The Essentials for Creating a Research Plan: A Guide for UXRs
I often find myself and some of my colleagues redoing the same steps at the beginning of research projects. In order to make life easier for my UXR colleagues and myself, I decided to build a simple Coda template that anyone can use to create a research plan using the framework that I have found to be extremely helpful in my career so far.
When creating a research plan, please include the following sections.
- Meet The Team: UXR Lead: [Name] Design Lead: [Name] PM Lead: [Name] DS Lead: [Name]
2. Research Context: Every research initiative begins with understanding the underlying needs. Why is this research crucial? What challenges will it address? And how will it align with our business aspirations?
3. Goals of Research: Identify the research and business objectives. If you have identified hypotheses and are looking for data to validate them, please clearly state them.
4. Methodology: What research methods will you use to answer the questions? Ethnography, concept testing, usability, survey etc. Write a brief statement on why this is the best approach.
5. Research Sample: General Criteria of who are the participants who will be recruited? What will be the total sample size? Any cohorts within the sample? How many will you recruit within each cohort? For survey research provide a detailed description of the sampling strategy. Use this calculator to show your reasoning for the sample.
6. Research Timeline: Provide a snapshot of the journey. For those who love visuals, the Gantt chart might be your best friend. Also, a pro tip for qualitative research: Involve team members in research sessions. Having them as note-takers can be incredibly beneficial.
7. Set expectations about the deliverable: What will you see at the end? A comprehensive slide deck? A quick synopsis?
👉 Please feel free to use the Coda template that I built for creating a research plan. It has many more details.
Go to Coda and start using it today. 🙌
