One of the biggest challenges UX researchers face is matching their research goals with the right tool for the job. After all, several UX research tools and software products are now available on the market. Thus, making a sound choice can be time-consuming.

This comprehensive review covers the top 5 UX or user experience research tools available in the market this 2023. These recommended solutions should be considered by all UX researchers for their ability to streamline the research process, unearth unique user insights, and ultimately deliver better products.

Let's take a deep dive into the best UX research tools starting with the basics.

What Is UX Research?

UX research is also referred to as user experience research. It pertains to the study of what consumers or end users of a product, service, or system want or need.

UX researchers use the customer insights they gather to enhance the design process for software, digital/physical products, and services. These professionals engage in different types of research like user tests and diary studies, but the method they choose depends on the goals and research questions at hand.

UX researchers uncover consumers' behaviors, requirements, and motivations. They perform this by observing and analyzing how users do specific tasks. UX research often involves working with consumers and users, collecting their needs, thoughts, and feedback to make product refinements.

Insights that inform product improvements are gathered through methods like user testing sessions and remote observation. These methods and many others can be facilitated by purpose-built UX research tools.

What Are Some Examples of UX Research?

UX researchers use several methods to gather insights surrounding consumer experiences. Some of the most popular include:

1.     UX Diary Studies

This UX research technique involves participants keeping a log. It includes the latter's activities, encounters, and thoughts. The log goes on for over a defined period, that could be several weeks or a few days. UX researchers later parse and analyze the users' attitudes and behaviors. This way, they better understand the participants' patterns, habits and real-world needs.

2.     Interviews

Interviews are one-on-one user discussions. They show UX researchers how a specific individual works to gather detailed information about users' attitudes, experiences, and wants.

3.     Focus Groups

Focus groups involve user experience researchers engaging in discussions with a group of users. Focus groups give UX researchers insights into consumers' desires, ideas, and attitudes through open discussion with individuals that share certain characteristics or qualifications.

4.     Surveys

A user experience research survey involves a series of questions posed to several consumers. They aid researchers in learning about the individual's opinion on using a particular end product.

UX diary studies, interviews, focus groups, and surveys are some of the most common examples of UX research. They help companies refine and improve their mobile applications, websites, prototypes, and even in-person services and physical products.

Top 5 Best UX Research Tools in 2023

User experience research tools come in many shapes and sizes.  Some are built for a specific method or task, while others act as a one-stop-shop. For example, there are tools that facilitate recruitment, building surveys, collecting longitudinal behavior data, and analyzing video transcriptions.

Thus, finding the right UX research tool is critical to obtaining the data and insights you're looking for. The following are the best user experience research tools for 2023. They stand out for their agility and ability to facilitate the researcher's job of collecting and analyzing data that leads to user-centered decisions.

1. Ethos

EthOS is a research platform that the world's leading agencies and brands use to get closer to their customers. This UX research tool enables businesses to better comprehend user behaviors, needs, and motivations.

The EthOS platform leverages apps to gather in-the-emotion and in-the-moment insights from users as they go about their day. Through their smartphones, companies can capture experiences from their customers 24/7, whenever or wherever they're interacting with their brands and products.

The EthOS applications allow for the gathering of high-quality mobile screen recordings, pictures, audio data, and videos from respondents.  This allows researchers to see the world through the eyes of their users and uncover rich insights.

EthOS has advanced analytics capabilities that help companies quickly analyze and organize research data. Automated transcriptions, coding, sentiment analysis, and AI can all be leveraged by researchers to achieve actionable insights with speed. EthOS will also be releasing AI functionality soon that instantly pulls themes and pain points from a study, drastically reducing the time needed for analysis.

Buyers of the EthOS user experience research tool will benefit from its ability to capture the context surrounding user experiences, behaviors, and needs. This platform helps companies deepen their comprehension of consumers' desires and product usage in real-world scenarios. Understanding context is key to understanding needs and the triggers surrounding product interactions.

Omnichannel consumer interactions are becoming more challenging to track due to the increasing number of touchpoints. EthOS was designed to be unmoderated and remote, so researchers can capture experiences whether they occur online or offline.

Buyers trust EthOS to deliver a better understanding of user attitudes and behaviors. It compliments the challenges of laboratory testing by gathering user needs, behaviors, and experiences from the real world.

UX researchers most heavily use EthOS for projects like diary studies, digital ethnography, mobile app testing, and journey mapping.  It's also a powerful generative research platform that's great for ideation and innovation.

Overall, EthOS is a powerful qualitative UX research platform that can be used across a number of methodologies. It has the unique ability to capture context, and provides a deep look into user needs, pain points, and behaviors.

The name EthOS is an abbreviation of 'Ethnographic Observation System.' Like its name, the history of this UX research tool has its roots in ethnography.

Founder and Chief Ideas Officer Siamack Salari pioneered the concept of mobile ethnography in 2009, developing it on the principle of empathy through ethnography, bringing businesses closer to their customers and their real world needs.

As one of the best UX research tools, EthOS allows firms to collect human insights leading to more user-centered business decisions. This results in a win-win situation. Firms better comprehend their users' needs, and users have their requirements fulfilled.

2. User Interviews

User Interviews is a user experience research tools provider. This company aids teams in discovering consumer insights. Its founders believe and know that quick access to quality research participants is the key to sound discovery.

User Interviews is top-rated for listening well to its B2B customers. It facilitates fast participant recruitment. Moreover, User Interviews' tool can be launched in minutes.

They can find all your participants in a couple hours to a few days. User Interviews' solution offers targeting for skills, job titles, product usage, consumer behavior, and more.

User Interviews' powerful panel software helps UX teams scale their research. Clients can also leverage User Interviews' Research Hub to gain command over their own panel of thousands or millions of users. The software facilitates the invitation of the right segment in a few clicks.

Then, it automates screening, incentives, scheduling, and more. User Interviews' solution unlocks self-serve recruiting, greatly increasing the agility of qualitative research.

Customer-centric companies trust User Interviews. They find its price point ideal. Many find this provider effective, cheap, and quick.

3. UserTesting

UserTesting is another user experience research tool that enables firms to connect with their audiences. Its maker lets researchers gather human responses for user experiences.

UserTesting is among the best UX tools for capturing human responses that do not show up in spreadsheets. Among these responses are sighs of relief, head scratches of confusion, faces lighting up over strong messages, and exhales of frustration.

UserTesting's platform allows buyers to hear, see, and speak to consumers as they interact with prototypes, applications, and websites. The UX study tool maker offers customer experience products for marketers, product managers, designers, and executives.

The different features UserTesting offers are Product Insights which gives pre-formatted tests and same-day video interviews. This enables buyers to obtain authentic customer feedback.

Marketing Insight helps buyers make better marketing campaigns and content by testing their messages with real clients. UserTesting utilizes Insight Core as its toolkit within the platform for managing and building custom user tests and research.

Buyers of UserTesting's UX tool particularly appreciate the solution's pre-formatted tests that get them up and running fast.

4. Hotjar

Another popular user experience research tool is Hotjar. This solution lets B2B clients view real-time user behavior via screen recordings and heatmaps. Hotjar is ideal for buyers seeking to concentrate on heatmapping as a research technique.

Given the in-app surveys and the considerable amount of available data, it is also recommended for those who desire to comprehend user behavior's nuances. As a remote research tool, Hotjar has other powerful features like follow-up polls, unmoderated research, and in-product feedback widgets.

In 2014, this UX research tool maker dedicated itself to helping companies design websites that their users appreciate. This self-funded and people-first company lets product teams have empathy with and understand their end-users beyond what is possible with conventional analytics.

Its solution delivers value by making the correct product developments fast. More than 900,000 websites worldwide use Hotjar's Product Experience Insights software. As of April 2023, the company claims that 1,148,546 websites trust it in almost 200 countries.

Hotjar's unique qualitative and quantitative data mix drives product decisions in over 180 nations. Hotjar has more than 310 team members today across 46 territories within the Americas, Europe, and Africa.

5. Maze

Maze is a UX research platform. This continuous product discovery solution empowers product groups to gather and extract user insights.

Maze offers solutions for research participant recruitment, reporting, and product research. It aids teams in building the habit of non-stop product discovery, being a platform facilitating dependable research.

Moreover, Maze integrates with Sketch, Marvel, InVision, Figma, and Adobe XD. B2B clients can import an existing prototype from their design tool. Additionally, Maze buyers can make and run in-depth usability examinations at any level of their research plan to get actionable insights fast.

Maze's usability testing solution comprises many path analyses, task analyses, guerrilla testing, heatmaps, and A/B testing. Buyers can test their information architecture with Maze's features like Tree Tests and Card Sorts.

This UX research solution has a reporting functionality that records and documents click heatmaps, misclick rates, time spent, completion rates, and more. It allows B2B users to run polls and gather user feedback early in the design procedure.

This product generates usability test reports for every test. Thus, Maze lets buyers share the results with anyone having a link.

Besides remote testing and surveys, Maze's other essential features include integrations with major design platforms. It also has question repositories and pre-built templates. Collaboration features, IA testing, and real-time reports are also among the solutions included in Maze.

The five best UX research solutions above aid organizations in discovering customers' needs and business opportunities. The mentioned UX research tools should be a part of the toolkit of any researcher who wants to develop a complete picture of their target audience so they can deliver better experiences and brand interactions.