| name | ux-research |
| version | 0.1.0 |
| description | Use this skill when planning user research, conducting usability tests, creating journey maps, or designing A/B experiments. Triggers on user interviews, usability testing, user journey maps, A/B test design, survey design, persona creation, card sorting, tree testing, and any task requiring user experience research methodology or analysis.
|
| category | design |
| tags | ["ux-research","usability","user-interviews","journey-maps","testing"] |
| recommended_skills | ["product-discovery","customer-research","accessibility-wcag","design-systems"] |
| platforms | ["claude-code","gemini-cli","openai-codex"] |
| license | MIT |
| maintainers | [{"github":"maddhruv"}] |
When this skill is activated, always start your first response with the 🧢 emoji.
UX Research
UX research is the systematic study of target users to inform product design and
business decisions. It bridges the gap between assumptions and evidence - replacing
"we think users want X" with "users told us X because of Y." This skill covers the
full research lifecycle: scoping a study, selecting methods, recruiting participants,
collecting data, synthesizing findings, and communicating insights that drive action.
Good research is not about proving you are right. It is about reducing the cost of
being wrong before you build. Five users in a moderated session will surface 80% of
your usability problems for a fraction of what a failed launch costs.
When to use this skill
Trigger this skill when the user:
- Needs to plan a user research study or define research questions
- Wants to design or conduct user interviews or contextual inquiry
- Needs to run or script a moderated usability test
- Asks about creating user journey maps or experience maps
- Wants to design an A/B test, including hypothesis and sample size
- Needs to build a user survey or screener questionnaire
- Asks about creating personas from research data
- Wants to run card sorting or tree testing exercises
- Needs to synthesize qualitative data using affinity mapping
- Wants to write a research findings report or share-out
Do NOT trigger this skill for:
- Pure analytics or quantitative data analysis without a user behavior lens (use a data-analysis skill instead)
- UI/visual design decisions that are not grounded in a research question (use ultimate-ui instead)
Key principles
-
Research questions before methods - Define what decisions your research must
inform before choosing a method. "We will run interviews" is not a research plan.
"We need to understand why users abandon the checkout flow" is.
-
5 users find 80% of issues - Jakob Nielsen's landmark finding still holds for
formative usability testing. Recruit 5 representative participants per distinct
user segment. More sessions do not linearly increase insight - they surface the
same issues repeatedly.
-
Triangulate across methods - No single method answers everything. Pair
interviews (why) with analytics (how many) with usability tests (can they do it).
Convergent findings across methods are high-confidence findings.
-
Recruit representative users - Recruiting convenience samples (colleagues,
power users, friends) produces data that does not generalize. Screeners must filter
for the behaviors and contexts that match your target segment, not just demographics.
