Meet UXArmy, Asia’s first remote user research platform – Wired PR Lifestyle Story

Customer research is not only the basis for delivering successful and desirable products to the market, but is also an essential component in maintaining a competitive advantage.

At a time when social distance, working from home, and travel restrictions have become new rules, how can companies get compelling customer insights to help shape the direction of their product?

Given the limitations of face-to-face research activities, remote sessions can provide tremendous value in maintaining the flow of insights and ideas.

This is where UXArmy, The first research platform for remote Asian users, comes in handy. The user experience (UX) design decision removes inventions by validating them with actual users.

Nothing is as powerful as watching users struggle with your product and hearing unfiltered verbal feedback, and that’s exactly what UXArmy’s remote research platform offers in addition to survey results and automatically generated usability measures.

A decade ago, co-founder Kuldeep Kulshrethta worked on defining the consumer UX of connected digital consumer products before her day of entrepreneurship.

He had difficulty getting his team to understand the value of UX design decisions based on real user feedback, and eventually learned that making the wrong decisions is an expensive thing to do.

Driven by this experience, Kuldeep — along with its business partner TJ Park — founded UXArmy in 2012, which was later reinvented in 2019 as a provider of a single UX research platform.

With offices in Singapore, Malaysia and India and local representatives in nine other Asian countries, the company is committed to creating products aimed at users who enjoy consumers.

How remote UX research benefits businesses

The main advantage of remote UX research is accessibility, faster time to market and the cost benefit it brings to users.

Remote UX research facilitates the inclusion of a wider range of participants across different backgrounds and locations. This will allow companies to become more inclusive in their recruitment, leading to a variety of in-depth insights.

At the same time, participants are more comfortable in their natural environment; it’s not so uncomfortable and scary compared to the utility lab UX research. More comfortable and relaxed participants tend to be more open and close, revealing more natural behaviors and reactions.

In addition, remote UX research platforms have integrated data analysis and reporting capabilities in addition to the ability to collect data, enabling users to effectively create UX perspectives and create visually appealing reports that effectively collaborate with stakeholders.

In terms of cost, remote research eliminates the costs of utility labs and travel, which is less expensive and time consuming than personally conducted research.

According to Kuldeep, UXArmy’s customers are saving 60 percent on user research costs, while increasing productivity by up to 40 percent.

UXArmy offers a complete set of UX research tools

UXArmy has a mission to improve the accuracy and action capability of remote user research, and is becoming a platform for businesses and UX evangelists because it makes their work effective and efficient.

Unlike some platforms that can only do prototyping or testing on computers, UXArmy has no such limitations and can therefore help you provide feedback on anything. It gives research at any stage of the product life cycle – be it an idea, concept, prototype, live website or live application.

According to the UX Toolkit, it offers two types of remote user research: Unmoderated utility tests (test images, prototypes, websites and mobile applications), and moderate research (live video interviews with users with integrated functions to facilitate analysis and collaboration).

Basically, companies can choose to repeat the design based on usability assessments and automated hiring of matching test participants, or choose in-depth interviews to take notes with live interviews and timestamps to generate accurate information remotely.

“Our platform is unique because you can run it comparative tests in a single test. For example, you can give the tester a task in your app and in the competitor’s app, and receive an unfiltered audio statement by recording the tester’s experience screen, ”shared TJ.

“For comparison testing, the ability to remember experience in Product A and Product B is important, and it allows testers to experiment one after the other, and it’s better for feedback.”

Companies can also build or improve their UX design with UXArmy Classification of cards, tree tests and Participatory Design Characteristics. These can help companies link information design to user expectation, create unmixed menus, and receive convenient feedback on their designs.

Get access to a strong user panel across and outside the SEA

The constant pain point in user research is to find the right participants who fit the target profile, which has a direct impact on the quality and speed of the research.

“This is more difficult as businesses globalize, to countries with different languages ​​and cultures, perhaps, but existing staff are expected to do research,” Kuldeep explained.

Therefore, UXArmy’s platform includes access to a robust user panel in Southeast Asia, India and Australia that has been built organically over five years. It’s a great draw for customers who don’t want to work with multiple vendors.

Companies can use a variety of behavioral filters to select the right set of testers, specific to their country or target profile.

Basically, UXArmy champions gain real-time UX knowledge from their target users. Although it’s nothing more than a first-hand experience, the next best thing to see and hear in person is video recording.

“Ultimately, the research team needs to convince stakeholders to make a change, and we provide them with visually appealing materials to help make the case,” TJ added.

In addition to its UX research platform, UXArmy also offers additional UX Consulting services.

From its UX Advisory Service it provides advice on best practice to clients in industry benchmark testing, test type and test / task design advice. UXArmy also offers translation and transcription services for testing on its platform.

By offering end-to-end support to improve the user experience, UXArmy really stands out from other UX agencies.

Create an attractive UX by first knowing what your customers value

Over the years, UXArmy has gained the trust of many notable international brands.

One of its past customers is a leading online food delivery provider in Singapore who wanted to launch a new feature to change customer orders.

The key goal of the user research exercise was to assess whether the feature would make sense for existing customers before investing in building some support features.

The UXArmy team assists the customer in the design and execution of the test for user testing. The results of the study allow the client to decide on the redesign of the function and to better understand the priority of sub-features.

UXArmy also conducted a moderate user survey for the company, a leading transportation network in Southeast Asia, to help people understand their behavior toward various new services.

The target market was outside Singapore, which meant that the local language was a barrier for customers to conduct research on their users. The shorter timeline of the project also meant that the client needed a research participant and a provider who could help them get the research results quickly.

UXArmy understood the urgency of the project and quickly executed the investigation. Some of the findings of his research were applied to the product and are now live. Findings about user behavior and attitudes toward new services were also used for product roadmaps.

Overall, UXArmy allows for faster feedback gathering on a scale, despite barriers to geographic, linguistic, and cultural gaps.

In addition, UXArmy is made up of a team of highly experienced research users and usability experts so that businesses can have accurate and high-quality data.

Now is a good time to jump into the UX research path

The “new normalcy” of the pandemic has led to new needs and behaviors for users, so there is a growing need for user research.

Moreover, Covid-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of companies and not giving up is no longer an option. Remote user research is a good way to keep up with the speed of product development, so UX views are sent quickly when needed.

TJ has also seen a lot of the UX landscape evolve over the years. There is now widespread awareness and acceptance in Asia that UX plays a very important role in product development, and there is no doubt about the value of UX research.

In fact, he noted that a good number of his corporate clients now have their own UX groups. They leverage UXArmy’s remote research platform and panel to enable the product development team of UX researchers, designers and product managers.

Today, UXArmy aims to be the most preferred and valuable research platform for remote users, and aims to promote global expansion intentions.

From research and strategy to design and development, UX is central to everything UXArmy does, and is the perfect partner for companies looking to gain a competitive advantage.

Check out the UXArmy website to register for a free trial here.

This article was written in collaboration with UXArmy.

Featured Image Credit: UXArmy