5 Steps to Build an Effective Research Program
How we built a Heuristic Research Program for impact
Authors: Jackie Ianni, Serena Hillman, Samira Jain — Microsoft Azure Data
Building a UX Research Program: Where to Start?
UX research as a series of one-off studies, with insights scattered across teams and time can be inefficient, unmemorable, unfocused, and overall problematic. Establishing a structured research program, a systematic way to explore key topics through interconnected studies, can be a way to organize and elevate your current research efforts. But the idea of building a research program from scratch can feel overwhelming. How do you make sure it’s actually useful? Who should be involved in the process? What should success look like? And what if you’ve never developed a research program before, how can you even start?
At its core, a research program revolves around clear, overarching goals, theoretical foundations, and consistent methodologies. Think of it like setting up a fitness plan: instead of randomly lifting weights whenever you feel like it, you follow a structured approach, with a clear fitness goal, and a set timeline to achieve that goal.
For example, research programs like “Feedback Fridays” are perhaps one of the most common research programs where product teams regularly engage with users through feedback sessions at a set cadence. As the name suggests, this could be weekly on a Friday. By regularly engaging with user insights, teams can spot patterns, address pain points, and refine their products or services. Similarly, benchmarking programs track UX performance over time, helping teams measure growth and identify areas for improvement. These programs ensure that research isn’t just a one-off effort but an ongoing, consistently impactful investment, helping transform what might already be active research initiatives into a more cohesive and marketable strategy. They each have their own goals, structured approach, and cadences.
At Microsoft, we took on the challenge of building a research program from the ground up. Through the SWIFT Research Lab we learned what works, what doesn’t, and the five key steps to creating a research program that, for us, helped drive impact. In this article, we’ll walk you through those five steps. Let’s get started!
SWIFT Lab is born
In January 2023, we launched the SWIFT Research Lab. The lab’s purpose is to identify, create, and bring success through research programs for our organization. SWIFT isn’t just a name, it’s our program philosophy. It stands for:
- Supporting product researchers, designers, content designers, and product managers by working…
- Widely across the organization to deliver…
- Impactful results by focusing on high-priority research questions with…
- Fast execution through efficiency and templatization for…
- Timely delivery of insights when they’re needed most
Within the lab, we have so far developed three core research programs: Citizen Content, Research Engine, and Heuristic Review. Each is designed to address specific research needs. While we won’t dive into the nitty-gritty of them all, we will take examples from the Heuristic Review to share the five key steps that built these high-impact programs.
5 Steps to Building a UX Research Program
Step 1: Research the Research
A successful research program isn’t built in isolation — it’s informed by past successes (and failures) from both inside and outside your organization. At Microsoft, we analyzed existing research programs, reviewed published articles, and spoke with internal teams running similar rapid research initiatives.
This background work helped us identify best practices, potential challenges, and key decision points, like how to templatize workflows, measure success, and ensure our program fills a real gap.
This isn’t just at the program level. Like the research we do for our products we need to understand our partners. What are the needs of our designers, PMs, the product. How can we leverage the strength of our current research practice? Once we select a program goal what methodology, cadence, overall approach will fit for our organization?
💡 Example:
After investigating our organizational needs and determining there was a gap in cost-effective identification of usability issues early on, as well as ensuring consistency with UX principles, we made the decision to create a Heuristic Review Research Program. Then, we needed to determine which heuristics to use, so we explored several frameworks, their overlaps and differences, and their alignment with our organization. Ultimately, we landed on a combination of three:
- Tenets and Traps — Classic usability heuristics, well-established and understood within our organization, catch core problems and address user needs
- UX Laws (curated by Jon Yablonski) — A cognitive-based set of principles that ensure that the solutions are not only functional but also align with how users think and behave
- Guidelines for Human-AI Interaction (HAX) — An AI-specific heuristic framework that addresses the unique challenges and opportunities presented by AI-driven interactions
While our non-program researchers are focused on building the right solutions, the Heuristic Review Research Program is geared towards making sure that we are building the solutions right. Given the complexity of our domain — enterprise data tools with a vast ecosystem of features and workflows — evaluating these experiences is critical to user satisfaction. Without a structured approach to assessing usability, consistency, and efficiency, even well-intentioned solutions can become difficult to navigate, leading to frustration and decreased adoption. By systematically reviewing our products through a heuristic lens, this program identifies friction points, usability gaps, and opportunities for refinement, making it an essential part of the product development process. These insights help teams prioritize design improvements, streamline workflows, and ultimately create a more intuitive and effective user experience.
