How to create an impactful user research plan

Set yourself, your team, and your project up for success from the beginning

👋🏻Hi, this is Nikki with a 🔒subscriber-only 🔒 article from User Research Academy. In every article, I cover in-depth topics on how to conduct user research, grow in your career, and fall in love with the craft of user research again.

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I am an avid planner - I always have been, even when I tried to fight it. Planning ahead assures me that things will have a certain outcome and that everyone will be on the same page with expectations if anyone else is involved.

When it comes down to it, for me, planning is about managing expectations.

I didn’t apply this to my professional life for a long time. When I transitioned into user research, I was completely self-taught. Yes, I did a UX Design course at General Assembly, which mainly taught me I can’t design, but other than that, I read books and did my best to piece together the profession.

In my first role as a user researcher, I had little concept of planning. My colleagues and I would talk about research that needed to be done, and I would go and do it. At the time, I didn’t have the capacity to question why we were doing specific projects, asking certain questions, or what the outcomes were supposed to be.

My main downfall, and the reason behind this, was perfectionism. I wanted to appear like I was good at my job and that I knew everything.

We have to survey our users to determine what about our app was unintuitive? Sure thing!

We have to do discovery research to verify our assumptions? Can do!

In fact, I tried:

Actual goal from one of my first projects

I didn’t know how to structure a goal — trust me, searching for user research goals and examples of them ten years ago led to absolutely nothing. The Interwebs was not my friend back then.

I didn’t know what to question, let alone how to respond to my stakeholders when they had questions.

What did this lead to?

• Lack of clarity on what I was trying to research (either too broad or narrow in scope), which made it a nightmare to figure out appropriate methodologies and which questions to ask

• Mismatched expectations on what colleagues got as outcomes of the research project

• Inability to focus during the research because I was unsure about what topics I needed to cover or what I could skip

• Little alignment on why we were doing the research project and what would make it successful in the end

What this list leads to is one word: disappointment. I don’t know about you, but (to me) nothing is worse than disappointing my team. And I’ve also found with disappointment comes skepticism. If research isn’t bringing value, do we need to do it? What’s the point?

That’s the last thing I wanted. So, I vowed to do better and, over time, built a research plan that I now use as a starting point (yes, still, to this day!) for my research projects.

What is a user research plan?

A user research plan is a document that lists the different parts of the research project, including why the research is happening to the research outcomes. They give you and the team an amazing overview of the research project and remind people exactly what the project is about, which greatly helps with scope.

The best part of a research plan is aligning people into a shared understanding so that everyone’s expectations are properly set up. Expectations are key when it comes to user research.

If a stakeholder is expecting that they will get a journey map out of a research project and we come to them with a written report, it won’t be the best of times.

Or, if a stakeholder expects deep insights and we conduct a survey, there will be a huge mismatch in the outcome.

A research plan is a forcing function (in the best sense possible) to get everyone’s thoughts and expectations of a research project out on paper, giving you, the researcher, clarity on how to best navigate the project for the necessary outcomes.

Why user research plans are so important

When it comes to documentation or doing things that are slightly more work, I say they are important for two main reasons:

1. Aligning people within the organization

2. A great document to reference in your case studies

For a while, the documentation didn’t feel like enough of a reason to me, but when I got laid off, had the rug pulled out from me, and was scrambling to understand two years of work, research plans were a lifesaver.

Research plans allow you to articulate your thought process and are a great first draft for a case study. They enable you to go back and review what you did, the impact you had, and remember with more detail the projects you completed. As I said, this is hugely important for job seeking. So, if documentation and alignment isn’t enough, do it for your future self!

Outside of that, we’ve already spoken a bit about why research plans are so important above, but just to reiterate, they are necessary alignment documentation that properly manages expectations.

When I started to use research plans in my projects, it was like night and day. I felt so much more confident in my decision-making and my thought process. Since I had information from my stakeholders, I could make much more informed decisions. I had so much more direction to create solid research goals, choose a methodology, and write questions that got the relevant information.

Not only that, but my stakeholders, overall, were so much more satisfied with my research. Because we took the time to align on the expectations and outcomes of the research, I got them the information they needed to make the decisions they were originally stuck on.

Among those, research plans are critical to the success of a project because they:

• Give you and the team focus on the research project and keep the research on track when scoop creep occurs

• Serve as a fantastic point of reference for future research projects (and for new people coming into the organization)

• Help ensure you aren’t doing the same research projects repeatedly

• Provide you with the information you need to do the most effective and efficient research you can for the team

• Allow everyone to give their thoughts on the research project to invite collaboration

And they can give you some great case studies.

When to use research plans

Research plans are a fantastic way to start any research project. I truly use them still, to this day, to plan out research, whether that’s in a full-time role or as a contractor. In this most recent project I’ve run, I started right from a research plan.

