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UX research encompasses all types of research activities: user research, competitive research, stakeholder or subject matter expert interviews, audits, analytics, and other information sources—with the goal of helping organizations understand how to better serve their users.

Think beyond the traditional research report! Below is a list of UX research deliverables you can use to help you communicate strategy or research insights with greater impact and engagement.

In January 2020, I spoke at the 2020 QRCA Conference in Austin, Texas. The name of my talk was “UX Research Is Not a Synonym for Usability Testing.”

The inspiration for my talk actually came to me immediately while attending the 2019 conference… Sometimes when I introduced myself as a UX researcher to another qualitative researcher, I heard, “I do usability testing, too!” Hhm?

If you haven’t guessed by now, I love making lists.

And as a maximizer, I’m always looking for new ways to grow as a researcher and strategist—whether it’s new research methods or techniques, reasons to invest in UX, or ways to communicate my research findings.

Are you looking for ways to deliver research insights more effectively to stakeholders or the design team? Do you find report writing to be too slow or too redundant? Or do you need a deliverable that the entire design team can collaborate on together?

Want to understand what the user experience is really like from the perspective of a customer? The data collected from web/app analytics, CES, VOC text analytics, video analytics, and session replays can show us where customer problems lie, but they don’t tell us why.

To inform your design decisions with deep, in-context insights, there are 5 different research methods you can use—depending on your research goal.

Surprise! Not all UX research methods include users. There are other ways to inspect or understand the user experience without observing or talking to people.

Supplement your user research with the following.