We go and meet your users in their real usage environment, to understand what they actually do and not what we assume they do.

You have a product that grates, a journey that's poorly understood, a redesign to prepare or a new value proposition to validate? UX research makes the diagnosis before the prescription.

UX research

Q: What methods do you use?

We identify the real blockers, we model your personas from interviews, not from marketing stereotypes, and we test your concepts with real users. These are individual interviews, in front of the service in question, following an interview guide prepared to smooth out interpretation biases and let people speak without a filter.

Q: How many participants for a user test?

There's no point trying to identify every single problem. In qualitative testing, a few participants per profile are enough to bring out the essentials; beyond that, it's often the same points that come back.

Q: When in my project should I do research?

As early as possible, before decisions are locked in: UX research makes the diagnosis before the prescription. But we also step in on a product that already grates, to understand where it stalls.

We go meet your users on the very site of their use, to study what they actually do, their behaviours and their exchanges, and the differences across user types and contexts.

A journey that's misunderstood, a redesign to prepare, a value proposition to validate? We combine several methods to collect needs, remotely and in person, individually and collectively, qualitatively and quantitatively. And we adapt the reporting formats: executive summary, detailed report, debrief workshop… depending on your stakes and your audiences.

Browse our UX research case studies

Christophe Bey Co-founder and Associate Director & Disney addict

Your need

Understand before designing, test before building.

A journey that gets stuck without anyone knowing why. An interface your team thinks is great but that users struggle with. Decisions to make without really knowing the people you're talking to. That's where research comes in.

For Cultura, for instance, we met 47 customers in store and ran 30 interviews with staff and management, then surveyed around 1,000 people across France. Enough to move past the "single persona" stereotype and map out a plurality of realistic profiles.

Meet the Research team

What we help you do

We won't claim anything radical about your users. Our clients are often deep experts in their fields, and that's a good thing. On our team, three Human Factors PhDs ground research in a scientific rigor that's rare in UX/UI agencies. What research brings is a shift of perspective that forces you to look at the same problems through someone else's lens, that of the people who actually live with the product rather than those who design it.

Ask without biasing

These are individual interviews, facing the service in question, following a guide prepared in advance. The questions are calibrated to keep within the scope while leaving a certain freedom of speech, to smooth out interpretation biases and to allow expression without a filter, as far as possible. That's what lets us gather what users actually do, and not what they think they should say.

For example: Studying the mobility needs of people with disabilities

Surface the needs

Model behaviors

Research is about shifting perspective.

Approach the problem from the other side, the users' side, to question what we think we know. That's what makes the difference between a product you design for yourself and one that actually serves its audience.

Make up your users without going to meet them, deliver a marketing study in disguise, justify decisions that have already been made, promise you statistical-grade precision from a panel of five people.

What we cannot do

They trust us with their UX research

Training

Your teams learn to prepare and run interviews, interpret results, so you can commission useful studies and read reports with a critical eye.

Get trained in research

Discover the other links in the chain

UX design

Which information goes where, and when? That's the UX designers' craft: translating insights into architecture, journeys and wireframes.

Turn the need into a solution

UI design

Give interfaces a strong, accessible visual identity, ready to be integrated by development teams.

Bring the solution to life

Our UX research case studies

For the Cultura Foundation, how do you give young people a taste for reading?

560 young people later, here's what we learned

Bordeaux.fr: a portal that informs Bordeaux residents as much as it serves them, with no compromise on accessibility and eco-design

RGAA 95%, RGESN 86%: stepping behind the scenes

See all our UX research case studies

Need to support your decisions with UX research?

Let's explore together the contexts, journeys and real needs of your users, to help you build products and services that make sense, for them as much as for you.

The methods, tools and deliverables of UX research

A few key concepts, for the more curious among you

Ergonomic audit

Systematic, detailed analysis of an interface (web, mobile, business tool) against a set of criteria, used to surface friction points and produce illustrated recommendations.

Diagnose before redesigning

User tests

User testing means having target users assess the usability of your product or service. Depending on the goals, several approaches are possible.

How we get them talking

Guerrilla tests

Guerrilla testing means meeting users in public places to gather spontaneous feedback.

Test in the wild

Focus group

A discussion group, run by a facilitator, where users speak about a shared theme through structured debate.

Get the group talking

Empathy map

An empathy map is a compact visualisation of the various elements that make up a user's lived experience.

Step into their shoes

Personas

Personas come out of work on user-profile modelling. They highlight behavioural archetypes that prove useful when designing.

Give the data a face

Experimental protocol

The research protocol describes the conditions, the resources and how an experiment or test runs, along with the research questions it sets out to answer.

Frame it right to test it right