Learn to do user research

This is a 2-day practical user research training course for people at the beginning of their user research journey.

Learn the key skills you need to advance your career from researchers who have worked with organisations like the Department for Education, University of Sheffield and Leeds City Council.

Each day starts at 9:30am (GMT) and finishes at 4:30pm with scheduled breaks during the day.

What you'll achieve with this training

Build your skills in conducting user research in Agile design and delivery teams.

By the end of this course you'll be able to:

• plan, design and facilitate user research
• recruit participants mindfully
• handle anything that may go wrong during research sessions
• define a research problem and frame it for your colleagues
• analyse research findings with people who aren’t researchers
• turn findings into persuasive and usable outputs
• make the case for research in your organisation

"After one week it has already made a substantial positive difference to my ways of working. I feel much more equipped to handle user research now. All of the topics I was hoping to learn about were covered, and I appreciated the thoroughness in going over with us whether we had any other questions."

Content Designer (October 2024 cohort)

"It solidified everything I knew but also taught me so much more about the different ways I can plan a UR session. I set out to learn more about the approach and mindset of conducting UR and Jon did an amazing job of ensuring he covered every aspect of the course. I came out with so much confidence and feel going forward I have the ability to lead and manage my own UR projects."

Mariam - User Researcher (April 2024 cohort)

“Learning user research with Paper is easily the most valuable career development I’ve done this year … I was able to use what I’d learned from the moment each session ended and every session gave me greater insight on how I can be a better, more thorough and conscientious user researcher.”

Sye Watts - User Experience Designer, Egress

Course modules

This training has 6 modules designed to give you a complete foundation in key user research skills.

1. Framing the right research problem

• Translate business strategy or policy into research objectives
• Reframe assumptions and solutions as user-centric problems to solve

2. Planning and designing research

• Choose the right research methods to get the insights you need
• Design research questions, discussion guides, interviews and usability tests

3. Recruiting research participants in a mindful and ethical way

• G et the participants you need signed up for your research
• Keep people and their data safe

4. Facilitating and observing research

• Create an environment where people feel comfortable and you get the most out of your research
• Be prepared for unexpected situations, like if you or your participant feel unsafe

5. Analysing research findings

• Break down raw research data into clear themes and key findings
• Facilitate effective, efficient group analysis that avoids bias

6. Turning research findings into persuasive and usable outputs

• Choose the best method for presenting insights depending on who it's for and how they'll use it
• Write clear user needs and hypotheses, design user personas and map user journeys

Accessibility

The course takes place online and we'll be using the following tools to facilitate it:

• Google Meet for the call – you don't need a Google account to join
• Breakout rooms in Google Meet
• Miro (an online whiteboard) – we recommend you create a free account for this at https://miro.com/signup/. You just need an email address to sign up.

Should you have any specific access needs we need to be aware of please email learn@paper.studio.

Your facilitators

Your training will be facilitated by a specialist from Paper. We will confirm who will be your facilitator closer to the event.

Contacting the team

Should you wish to ask the team any questions before the training begins please email learn@paper.studio.