ISS Research Approach

ISS applies any descriptive, explanatory, and exploratory research methods to conduct any academic research. The research design is meant to address the research questions and test hypotheses/null hypotheses grounded in theory.

We also apply the above research methods to conduct strategic research, design research, post-launch research, and usability study depending on the product or service, research questions, problem statement, and proposed hypotheses.

In addition to your product users, we have access to a large dataset of individuals with diverse demographic characteristics in order to obtain a sample with a high level of validity and reliability.

We have a well-equipped and fully customizable lab to perform all types of usability testing especially moderate, unmoderated, and in-person usability testing.

The UX research team at ISS specializes in incorporating new technologies in designing and conducting quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research.

The team applies these methods to investigate and understand target users, their expectations, feedback, motivations, and desires as well as the requirements to improve the product or service, solve the problem, or add realistic contexts and insights to the lifecycle of the product including planning, design, build, launch to the market, management, maintenance, development, and withdrawal from the market.

The team specializes in incorporating the results of data analysis obtained from primary or secondary research with business goals and needs to provide the best organizational strategy for the product or service.

As the data analysis of each method is completely separate, the team well knows how to deal with each approach by choosing the appropriate research design, recruiting the right population, applying the best sampling methods, defining valid constructs and indicators, implementing control variables, addressing biases, adopting appropriate data collection procedures, launching a valid and reliable measurement model as well as using appropriate statistics and data analysis tools.

We apply the most powerful statistics and data analysis tools such as SPSS, PLS Smart, Amos, Gesca, Microsoft Power BI, and so on to analyze the data.

Below are some of the methods we use for each research approach.

Usability Study

Through usability testing, we evaluate the usefulness, usability, and desirability of the product from the perspective of its users through established metrics

ISS Types of Usability Studies

- Moderated usability study

- Unmoderated usability study

- Remote usability study

- In-person usability study

- Explorative usability study

- Assessment usability study

- Comparative usability study

ISS Data Collection Methods in Usability Study

- Phone/video interview

- Lab usability testing

- Guerrilla testingA/B testing

- Card sorting

- Session recording

- Focus group

- Observation

Exploratory (Qualitative) Research

Qualitative research focuses on collecting, analyzing, and interpreting non-numerical data, and gaining insight and understanding about an individual’s experiences and perception of products, services, and processes.

Qualitative research helps to illustrate why certain problems are happening, and how they can be fixed.

ISS Types of Qualitative Research

- Phenomenological studies

- Ethnographic studies

- Historical studies

- Case studies

- Diary studies

- Benchmark studies

- Comparative study

- Longitudinal studies

- Focus groups

- Action research

- Lab studies

- Field research

ISS Data Collection Methods in Qualitative Research

- Semi-structured interviews

- In-depth interviews

- Open-ended questionnaires

- Structured observations

- Short on-page surveys

Explanatory (Quantitative) Research

Quantitative research focuses on collecting and analyzing numerical data to describe characteristics, find correlations, test hypotheses, answer the research question, and solve the research problem.

Quantitative research is primarily exploratory research and is used to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into useful statistics. Quantitative analysis will give you statistics that can be used to identify the presence and severity of issues.

ISS Types of Quantitative Research

< Experimental >

- Randomized Control Trial (RTC)

- Non-Randomized Control Trial (NRTC)

< Observational >

- Cohort

- Case-Control

- Cross-Sectional

ISS Data Collection Tools in Quantitative Research

- Structured interview

- Structured observations

- Cloud Based Close-ended questionnaires

- Survey

- Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual reality (VR) enables people to experience the feeling of actually being in another place through a computerized scenario that simulates an immersive and lifelike experience grounded in reality. Realistic virtual reality-based simulations (IRVRS) would potentially be effective and useful in creating accurate mental models for users.

✒ VR can simulate the physical environment, provide teleportation, and create realistic interaction with objects, which can create a new approach to measuring and evaluating psychometric variables when conducting UX research.

✒ VR allows for highly detailed observations, accurate behavior measurements, and systematic environmental manipulations under controlled laboratory circumstances. It enables UX researchers to monitor and evaluate users' behavior during a design interaction to gain insight into their needs, expectations, and feelings.

✒ VR enables UX researchers to measure the quantitative data metrics for user testing such as success rate, error rate, time to complete a task, satisfaction rankings, learning rate, and perceived quality.

✒ Confounding variables can have a hidden effect on the experiment’s results, ruin an experiment, and give useless results. This is especially important when measuring sensitive variables such as users’ satisfaction that should be measured in an isolated environment by controlling all other confounding variables. VR environment gives UX researchers the ability to control for the potentially confounding variables and isolate the variables of interest while providing the same environment for all the participants so it enhances the internal validity of the research.

✒ External validity can be improved by setting experiments in a more natural setting and using random sampling to select participants. External validity is the closest to our definition of generalizability. Randomization ensures external validity and allows results and inferences drawn from the sample to be generalized to the population from which the sample was drawn. In some cases and products, product users do not have the required diversity such as demographic diversity, so it cannot be generalized to the entire population and reduces the external validity of the research. As VR simulates the environment and product similarly to reality, it is not limited to specific conditions. Hence, UX researchers can invite a variety of people to take part in a research study, expanding the user population from a specific group to the entire population. Therefore, it enhances the external validity of the research.

✒ VR enables UX researchers to create a comparative environment for participants by providing an alternative option for measuring their relative evaluation and feelings for products. Some constructs such as quality performance and satisfaction should be evaluated and measured as relative or comparative attitudes toward products. Users who have alternatives to compare can better recall, recognize, assess, and express how they feel about products like quality performance and satisfaction. In addition, a comparative environment increases the internal validity of research as isolates the variables of interest. VR makes it possible to create two or more versions of a product and show them to the users at the same time to determine which version leaves the maximum impact and drives business metrics.

ISS Research Approach and facilities

Usability Study

Exploratory (Qualitative) Research

Explanatory (Quantitative) Research

We Take Advantage of Virtual Reality (VR) in Conducting User Experience (UX) Research