A Few Tips on How to Prioritize UX Research Recommendations

I love the moments right after a research project is conducted. You can feel the excitement in the air. And there might be some disappointment with the results, too.
But, then, the brainstorming starts. There are so many new ideas being shared, so many updates that could be made. Where to begin?
For UX researchers writing up a report, how do you prioritize recommendations? What should count as a short-term vs. a long-term recommendation? For the purposes of this post, I’m prioritizing recommendations as short vs. long-term. Of course, there are other ways to prioritize recommendations like high, medium, and low severity.
Recommendations should always be based off research. But they also need to be thought of holistically. For all recommendations, you should start by asking yourself, how does this benefit users and the goal of the business? Ideally, the recommendation will benefit both users and business goals. Next, compare the recommendation against available resources and constraints, such as time, budget, tech, and organizational politics to determine feasibility. Then, decide if it should be a short or long-term recommendation based on its feasibility.

There’s another scenario that comes to mind when I’ve been writing up research recommendations. For example, “big ideas”, or recommendations that are more abstract, could usually be considered long-term recommendations. These bigger ideas typically require more resources to implement.
My intention isn’t to oversimplify research recommendations. There’s always room to include recommendations where feasibility is uncertain and ones that solely benefit users’ rather than accounting for the needs of the business. Recommendations can fall all along the continuum of feasibility, and business and user goals.
However, as UX researchers, if we want our recommendations to be implemented, they need to be realistic and account for context.
