The next step to designing an app or website with Adobe XD is to conduct real world research to back up your assumptions about what your target audience wants/needs.
Do this step after you have determined what your app or website will be called, what need / desire it will fill, who will be wanting to use it, what functions it will serve, how you will gather and / or create your content, and what other competition exists that would challenge your design.
There are a few different ways you could go about this step. The key is to make sure that you are looking where your target audience is.
- Survey
- You could create a survey to gain an idea of what your target audience wants.
- You could create a physical or digital survey.
- You can ask questions in the survey that are based on numbers or opinion. For example if you had 100 respondents and 50 are female you can look further into what they answered on the questions if your app or website is designed for females.
- Interviews
- You could conduct in-person, phone, text, or email interviews to gain useful information about your target audience.
- This will give you a chance to dig deeper into the wants and desires of your target audience and what they think of your ideas.
- This option may result in people being less forthcoming though, because it is a less anonymous option.
- The data from this option may take a long time to analyze, but it will give you a deeper understanding of someone than a survey.
- Focus Group
- You could conduct a group interview where you can interview more than one person at once about a topic and gather insight to their wants/desires.
- This may be hard to do if it is not people you already know, but you could conduct this at a public place and offer cash or free food for participating.
- Make sure you are interviewing people who fit your target audience.
- Second Hand Research
- You could look into research reports that have already been done for information.
- Make sure that the information you use is backed up by facts, non-biased, and from a credible source.
- If you can find raw data about it, you can form your own conclusions on the data.
Once you have figured out what research method is the most suitable for your needs, create a list of questions that you would like answered. Make sure you include questions about demographics so you can make sure you are basing the decisions for your app or website on the wants/desire of your intended audience. Send out your survey, conduct your interviews, and collect the responses.