Best UX Research tools – Remote work is an ideal alternative when for reasons of time , budget , or reasons beyond our control we cannot travel to investigate or test with our users.
However, remote work not only helps to deal with these types of problems, but it is also a great ally when it comes to improving communication with your team members and optimizing time, so today we present you 12 UX tools online and free that will be able to lend you a hand.
Best UX Research tools
Organization and planning tools
These tools that are explained in the first place can help you in the initial phases of organizing and planning the project.
Trello
Trello is a free tool that will allow you to organize and plan projects online with your team , create different boards with projects to assign categories to the different tasks and move them by column depending on the state in which they are.
Image from https://blog.trello.com/
It allows you to view the progress of the project at a glance, link files and third-party platforms , such as Microsoft Teams, Drive or Dropbox.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a chat -based workspace designed to improve communication and collaboration in business teams.
In it you can have group or private chats to have private conversations, create work teams, or access notes or other documents thanks to its integration with other platforms such as OneNote, Sharepoint, or Microsoft Office.
Mindmaster
It is a collaborative web application to create, visualize and share mind maps with the members of your team. With Mindmeister you will be able to plan projects, but also link ideas and concepts that arise in UX research.
As it does not require installation, you can access your mind maps from any computer with internet access. Despite being paid, it allows you to create three mind maps for free .
UX research tools
Once the planning phase is over, the investigation or UX Research begins . There are different methods of UX research . The tools detailed below will help you research with users and obtain insights for your project.
I look
From early-stage research to mapping and diagramming , Miro is a platform that enables teams to work together from anywhere, anytime.
Hotjar
Hotjar is a tool created to understand what users do in a digital business , through analytical tools such as user feedback collection.
This is achieved through tools that allow users to ask about their experience on the platform with forms , surveys and questionnaires . However, since what users say doesn’t always correspond to what they do, Hotjar also offers to observe user behavior using heat maps , visitor recordings, and conversion funnels .
Mural
Mural is a collaborative digital space that allows design teams to collaborate together in the same workspace online.
It is an open work space based on a white board in which ideas are shared collaboratively . It allows the creation of diagrams , lists, and graphs that are present in agile methodologies, and design thinking techniques.
The integration of these tools and the remote access of the participants make Mural a very versatile research tool.
Makestoryboard
Storytelling for UX designers is very important and when it comes to representing the action sequences of our service visually with a storyboard , MakeStoryboard helps us visualize it in a simple and fast way.
This free tool allows you to use your own images or use the ones that this tool offers you, and add a description to it. But that’s not all, MakeStoryboard also allows you to create collaboratively between different team members and add comments.
Once the storyboard is complete, it allows you to export it to PDF or share it online via a URL.
UXPressia
UXPressia is a very complete online tool that participates in the entire design process, allowing you to create Customer Journey Maps, Personas and Impact Maps .
From the ideation to the elaboration of deliverables, it facilitates the collection of information and its mapping through its integrated tools while allowing the collaboration of the members of your own team in real time.
Despite being a paid tool, it has a free version “forever free” whose limitation is that it allows you to work with a smaller number of projects .
Make my person
The persona method allows you to create fictitious characters that represent the end users, also called UX Personas , of what is being designed after having carried out the relevant qualitative and quantitative research. It allows us to answer the question: who are we designing for?
If you have never created a Persona, Hubspot has created a tool to facilitate the process of creating Personas through a template that guides us step by step , and that can be easily exported with all the information of the person.
UX evaluation tools
Have you finished the research phase and have you developed your prototype? Now it’s time to test with users! These user testing tools will allow you to improve your prototypes.
Helium
Helio is a tool with which you can upload screenshots of your wireframes and prototypes to check what works and what doesn’t . It is not about usability tests as such, this platform allows you to test your prototypes through surveys and questionnaires specifically oriented to your target audience.
It provides qualitative and quantitative answers from a certain audience, from Likert surveys, numerical scales, click tests, preferences, multiple answers or open answers .
Image from https://helio.app/
Optimal sort
To improve the information architecture of a digital project, one of the best platforms is OptimalSort: the Card Sorting tool .
Card sorting makes it possible to find out how users think the content of a platform should be organized by creating a series of cards that represent said content, allowing users to organize them into groups that make sense to them.
Optimal sort facilitates the process of preparing a card sorting by providing us with a platform in which to create said cards and to be able to distribute them to all the participants through a URL. Finally, it also allows you to analyze the data obtained through the automatic creation of diagrams.
Optimal sort is a paid tool, but it allows 10 users or less to perform free tests .
Crazyegg
It is an A/B testing tool that is complementary to web analytics that allows us to optimize the conversion rates of our website, that is, to increase the percentage of visitors to our website who become customers. Among its features, heat maps, scrollmaps and click maps stand out .
It achieves this by monitoring user activity on a web page . It allows extracting very useful information in order to see how the page is navigated, since it shows, for example, in which sections of the web users stop, to what point they scroll, where they click, etc. With this data , crucial design and usability decisions can be made .
Crazyegg is a paid tool , although it allows you to request a demo for companies.
These have been the 12 UX tools for remote projects that we propose to help you throughout the design process, but there are many more! We encourage you to continue investigating.