Writing a literature review as a user researcher

How bringing this piece of academia into your role can be helpful

👋🏻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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Although my background is in academia (I have a Master's in Psychology), I never considered myself an academic. I did a lot of research, wrote quite a few academic papers, and did statistical analysis, but, to be honest, as soon as I became a user researcher, many of those things fell by the wayside.

What I loved most about my time in school was understanding people and diving into their mental models and how they thought of/perceived the world. The most gratifying moments were those when I was interviewing patients.

So, when I moved into user research, it was no wonder I let go of some of the other areas of my expertise I didn’t love (I’m looking at you, stats!). I quickly dismissed some of my more academic tendencies and embraced the fast-paced environment I’d joined.

However, over time, I realized some parts of my academic background could really help me in my user research practice. One tool I left behind was literature reviews. It wasn’t until my third role in research that I noticed how helpful conducting a lit review could be.

I brought this practice back into my process and, since then, have highly recommended literature reviews as part of the planning and scoping process. So, with that, let’s dive into breaking lit reviews down so, if you want, you can add them to your user research toolkit!

What is a literature review?

Before we dive into what a literature review is, it’s important to distinguish between primary and secondary research:

• Primary research is research that you conduct to directly answer a research question

• Secondary research is research that others conducted or that you previously conducted

This is important because literature reviews (also referred to as lit reviews) are a secondary research method. This means that, when conducting a lit review, you are collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing research that others have conducted or that you previously conducted.

Now, let’s get to what a literature review actually is:

In a literature review, the researcher collects information via academic papers, journals, websites, or previous research on a particular subject area. These resources are brought together to summarize the trends or patterns based on research already conducted on a particular topic.

There are technically four types of literature reviews:

1. Systematic literature reviews aims for an exhaustive, comprehensive appraisal of as much relevant and existing research as possible on the topic with little to no bias. It is a very rigorous and well-defined approach. This review can take one to two years to complete.

2. Rapid literature reviews assess what is already known about a topic within a time-constrained setting. Rapid literature reviews also follow a structured research protocol but employ methodological “shortcuts” (ex: limiting the scope of the literature review) at the risk of introducing bias. This type of review can take up to six months.

3. Scoping literature reviews are a preliminary assessment of the potential size and scope of available research on a particular topic. This type of review looks at the nature and extent of research already done (and sometimes ongoing research). Within this review, the researcher seeks to identify research gaps, identify key concepts and characteristics of the literature and/or examine how research is conducted on a topic of interest. This can take anywhere from two weeks to two months, depending on the scope of the review.

4. Narrative literature reviews summarize the body of literature relevant to a particular research question. Within the narrative review, the researcher also draws conclusions about the topic and identifies gaps or inconsistencies in a body of knowledge. You need to have a sufficiently focused research question to conduct a narrative literature review. This review can take anywhere from a week to a month.

Since I now might have scared you with timelines, this is a great time to point out that user researchers typically focus on scoping and narrative literature reviews. I always recommend starting with a narrative literature review as they are the quickest and a great way to learn how to gather, synthesize, and summarize relevant data.

Why are literature reviews important?

For a while, I didn’t do literature reviews at the beginning of my projects. I was working at start-ups in fast-paced environments. I didn’t have time to spend on the literature reviews I used to do before an academic research project. It was that stigma toward lit reviews that stopped me from doing them.

Then I was faced with a massive project. On this particular project, I was working as a freelance user researcher, but I will say that it is just as important for a full-time or contract researcher to also think about and incorporate literature reviews into their process!

The company I was working with wanted to understand the different factors that impacted teenagers’ inclination to become a cyberbully.

I remember first hearing about the project. I was immediately overwhelmed by how I was going to start the project. Not only was I not familiar with cyberbullying, but I also had no idea where to start. My mind spun with how I could possibly start and tackle this immense project - seriously, it kept me up at night.

Luckily, I had been reading some academic research books, and while reading, I made the connection: I should start this particular project with a literature review. I am so glad I did. I truly believe writing that lit review made my freelance project a success and, without it, I’m uncertain if I would have been able to properly tackle the project.

Literature reviews can help us in so many different ways, such as:

1. Find the gaps in previous research. Some of the most fun I’ve had as a user researcher has been understanding the gaps we have in previous research. It’s fascinating to look through previous projects and highlight our continued gaps in knowledge which can lead to amazing studies. Literature reviews are a great way to comb through any internal or external resources to see what questions have been left unanswered.

2. Understand (and potentially reduce) the scope of our research question. Especially when we are tasked with a huge and overwhelming research question, a literature review can help ground us and potentially reduce the scope of our research question. For instance, the above research question, “What factors impact teenagers’ inclination to become a cyberbully” is a massive project. By using a lit review, you could potentially find research that demonstrates certain factors and reduce the scope of your project to the specific gaps in previous research.

3. Ensure we are not “redoing” work. Standing on the shoulders of giants is an important part of research, in general. Whether externally or internally, one of the biggest wastes of resources is redoing research that’s previously been conducted. A literature review helps ensure you aren’t reinventing the wheel and, instead, doing new research that addresses gaps in knowledge.

4. Help to formulate hypotheses. Literature reviews give us the context and knowledge to form testable and strong hypotheses. Instead of basing our hypotheses on assumptions or what we hope to learn, a lit review allows us to base our hypotheses on real data. This can help us ask better and more informed questions during the project.

5. Make research findings more valid/reliable. Data triangulation is key in user research, and literature reviews can serve as a great source of evidence. If your research outcomes are aligned with those that have come out of similar studies, you have an additional data source to point to.

6. Gain inspiration for further studies. Whenever I’ve had some downtime, I've conducted literature reviews to understand general industry trends within the area I was working. Going through other researchers’ studies gave me some amazing inspiration for further studies I could conduct to help my organization more deeply understand our industry.

7. Reduce time and cost. One of the biggest hurdles for researchers is the time and cost of research. Conducting a lit review before a more extensive study can help reduce the time and cost of your project. For instance, instead of doing a large-scale survey or many interviews on a topic, you can review previous research and utilize the findings within your project and reduce redoing any unnecessary work.

I will also say not every study needs a literature review! For example, some evaluative research (such as usability tests) would not benefit from a literature review. Typically, the projects that are best suited for lit reviews are those with broader, generative questions.

How to conduct a literature review

Now that you are excited to start conducting literature reviews (I mean, who wouldn’t be by now 😜), let’s discuss, step-by-step the best way to approach one: