Choosing UX Research Methods with Vanessa Michelle Garcia | Episode #4

Vanessa Michelle Garcia entered UX research after realizing that she was more interested in understanding problems than designing solutions. Born and raised in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, she studied graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She then spent the first six years of her career in creative advertising and visual design.

Advertising eventually felt too one-sided. As an art director, Garcia created campaigns for large audiences with little understanding of or input from the people who would see them. She left agency work for a software design role at a fintech company in Chicago. There, she observed a UX research study about how older adults prepare for retirement. Sitting across from potential users and hearing about their experiences changed how she thought about product design.

At the time of this conversation, Garcia had been at Facebook for about a year. She worked as a UX researcher on the New Product Experimentation team, known as NPE, which built novel consumer apps and moved quickly to learn, evolve, or stop pursuing product ideas. Her role was to help the team make early product decisions with greater confidence and empathy for the intended audience.

What you'll learn

• How direct contact with users led Garcia from visual design into UX research

• How foundational, formative, and evaluative research support different product stages

• Which methods can answer questions about audiences, concepts, and working interfaces

• Why asking people to predict their future behavior can produce unreliable answers

• How researchers help teams keep human needs present when time and resources are tight

Match the research method to the product question

Garcia organizes her work into three broad types of research. Foundational research happens early, when a team needs to understand its audience before committing to a product direction. Questions include who the audience is, what people currently do, and how they feel about the subject. The goal is to generate evidence that can inspire what the team builds while reducing the influence of its own assumptions.

Useful foundational methods include desk research, interviews, observation, and diary studies. Diary studies are particularly helpful when the team needs to see behavior across a longer period. Participants can document relevant moments in daily life, such as making a purchase or going to the gym, rather than trying to recall an entire pattern in one conversation.

Formative research helps a team develop an early product concept. It examines whether people understand the idea and how they might use it. Garcia names concept testing, prototypes, participatory design, and light usability testing as useful methods. The practical principle is to put something in front of people early, let them interact with it, and learn from their response before the concept becomes expensive to change.

Evaluative research belongs during execution and can continue after release. Here, the team stress-tests interfaces and features and examines product performance. Usability tests can reveal where a maturing design breaks down, while surveys can assess user satisfaction. The method should follow the decision the team needs to make, not a fixed research routine.

Ask about behavior, not imagined futures

Garcia also warns product managers not to treat every kind of research as interchangeable. Quantitative research, market research, and qualitative research answer different questions. Qualitative studies often involve smaller samples and focus on human behavior. A study with 15 participants is not automatically less meaningful simply because it does not contain thousands of survey responses. Its value depends on whether the method fits the question.

One especially risky question asks participants to speculate about what they will do. Garcia uses a proposed fitness product as an example: asking whether someone would use it to lose weight or how much they would pay invites rationalization. People may answer sincerely while describing an idealized version of themselves rather than how they will actually behave.

For product managers, the actionable lesson is to ground questions in experiences people can report and behaviors a team can observe. Evidence about what people do now gives the team a firmer basis than a promise about an unfamiliar future. A favorable prediction should not be confused with proof of demand or product viability.

Keep human needs visible in fast product work

Garcia finds the work fulfilling because research gives real human needs a place in the products a team builds. That matters especially on an experimental team, where timelines and resources can be tight and ideas may change or end quickly. Research is not only a final usability check. Used throughout development, it can shape who the team serves, how an idea evolves, and whether the resulting experience works.

Her career transition reinforces the same point. She moved from creating persuasive artifacts for audiences she barely knew to helping teams learn directly from the people affected by their decisions. For product managers without a researcher beside them, her framework still provides a useful starting point: define the question, identify the product stage, choose a method that can produce relevant evidence, and avoid asking users to forecast behavior they cannot reliably know.

Listen to Episode #4.