What is quantitative user experience research at Pinterest?
I use this simple one-pager to explain it to colleagues
In 2016, I joined the Pinterest UX Research team. I was the second quant UXR on the team and have been defining, building and scaling quant UX research discipline at Pinterest ever since. Frankly, it’s the most challenging and rewarding part of my work. And I. love. it. Period.
It’s not uncommon for people to associate user experience research with qualitative user experience research. A qualitative user experience researcher (qual UXR) builds user understanding and empathy by utilizing qualitative research methods such as 1-on-1 in-depth interviews, ethnography, diary studies, and many others (a qual UXR’s toolkit can be very broad, and here are just a few examples). On the other hand, perhaps you’ve also heard the role of a data scientist, who might write code and use statistical analysis techniques to analyze log data (a data scientist’s role can be very broad too, and here is just one example).
As a quant UXR, we get asked a lot of questions like these ones, both by Pinterest internal stakeholders, as well as students, academics and industry professionals.
Over the years, we’ve written docs, posts, blogs, and messages to explain to people who quant UXRs are and what we do, but everyone’s time is limited. So an idea came up: why don’t we just create a one-pager that would capture all the gist from the past publications, and explain the most essential part of quantitative user experience research without colleagues spending hours reading up on it? (But if you do want to read more, check these articles out: article 1; article 2; and the resources under quantUXcon.org– i am one of the co-founders :) )
Ah-hem…..introducing the one pager:
The first page includes the definition of the discipline, the common tools and analysis methods a quant UXR uses for their work, and our mission statement at Pinterest. It also includes 5 habits a successful quant UXR has, which stemmed from the 5 lessons I learned from doing quant UX research at Pinterest.
The second page includes an explanation of quant UXR’s super power, why this is our super power, and a few examples of questions a quant UXR would ask for their work. Simply stated, one can’t define quant UX research without looking at its connection and separation from other knowledge/insight-based disciplines. Once you understand the focus of each discipline, you will see the unique contribution of quant UX research to our understanding of user experience.
Hope you find this one pager helpful to understand what quantitative user experience research is (at least how we define it at Pinterest), and to explain this discipline and the value it can bring to stakeholders in your organizations!
One-pager content design support by Lindsay Hadley and Kelsey Jones, Ghostranch Communications.
