Summary
The research landscape includes overlapping disciplines: Market Research (understanding the market), CX Research (the end-to-end customer journey), UX Research (product interaction), Product Research (viability and strategy), Human Factors (system interaction and safety), and Design Research (informing the design process). While names differ, the underlying skills overlap, and all use variations of the same foundational Building Blocks.
Before we can get into the craft of research, we need to establish a shared language. The world of research in a business context is a messy one, filled with overlapping terms and competing methodologies.
For many, "doing some research" means looking up information on the internet or in an internal repository. But this is not the empirical research we are discussing here.
A product manager might talk about product research, while the marketing team is focused on market research, and the data science team is running A/B tests. Are these different things?
At their core, they are all related. They are all methods for gathering data and insights to reduce uncertainty and make better decisions in businesses. The key is understanding what kind of decision each approach is best suited to support.
The Research Disciplines
Market Research
This is the broadest category. Its primary goal is to understand "the market" as a whole.
Questions it answers:
- How big is the potential market for this type of product?
- What are our key customer segments?
- How is our brand perceived relative to competitors?
Typical methods: Market research often uses quantitative methods with larger sample sizes, such as surveys, to understand broad trends, attitudes, and opinions.
Customer Experience (CX) Research
Taking a broader view than UX research, CX research examines the entire end-to-end journey a customer has with a company. It encompasses every touchpoint, from the first marketing ad and the sales process to product interaction and customer support calls.
Questions it answers:
- What are the primary points of friction in our customers' overall journey?
- How does the support experience affect customer loyalty?
Typical methods: Shop exit interviews, mystery shopping (trained observers as test customers), and large-scale satisfaction surveys. Often involves journey mapping across touchpoints.
User Experience (UX) Research
UX research (often used interchangeably with User Research) is the core focus of applied product research. While market research looks at the broad consumer landscape, UX research focuses specifically on the interaction between a user and a product or service.
Goals fall into two categories:
Generative Research aims to uncover user pain points, unmet needs, and generate ideas for new products. It answers "What are users missing?"
Evaluative Research seeks to inform the design and development of a specific solution:
- Formative evaluation is done during development to find problems and improve a design-in-progress
- Summative evaluation happens at the end of a cycle to measure a finished product's success
Typical methods: UX tests, interviews, and surveys, the three Core Methods.
Product Research
This more business-focused discipline often overlaps with both market and UX research. It aims to answer questions about the product's viability and strategy.
Questions it answers:
- Which features should we build next?
- How should we price our new subscription tiers?
Product managers often refer to these activities as Continuous Discovery [1], what a UX researcher would call ongoing (rather than time-limited) user interviews.
A key framework used here is Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) [2], which seeks to understand the underlying "job" a customer is "hiring" a product to do. This concept is analogous to the user goals and tasks central to UX research.
Human Factors (HF) Research
Closely related to UX research, and in many ways its predecessor, this discipline focuses on the interaction between humans and systems. Its scope is often broader than digital products, encompassing physical products, complex environments (like cockpits or operating rooms), and demanding work processes.
With historical roots in aviation, military, and industrial engineering, its primary goals are to optimize human performance and well-being, often with a strong emphasis on safety and error prevention.
Questions it answers:
- How can a car's dashboard be designed to minimize driver distraction?
- What is the optimal physical layout for a factory workstation to reduce fatigue?
- Can a surgeon reliably use this new medical device under pressure?
Design Research
This broad term encompasses research activities that specifically inform the design process. It is often synonymous with UX research but can also include more exploratory and collaborative methods.
For example, participatory design or co-creation sessions actively involve users as partners in the design process itself. In these workshops, participants do not just provide feedback on existing concepts; they help generate new ideas and build low-fidelity prototypes alongside the team.
Employee Experience (EX) Research
This discipline focuses inward on the experience of a company's own employees, aiming to improve satisfaction, engagement, and retention.
