Here are some examples of the types of user research performed at each phase of a project.

• Card Sorting: Allows users to group and sort a site’s information into a logical structure that will typically drive navigation and the site’s information architecture. This helps ensure that the site structure matches the way users think.
• Contextual Interviews: Enables the observation of users in their natural environment, giving you a better understanding of the way users work.
• First Click Testing: A testing method focused on navigation, which can be performed on a functioning website, a prototype, or a wireframe.
• Focus Groups: Moderated discussion with a group of users, allowing insight into user attitudes, ideas, and desires.
• Heuristic Evaluation/Expert Review: A group of usability experts evaluating a website against a list of established guidelines.
• Interviews: One-on-one discussions with users show how a particular user works. They enable you to get detailed information about a user’s attitudes, desires, and experiences.
• Parallel Design: A design methodology that involves several designers pursuing the same effort simultaneously but independently, with the intention to combine the best aspects of each for the ultimate solution.
• Personas: The creation of a representative user based on available data and user interviews. Though the personal details of the persona may be fictional, the information used to create the user type is not.
• Prototyping: Allows the design team to explore ideas before implementing them by creating a mock-up of the site. A prototype can range from a paper mock-up to interactive HTML pages.
• Surveys: A series of questions asked to multiple users of your website that help you learn about the people who visit your site.
• System Usability Scale (SUS): SUS is a technology-independent ten-item scale for subjective evaluation of the usability.
• Task Analysis: Involves learning about user goals, including what users want to do on your website, and helps you understand the tasks that users will perform on your site.
• Usability Testing: Identifies user frustrations and problems with a site through one-on-one sessions where a “real-life” user performs tasks on the site being studied.
• Use Cases: Provide a description of how users use a particular feature of your website. They provide a detailed look at how users interact with the site, including the steps users take to accomplish each task.