Here are 6 reasons why you should not focus on tools or platforms at the beginning of your UXR journey. First, learn how to conduct user research without them. Master how to ask solid non-leading questions and interview. The rest comes from practice.

Here are 6 reasons why this is critical:

1. ACCESS: You won’t always have access to the same tools. Access varies depending on what clients/employers subscribe to and change regularly

2. APPROPRIATENESS: There isn’t always time, money, or a need to use a tool. Sometimes intercepts, guerrilla testing, interviews and or data analytics are a better choice

3. SUITABILITY: Tools have separate functions. Don’t compare them, or prioritize learning them, until you have a specific research question, or use case, to evaluate it against

4. FAMILIARITY: When you master a few tools before building a solid UX research foundation you'll wind up trying to shove every study into the tools you know (because you won’t know any better)

5. EVOLUTION: Technology evolves. A strong methodological foundation will help you determine which approaches are best for the question at hand

6. PREFERENCE: People tend to prefer the method learned first — in everything. (e.g. Mac users struggle with PCs)