There are a number of both qualitative and quantitative research methods to learn about user needs. User interviews, surveys, and contextual inquiries are three of the most common for UX design research. Spoiler alert: I focused on user interviews and surveys for my Ahoy! boating weather app project. Let’s take a quick look at these three research options.

User Interviews

User interviews are an inexpensive and direct way for us to speak directly with users. By interviewing potential users, we will be able to learn directly about their recreational boating habits, how current apps work, and don’t work, for them, and gain insight into their needs for accessing coastal weather and forecasts for a pleasurable and safe day on the water.

User Surveys

Online user surveys are another inexpensive and quick way to ask potential users about boating weather apps. With online surveys we can reach a larger group of boaters and get input from those who are unable, or unwilling, to participate in interviews. Similar to the user interviews, user surveys allow us to ask boaters about their recreational boating habits, use of current weather apps, and learn about their needs in getting marine weather and forecasts as pleasure boaters who want to enjoy fun and safe days boating.

Contextual Inquiries

While more time-consuming and expensive, contextual inquiries would allow us to observe boaters as they look up marine weather and forecasts in preparing for a day of boating. We can observe their habits in gathering weather and forecasts, the websites and applications they use, how they interact with the technology, issues they have, and what works well for them. Such observations will help us learn the needs of our potential users by observing them going through their natural routines of gathering marine weather and forecasts, and how they make use of that information.

User Research for my Ahoy! app

For the Ahoy! app, I decided on Interviews and Surveys. Both research methods are inexpensive and can be done through personal connections and Facebook boating groups. Using these two methods also provides both qualitative and quantitative results for a richer blend of results. While Contextual Inquiries would be nice to have, that method is not currently feasible with COVID-19 restrictions.

User Survey of Boaters

I created an online survey as an inexpensive and quick way to ask potential users about boating weather apps and gather quantitative data to analyze. With the online survey I reached a larger group of boaters to get input from those who are unable, or unwilling, to participate in interviews. I created the survey using Microsoft Forms and targeted Facebook boating groups for survey participants. I had the form available to collect responses for 24 hours.

Key Survey Insights:

• A majority of boaters have 20+ years experience and know the weather features most important to them.
• UX design should be mobile-first as 86% of boaters use their phones to look up marine weather.
• Saving boating locations to a personal profile is at least somewhat important to 86% of recreational boaters surveyed.
• Setting personal preferences are at least somewhat important to 86% of recreational boaters surveyed.

The survey insights inform the research goals in that I want to learn the importance of a mobile-first design and if interviewees mention saving locations and/or a rating system as features they look for in a boating weather app.

User Interviews

Before conducting the interviews I stated the Research Goals:

• User’s recreational boating habits.
• Users’ behaviors with boating weather apps.
• Users’ attitudes about current boating weather apps.
• Discover essential features for boating weather app.

From there I put together a list of questions and an interview script. I conducted interviews with three recreational boaters who represented different levels of boating experience, ages, and locations where they boated.

I won’t go into the details of the interview questions and responses here. If you are interested, I include them in the exercise document below.

Here were the key findings from the interviews:

• There is no one app to satisfy all boaters.
• Boaters want the ability to set personal preferences.
• Having accurate marine conditions by location is important.
• While some boaters do use their computers to look up weather information, a responsive web app (mobile-first design) is important as cell phones are used by nearly all boaters.
• Ahoy! should use NOAA weather reports and forecasts (boaters trust and rely on NOAA as official source) but should offer a better user experience from the raw NOAA output.

I find conducting user research on a topic I don’t know anything about to be a bit of a challenge (it just requires a little more up-front research to get to know an industry or product), but I am a recreational boater so conducting the surveys and interviews was a lot of fun for me. As with all user research, I gained some valuable insights into the needs of the possible users of a boating weather app. It will be interesting to see how the user research moves forward as I begin developing personas and user journeys.