SUMMARY: This article explores the intersection of user research in UX design with the philosophical concepts of the Easy and Hard Problems of consciousness. We do so by examining the similarities between qualitative user research and the explanatory gap - highlighting the why behind triangulation in user research.

According to Jakob Nielsen, “User research offers a learning opportunity that can help you build an understanding of user behavior”(Nielsen). In layman’s terms, we want to know about the users’ behavior because it can help us simultaneously further the business and users’ needs.

But how do we do that?

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Sites that provide insights about a user’s objective experience are solving a problem analogous with David Chalmers’ Easy Problem of Consciousness where

“It seems reasonable to assume that as neuroscience progresses and we learn more and more about the brain, we will be able to explain these abilities in terms of neural mechanisms. Aspects of consciousness that can be explained in this way constitute … the easy problems of consciousness (Kind)”.

Here, we can view insights as learning more about the user (instead of the brain). The information tracked about the user (where they clicked, looked, total time spent, route, etc) is the **neural mechanisms. These mechanisms help us explain the user’s behavior.

While these insights do help businesses better understand their user’s needs, the only way to truly know what the user wants is to also talk to them. You cannot depend solely on a user’s objective experience, you also need to understand their subjective experiences - their Qualia.

Why does Qualia matter? The explanatory gap, originally authored by Levine, tells us:

“For no matter how deeply we probe into the physical structure of neurons and the chemical transactions which occur when they fire, no matter how much objective information we come to acquire, we still seem to be left with something that we cannot explain, namely, why and how such-and-such objective, physical changes, whatever they might be, generate so-and-so subjective feeling, or any subjective feeling at all”(Tye).