I highly recommend starting every user research project with a research plan. This means I open up a new research plan document whenever someone comes to me with a research idea through:

• Email

• Slack

• Coming to my desk

• A post-it note

• A meeting follow-up

• A proactive research project comes to my head

• A next step after a research project emerges

Before I go much further, I want to answer a question that popped into my head when I got into this habit.

What if the research project sucks? Aka. how to maximize a research plan

Suddenly I was making a lot of research plans, and, to be completely honest, many of them sucked. I would write down the idea for the research and just sit there, trying to get my head around why we would do this or even how we would do it.

For instance, the number of research requests that I got about “Verifying designs” or “Which design do users like more” or “What would people pay” or “Would people like this feature” was astounding. If those are the types of research questions you’re getting, I highly recommend this article on rewriting and prioritizing research questions.

But then I had a bunch of research plans I put time into, and not a lot of them led to anything meaningful, either because the research question was unanswerable by research or we didn’t need to research to uncover something.

On top of that, the number of follow-up meetings I had to have was mind-boggling. Suddenly, I had way too many meetings on my calendar to get more clarity or detail for my research plans.

So, I had to go one step further to avoid wasting time on useless documentation. With that, I started an intake process.

With every request that came my way, I automatically sent back an intake document (you can also use Google Forms) for that person to fill out. This intake document gives me all the details I need to properly fill out version one of a user research plan, without all the meetings!

My intake document includes:

Background

1. What led you to request research support now?
   For example, we completed desk research and found we needed more information on X concept. 

2. What phase of your project are you in? Is it discovering new information, testing a concept or an idea, or something else? 

The Big Picture

3. Please discuss the impact this research will have on this particular team.

4. If applicable, please explain how this research will impact other teams and the overarching organization

Deep-dive into Your Research Need

5. What level of support do you anticipate needing for this project?
   For example, we offer support on recruitment, interview guide writing, interview guide review, interview moderation, and analysis. Please indicate all you believe you would need help with. If you have someone on your team experienced with user research, ask them to what level they are comfortable with running the study. 

6. What are your questions for the research project?
   For example, we want to understand how customers think of X concept, uncover how users interact with the prototype, discover pain points on a current flow

7. What groups of customers do you want to learn about?
   For example age range, gender, users versus non-users, country, language, any special criteria (ex: needs to have bought X in the past Y months) 

8. What customer problem/need are you trying to solve? If you have any documentation, like an Epic or Design Brief, summarize and link it here.
   For example, we are testing an idea that helps customers achieve X or Y goal. Please include any documents here. 

9. How do you know this is a customer problem or a customer need?
   For example, here are some quotes from other research that highlights the problem or analytics that show negative behaviors.

10. What would you do with the insights from this research? Is there someone (ex: designer, developers) “ready” to act on the insights generated from this research?
    For example, we would like to know if our concept is going in the right direction or what changes we need to make with a prototype. 

11. When do you need insights (e.g. analysis of the research is completed) to move forward?
    For example, we need insights by X date because that is when Y is happening.

12. Is there any other information you think is important and useful as we begin to discuss your project?
    For example, we also found this competitor research that is super relevant. Please include any links to the information here. 

Looking Back

13. How have you acted on previously completed research that backs up the solution you’ve designed (User Research, Market Research, Business Intelligence, on-site data, A/B testing, Analytics, customer care, NPS)?
    For example, we have done discovery research or A/B testing that shows X, Y, and Z.

14. What important and unanswered questions do you still have after evaluating past research that you want to address in this current research?
    For example, although we have done quantitative research in the past, we are still unsure about why customers are behaving in certain ways

15. Please include any links to solutions (e.g. prototypes) you have considered.
    For example, we have used previous research from other research sessions to create this prototype. Please link to any prototypes here.

You can find a template of this intake plan here.

This wasn’t an overnight and immediate fix. It took time to socialize this document and help colleagues understand how to fill out this form. For about two to three months, I had to sit with colleagues and teams and help them through the form. So, if you do introduce this at your organization, I would recommend taking the time to make sure people understand how to use it.

With that intake form in place, my process became:

1. Receive a research request

2. Send the intake document

3. Receive the intake document and clarify any questions (either by meeting, messaging, or async comments)

4. Create a research plan based on the intake document

5. Share the research plan with colleagues and get their feedback (either by meeting, messaging, or async comments)

6. Make changes based on feedback and get a final “go-ahead” that everyone is aligned

7. Continue to update the research plan as needed with changes or links

You don’t always need an intake document if you have a highly mature team. I have worked with people who gave me all the context up-front. However, an intake document can help when faced with newer research colleagues and get everyone to respond consistently with research requests.

My planning process went from about two weeks of chasing people down, getting clarification, and gathering information, to about three days. This shift hugely increased my efficiency in doing the best research possible for teams.

I highly recommend giving this process a go and starting your research projects with a solid plan!

How to put one together