User Research – Methods and Best Practices
How This Course Will Transform Your Career
In This Course, You'll
Get excited as you learn the business superpower: user research! Master it, and you'll solve meaningful problems, create better experiences, and drive success in any field. Why? User research empowers you to become a detective of human behavior. You'll discover what people truly need so that you can create products and services they love. You can use user research to reduce abandoned carts in online shopping, improve patient outcomes in healthcare, and solve challenges in any industry. It's easier than you think! With step-by-step guidance, you'll master User Research quickly—no matter your background. Studies show that user research can improve time to market by up to 330% and increase revenue by up to 320%. So get on board, do work you're proud of, and get paid what you're worth.
Make yourself invaluable with timeless user research skills. Your ability to understand human behavior will future-proof your career and protect you against AI. Effortlessly transform insights into Return on Investment (ROI) as you design solutions people love. You'll learn to make data-driven decisions that eliminate guesswork as you design products and services based on real user needs. That drives loyalty and outperforms competitors. You'll easily translate research into visuals that win over stakeholders, managers, and clients. Discover exactly what motivates people and build solutions that consistently deliver results.
Gain confidence and credibility with hands-on experience in usability testing, contextual inquiries, semi-structured qualitative interviews, and observational methods. Master how to ask the right questions and create actionable personas from your research. You'll plan, conduct, and analyze research in real-world scenarios, fast-tracking your success with 40+ ready-to-use templates like interview guides, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps. If you want to leave assumptions behind and create with precision, purpose, and impact, this course is perfect for you. If you're interested, we'll even help you build your portfolio around an app, so your new superpowers shine clearly.
It's Easy to Fast-Track Your Career with the World's Best Experts
Master complex skills effortlessly with proven best practices and toolkits directly from the world's top design experts. Meet your experts for this course:
Frank Spillers: Service Designer and Founder and CEO of Experience Dynamics.
Ann Blandford: Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at University College London.
Alan Dix: Author of the bestselling book “Human-Computer Interaction” and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University.
Gain an Industry-Recognized UX Course Certificate
Use your industry-recognized Course Certificate on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website.
Our courses and Course Certificates are trusted by these industry leaders:
Why Learn User Research?
User Research falls under the umbrella term of User Experience (UX) design. UX design is your fast-track to a meaningful, secure, and rewarding career.
Worried You'll Lose Your Job to AI? UX Design Skills Make You AI-Proof
UX design builds on your core human strengths, such as emotional intelligence, deep human understanding, critical thinking, intuition, and imagination.
AI can't replicate your uniquely human ability to design for real emotions and needs such as joy, comfort, curiosity, safety, and a sense of belonging. These deeply human insights are your superpowers. With UX design skills, you'll turn them into products and experiences people truly love. You become irreplaceable, confident and in demand.
And yes, we'll also show you how to use AI to accelerate your results.
Feeling Stuck in the 9–5? Design Your Freedom
Tired of feeling undervalued, anxious, or trapped in your career? UX design skills open doors to freedom, flexibility, remote work, and a career you're excited about—without starting from scratch.
Stop wondering if you could be more. Start realizing your full potential today.
UX Design is Booming: Accelerate Your Career to Higher Salaries and Impact Across All Jobs and Industries
Salaries for people with design skills are soaring, often surpassing $200K in cities like San Francisco, and job growth is strong (13% globally). Why? Because companies thrive when their users are happy. Companies that invest in great design outperform the S&P 500 Index by a whopping 228%.
Design a Life You Love
Great design is all about helping people meet their needs and achieve their goals through intuitive, meaningful, and delightful experiences. Skills in design will empower you to create experiences and products that make people's lives easier and more fulfilling. And when people love what you create, your business thrives, and your salary potential grows. You get the ultimate double win:
You'll feel deeply fulfilled by designing experiences and products people love.
You'll be financially rewarded for your real-world impact.
Course Overview: What You'll Master
- Each week, one lesson becomes available.
- There's no time limit to finish a course. Lessons have no deadlines.
- Estimated learning time: 32 hours 15 mins spread over 7 weeks.
