“Research-Informed” not “Evidence-Based”

Playing the terminology game only because it could reframe expectations of what good product plans look like

I’ve just dropped “evidence-based” from how I talk about product planning in my book draft.

From this frame, folks can too easily find any piece of evidence to justify their decisions. That can result in a very brittle “why” to justify a plan — with the halo of having used evidence.

That’s why I’m going with “research-informed” instead.

Where research in tech — regardless of the discipline or who’s conducting it — has some sort of study plan that can be inspected, including a clear sample frame and some described methodology. Research also typically generates some sort of documented report, ideally with narrative structures and context beyond the insights or individual pieces of evidence.

I’m going with “informed” instead of “based” because sometimes research complements and justifies ideas in flight — and that’s okay! Research-driven planning is excellent, but inspiring totally new directions is not the only value that customer insights can provide.

The corresponding take that goes with this language is that some research repository tools are giving broad access for evidence-based planning, rather than promoting use of key research insights. In my view, that’s probably not a good fit for an impactful research community.

Much more to come on these topics in forthcoming ‘Stop Wasting Research’ book for Rosenfeld Media

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