Discovery, Evaluative, Primary, and Secondary Research

If you want to be a UX researcher, you have to understand the difference between discovery, evaluative, primary, and secondary research. When Imani first became interested in UX research, she would hear evaluative and discovery research mentioned quite a bit and though she googled them to learn more about them, she didn’t fully understand what they actually were, when to apply them, and which methods they encompassed until fairly recently. If you do some googling, you’ll notice that there are different opinions among researchers as to which methods are evaluative and which are discovery. Since UX research is still a relatively new career path, it is actively being defined by those who are current practitioners. What constitutes primary and secondary research seems to be better understood and more universally defined. This episode unravels discovery, evaluative, primary, and secondary research.