Lesson 0: Welcome and Introduction
-
0.1: An Introduction to Courses from IxDF (37 mins)
-
0.2: Get Help, Career Advice, and Job Opportunities (1 min)
-
0.3: How to Get Your Course Certificate (16 mins)
-
0.4: Grow Your Global Network and Build Your Brand (11 mins)
-
0.5: Global Skills, Local Jobs: Build Your Network in Your Area (1 min)
-
0.6: Gain Timeless Skills Through Courses from IxDF (21 mins)
-
0.7: Mandatory vs Optional Lesson Items (7 mins)
-
0.8: Learn Smarter: The Perfect Mix of Video and Text (6 mins)
-
0.9: Community-based learning and networking (6 mins)
Lesson 1: Why do User Research and How to Fit User Research into Your Everyday Work
-
1.1: Welcome to User Research – Methods and Best Practices (16 mins)
-
1.2: User Research: What It Is and Why You Should Do It (24 mins)
-
1.3: When to do User Research (21 mins)
-
1.4: How to Involve Stakeholders in Your User Research (21 mins)
-
1.5: Return on Investment of User Research (2 hours 20 mins)
-
1.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (7 mins)
-
1.7: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 2: The Basics of Qualitative User Research
-
2.1: Welcome and Introduction (6 mins)
-
2.2: The Basics of Recruiting Users for Usability Testing (19 mins)
-
2.3: Planning a User Research Project (1 hour 7 mins)
-
2.4: Best Practices for Qualitative User Research (27 mins)
-
2.5: Conducting Ethical User Research (20 mins)
-
2.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (8 mins)
-
2.7: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 3: Usability Testing
-
3.1: Welcome and Introduction (11 mins)
-
3.2: Introduction to Usability Testing Methods and Metrics (1 hour 3 mins)
-
3.3: Planning a Usability Test (1 hour 20 mins)
-
3.4: Running a Usability Test (1 hour 2 mins)
-
3.5: Reporting on the Results of a Usability Test (47 mins)
-
3.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (7 mins)
-
3.7: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 4: Semi-Structured Qualitative Interviews
-
4.1: Welcome and Introduction (8 mins)
-
4.2: Pros and Cons of Conducting User Interviews (46 mins)
-
4.3: How to Prepare for a User Interview and Ask the Right Questions (52 mins)
-
4.4: How to Moderate User Interviews (1 hour 55 mins)
-
4.5: How to Do a Thematic Analysis of User Interviews (57 mins)
-
4.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (6 mins)
-
4.7: Build Your Portfolio: User Interviews (18 mins)
-
4.8: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 5: Contextual Inquiry
-
5.1: Welcome and Introduction (7 mins)
-
5.2: Introduction to Contextual Inquiry (1 hour 50 mins)
-
5.3: Planning a Contextual Inquiry (1 hour 0 mins)
-
5.4: Running a Contextual Inquiry (1 hour 55 mins)
-
5.5: Analyzing a Contextual Inquiry (1 hour 27 mins)
-
5.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (7 mins)
-
5.7: Build Your Portfolio: Contextual Inquiry (19 mins)
-
5.8: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 6: User Observations
-
6.1: Welcome and Introduction (8 mins)
-
6.2: Introduction to Observational Methods (1 hour 39 mins)
-
6.3: Planning an Observational Study (34 mins)
-
6.4: Running an Observational Study (1 hour 22 mins)
-
6.5: Analyzing an Observational Study (1 hour 41 mins)
-
6.6: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (7 mins)
-
6.7: Build Your Portfolio: Observations (20 mins)
-
6.8: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 7: How to Make Your Research Matter
-
7.1: Welcome and Introduction (8 mins)
-
7.2: How to Visualize Your Qualitative User Research Results for Maximum Impact (20 mins)
-
7.3: Creating Personas from User Research Results (44 mins)
-
7.4: Workshops to Establish Empathy and Understanding from User Research Results (17 mins)
-
7.5: Conversations: Community-Based Learning and Networking (9 mins)
-
7.6: Build Your Portfolio: Create Design Deliverables (17 mins)
-
7.7: Congratulations and Recap (6 mins)
Lesson 8: Course Certificate, Final Networking, and Course Wrap-up
How Others Have Benefited
Ulrike Bruckenberger, Austria
“I enjoyed the mix between video and text very much and I am sure that it improved my learning experience. In general the content of the course was very interesting to me and I consider it very useful for improving in doing user research. I really like the possibility to download templates about different methods because they enable me to easily look up the most important information.”
Laura Gieco, Australia
“A strength of the course was the instructors' knowledge and examples from their own experience. I find it very useful when someone tells you stories, in this case about situations when they did research. The lessons where very easy to follow and understand.”
Juan Esteban Arango Florez, Colombia
“The course instructor has a lot of knowledge and experience, and can explain the topics without a problem.”
How It Works
-
Take online courses by industry experts
Lessons are self-paced so you'll never be late for class or miss a deadline.
-
Get a Course Certificate
Your answers are graded by experts, not machines. Get an industry-recognized Course Certificate to prove your skills.
-
Advance your career
Use your new skills in your existing job or to get a new job in UX design. Get help from our community.
Start Advancing Your Career Now
Join us to take “User Research – Methods and Best Practices”. Take other courses at no additional cost. Make a concrete step forward in your career path today.
Advance my career now