dinner and 18 holes of golf, product-led companies recognise that the end user is the new buyer. That end user’s primary decision making criteria is not “how will this product help the company’s bottom line?”, it’s “how will this product help me in my day-to-day?”.
While these strategic choices may seem far removed from UX, they completely reframe the job of research. User research is no longer just about creating a smooth experience or quantifying the cost savings a product creates. Instead, user researchers have a central role in crafting company strategy by answering the question ‘What are our users’ biggest unmet needs, pains and motivations?’. As the need for user research is increasingly becoming tied to strategy, the demand for researchers has skyrocketed. Searches for ‘UX Researcher” are up nearly 500% in the last 5 years and “there is more demand for customer insights today than there are UX researchers to uncover them.”
This surging adoption of user research in tech companies has resulted in an emerging trend; mixed methods is the most important research specialism of the next decade.
Why is mixed methods becoming so popular?
Quantitative data is the internal currency of tech companies. The credo of these tech companies is W. Edward Demings’ famous quote, “In God we trust, all others must bring data.” And make no mistake, product teams don’t think that an interview quote passes for “data”.
The collision of these two worlds — the quantitative technologist and the qualitative researcher — is the driving force behind today’s mixed methods resurgence. Rather than prioritising one over the other, tech companies recognise the need for both. Without qualitative research, understanding why people behave the way they do or uncovering new unknown insights are often beyond reach. Without quantitative research, it’s impossible to know the scale and impact of our qualitative findings or prioritise our next steps.
What is new about this relationship is the importance of their interaction working smoothly. Before recently, these two disciplines generally met under ad-hoc circumstances. With qual’s new seat at the decision-making table, it’s now increasingly important that both specialisms can collaborate effectively. Simply put, one has to learn the other’s language. It is increasingly clear that this burden is falling to researchers.
We’re seeing the impact of this new role across multiple aspects of the researcher’s job. Research is becoming a proactive, continuous function that isn’t confined to pre-determined project timelines. Identifying the core pains driving user behaviour must be proactive instead of a reactive response to the output of big data. As the team that interacts with the end user most, product and UX leads are responsible for understanding user’s motivation to purchase. Most importantly, user researchers are becoming multilingual influencers capable of wielding any type of data in order to convert internal skeptics to the perspective of the end user. As companies become more integrated cross-functionally, this need for researchers to become multilingual internal networkers only grows. They become the go-to resource for everyone, from the marketing and sales teams to the product and design functions — each of which speak a different language and value different types of data for decision-making.
Hang on… what is mixed methods research?
Mixed methods is a type of user research that blends qualitative and quantitative methods together within a single research project. Companies like Spotify, Airbnb and Lyft are using mixed methods research to combine rich user insights with actionable statistics for deeper user insights.
Leading technology companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter are ALL hiring mixed methods researchers right now. Let’s jump into some examples to explain the three types of mixed methods research.
Exploratory Mixed Methods (Qual → Quant)
If you’re working on a project with a lot of unknowns, exploratory mixed methods is a great way to form a hypothesis. It usually starts with open-ended qual like a user interview or free-text survey before moving into a quant survey to measure the significance and validity of the insights gathered. Check out this example of UX Researcher Alison who used exploratory mixed methods to prioritise what features to build based on what would impact the most number of users.
Explanatory Mixed Methods (Quant → Qual)
Explanatory research is perfect for research projects where you’re trying to interpret quantitative findings. By analysing user or market behaviour using big data, researchers can identify a measurable insight and bring into forward into a qualitative deep dive to learn more about the context behind the numbers. Clement Kao, PM at Blend, describes his experience using explanatory mixed methods to dig into user churn and diagnose the factors impacting their highest value cohort of users.
Dynamic Mixed Methods (Qual + Quant)
As the name suggests, dynamic mixed-methods collects qual and quant data at the same time within the one research method (unlike exploratory and explanatory which need multiple methods/steps). Dynamic research projects give more control over to users so that multiple data types can be collected, making them a great fit for discovery-focused research and product-led companies looking to understand user perspective.
Dynamic mixed methods is a new type of research that has been unlocked by advancements in technology. You’ve possibly heard of them being called “qual at scale”. The most common type is unmoderated usability testing at scale, however new platforms, like OpinionX have emerged in recent years that reimagine existing research methods for the digital age. These tools have the added benefit of taking away some of the most time-consuming manual tasks associated with mixed methods such as thematic coding and qualitative analysis. Dig deeper into dynamic research with this great case study about nonprofit Feed the Heroes using dynamic surveys to understand donor motivations.
The future of research?
Mixed methods research used to be an academic affair that was convoluted and inaccessible. That is no longer the case. As the leaders of the Product-Led Growth movement attest; we are now in the era of the end user — and Mixed Methods Research is your toolkit to understand those users.
About the author: Daniel Kyne is the Co-Founder and CEO of OpinionX, a next-generation survey tool that helps product and UX teams understand what matters most to their users in just one click. He curates a newsletter on the future of user research called The Full-Stack Researcher and can be found shouting out into the internet void on Twitter and LinkedIn. (Originally published February 1st 2021)