What is Atomic UX research, and how it works

Today’s multifaceted technologies offer immense opportunities to consumers. With an ocean of available options, users’ expectations are also expanding. In this situation, the imperative aspect for organizations to attract and retain customers is offering an exceptional experience. Users who had great experiences will become your brand’s advocates.

Therefore, it is necessary to know the user’s perspective about the brand and its products. Through market research, organizations capture information about their customer’s experiences, and these data are precious. Atomic UX research is a new way to manage and utilize such research information. This methodology is applicable in various research areas like usability testing, capturing users’ perspectives, personas, and more.

Definition of Atomic UX Research and advantages

Atomic UX research is a methodology that helps to manage, categorize, and use the information achieved from the users’ behaviors. The data is then divided into atomic levels and examined thoroughly to get helpful insights, which are used to decide the priorities. This is a procedure to manage the research data and knowledge in a structured and easily retrievable manner.

The micro-level findings of user information, also called “nuggets”, are captured with proper evidence like snapshots, videos, and quotes. With the help of this methodology, businesses can eliminate research silos and make the data more structured and available to the right audience or researchers without tampering with the evidence.

Atomic UX research is highly beneficial in mitigating research problems. Here’s the reasons why: 

Wider access to research data:

With this new methodology, organizations can monitor the research data about customer information. This research repository is easy to search by the stakeholders like the UX team, designers, product managers, researchers, etc. Quick access to information reduces the decision-making time drastically. 

Single source of authentic information:

The Atomic UX research process enables all the stakeholders to share and grab information from a single research repository. Due to this ease , atomic research has evolved as the only source of true information.

Support continuous discovery:

This methodology allows tagging relevant information with the research data, which can be quickly retrieved and used in various analyses. This is helpful to manage the data better and to further deep dive into the process. Additionally, quick retrievability reduces search time and results in better research ROI.

Restrict personal prejudice:

Due to the unstructured procedure to manage traditional research data, only limited people can analyze and draw conclusions from them, which may cause a biased perception of the siloed team. It restricts the reach of the analysis to a smaller comprehensive range. The Atomic UX research model limits individual prejudice to a great extent through its broader access.

Robust memory bank:

Research data and information often lose significance due to improper data management and man-dependent processes. But in the case of the new atomic UX research technique, the data is captured correctly, and relevant information is tagged with it, which nullifies the chance of data loss.

Atomic UX Research: the 4-step method

Experiment: In the first step, the description of the experiment is captured. This consists of different research models, like research on pricing, user research, customer fact-finding, etc.

Fact: Fact finding is the second step of this process. Here the actual data of the experiment is noted along with the proper evidence like survey reports, snapshots, videos, and more.

Insights: After gathering the facts, it’s time to get the informed insight. There may be several parameters or attributes that can give insight. It is essential to remember all those aspects while comprehending the facts sheet.

Opportunities or recommendations: This is the final step of this research architecture. It’s the conclusion derived from the facts and insights; with more evidence, it's easy to reach a better, data-driven conclusion.

How to do Atomic UX Research

To perform structured atomic UX research, it is essential to use proper tools that allow the management of the data efficiently. Small organizations usually use available technology like spreadsheets, which can satisfy some basic requirements. But large organizations need advanced, specialized tools like QuestionPro, Maze, Lookback, Airtable, etc., to quickly manage the information and gain greater insight. These tools help to save time and cost and improve ROI with enhanced security.

Conclusion

The Atomic UX research method is going to help utilize the user experience data to boost organizational growth. With simple four steps- experiment, fact, insight, and opportunity, this technique helps to manage and retrieve documents and data efficiently without any error.