In many ways, it is the furthest from other disciplines due to its internal focus. However, it connects externally through employer branding, as a positive employee experience helps attract new talent.
While the audience is different, the Core Methods are often the same: internal surveys and qualitative interviews.
The Layers of Experience Model
The easiest way to understand the boundaries between disciplines is to think of them as different "zoom levels" on the same map. Each level answers different questions with different methods.
Level 1: Market Research (The Landscape)
Zoom Level: All the way out. The entire market.
Questions: "Who is the customer?" and "How big is the opportunity?"
Methods: Large-scale surveys, segmentation studies, competitive analysis, brand tracking.
Output: Market sizing, customer segments, positioning strategy.
Level 2: CX Research (The Journey)
Zoom Level: The relationship. Every touchpoint a customer has with your company.
Questions: "How loyal are they?" and "Where does the journey break down?"
Methods: NPS tracking, journey mapping, touchpoint analysis, service blueprints.
Output: Loyalty metrics, journey maps, cross-functional improvement priorities.
Level 3: UX Research (The Interaction)
Zoom Level: The product. The specific digital or physical artifact.
Questions: "Can they use it?" and "Does it solve their problem?"
Methods: Usability testing, user interviews, heuristic evaluations, A/B testing.
Output: Usability findings, feature prioritization, design recommendations.
The Overlap Is Real
While the names differ, the underlying skills often overlap. A good UX researcher needs to understand the market context, product strategy and viability, and the needs and frictions of consumers and users.
The disciplines map roughly to the Layers of Experience:
| Discipline | Primary Focus |
|---|---|
| Market Research | The market as a whole, segments, trends |
| CX Research | End-to-end customer journey, all touchpoints |
| UX Research | Product/service interaction |
| Product Research | Product viability and strategy |
| Human Factors | Human-system interaction, safety |
Where Research Happens
The short answer is everywhere. Experiences happen in any context where a human interacts with an offering from an organization, whether that is a digital app or a restaurant.
Historically, UX research as we know it was forged in the world of technology, growing alongside e-commerce, social media, and FinTech. It was championed by disruptive companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Uber.
As the field matured, specialized sub-domains emerged:
- Game UX Research (also called Player Experience or PX research; tests are often called Playtests)
- Healthcare UX (Patient Experience, patient-centered design)
- Service Design (improving experiences in retail, hospitality, public services)
But despite different names, the core Building Blocks of asking, observing, and testing remain the same. The context changes; the fundamentals do not.
Industry Practice vs. Academic Roots
All the disciplines discussed are forms of applied research. Their primary goal is to solve a practical problem or inform a specific business decision.
The academic root of many of these fields, particularly UX and Human Factors research, is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This multidisciplinary field blends computer science, design, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines.
While there is significant overlap in methods, the goals differ:
| Applied Research | Academic Research | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Solve a practical problem | Generate new knowledge and theories |
| Standard | Did it help make a better decision? | Is it publishable and generalizable? |
| Timeline | Tight deadlines, business cycles | Longer research programs |
| Scope | Specific product or service | Broader principles of interaction |
This distinction matters when stakeholders question your methods. Academic conventions (large sample sizes, controlled conditions) are not always appropriate for applied work where the goal is actionable insight, not publishable findings.
A Word on Words
Like all disciplines, especially newer ones, we like to make up words. And then argue about them.
In UX research, the same activity might be called a "user interview," a "Jobs to Be Done interview," or "continuous discovery." Depending on who you ask, these could all mean the same thing.
In practice, they often do. Same goals, same methods, just framed differently.
Terminology Throughout This Knowledge Base
Throughout this resource:
- UX Research and User Research are used interchangeably
- User refers to someone who interacts with a product; Customer refers to someone who pays, they are not always the same person, especially in B2B contexts
- UX Test is the umbrella term; Usability Test appears only when explicitly evaluating against the ISO 9241-11 standard (effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction)
The functional taxonomy aims to name things in their most basic form, not tied to one role, team setup, or buzzword. Just language that works.