Explore what works best for your organization’s needs by considering both perspectives: addressing core problems and user needs, and ensuring the final product is intuitive and user-friendly.
🎯 Business Impact:
Conducting thorough research upfront helps mitigate risks, prevent costly missteps, and align strategies with organizational needs. Without proper research, businesses risk launching programs that fail to address user needs, leading to wasted resources, reduced customer adoption, and potential revenue loss.
Step 2: Have a Plan to Foster Relationships
Research programs don’t thrive in a vacuum, they need champions. Building strong relationships with stakeholders, in our case aligning with non-program researchers, was key. These advocates help identify opportunities, build trust, and drive program adoption. For SWIFT This meant developing a plan that detailed who the program was for and how we would engage with them from the beginning.
Additionally, at SWIFT’s launch, we created an easy-to-digest overview and presented it at internal conferences and meetings. We also kept things informal and approachable, branding SWIFT as a friendly, accessible initiative rather than an intimidating exclusive group. Specifically, planning these efforts so we could be proactive vs reactive.
💡 Example:
To boost awareness and foster relationships of our Heuristic Review Research Program, we:
- Showcased success stories which highlighted strong partnership successes
- Hosted intro sessions for new designers
- Gathered feedback from partners/stakeholders to refine our approach
🎯 Business Impact:
A well-defined stakeholder engagement plan strengthens collaboration, keeps key decision-makers aligned, and increases the likelihood that research insights translate into actionable business decisions, ultimately preventing costly misalignment and missed opportunities.
Step 3: Create Infrastructure and Templatize
A research program is only as strong as its foundational structure. We prioritized setting up:
✅ A central knowledge hub for research findings
✅ Step-by-step guides to make participation easy
✅ Templates to standardize project briefs, screeners, and reports
We also established a set cadence, a clear timeline for participation. This ensured product teams knew what to expect and when. Additionally, they know they need to participate based on the schedule, allowing us to bring predictability as well as deliver timely insights while maintaining our program’s efficiency.
💡 Example:
For the Heuristic Review Research Program, we:
- Created a simple sign-up spreadsheet
- Established a weekly review session where designers walked us through their prototypes
- Used a visual deck template to document findings, pairing UI screenshots with usability heuristics and actionable recommendations
🎯 Business Impact:
A strong infrastructure and templatization can boost efficiency, reduce turnaround times, and maintain research consistency across teams that builds trust.
Step 4: Measure Success
How do you know your research program is working? Set clear success metrics.
At SWIFT, we focused on both success metrics that measured the long-term, strategic indicators that our programs were achieving its overall goal, as well as Pulse Tactical Metrics, which helped us understand short-term, operational indicators that track immediate effectiveness of each effort.
Success Metrics
- Supportive: Percentage of studies in which product researchers focus on design-heavy efforts.
- Wide: Percentage of SWIFT studies that combine multiple requests or topics.
- Impactful: Satisfaction rating and qualitative interview notes.
- Fast: Number of studies completed biannually.
- Timely: Qualitative stories highlighting the impact of timeliness.
Pulse Tactical Metrics
📊 Satisfaction ratings (How helpful was the research?)
🔍 Trustworthiness of insights (Did stakeholders find them credible?)
📈 Anticipated impact (How did insights influence decisions?)
🤝 Ease of collaboration (Was working with SWIFT frictionless?)
🔄 Likelihood of future participation (Would they return for another study?)
We shared our metrics via the bi-annual newsletters to demonstrate the program’s reach and value.
💡 Example:
After each Heuristic Review session, we asked for feedback via surveys and one-on-one chats to collect the Pulse Tactical Metrics. Instead of relying solely on formal surveys (which often get ignored), we found that sending direct messages and timing survey requests right after sessions improved response rates.
🎯 Business Impact:
Tracking success metrics and pulse enables teams to refine their approach, quantify impact, and continuously enhance research effectiveness; helping to avoid misguided investments and ensuring resources drive meaningful business outcomes.
Apart from capturing success metrics, a strong signal of knowing if your program is impactful is the consistent return of stakeholders for additional reviews. It proves that stakeholders find value in the program, providing them with actionable insights that help them build better solutions, thereby fostering trust and ongoing collaboration.
Step 5: Continuously Improve
Change is the only constant. A research program should evolve with the organization. We regularly refined SWIFT based on stakeholder feedback and explored ways to integrate new technologies for efficiency gains.
💡 Example:
Over time, our Heuristic Review Research Program evolved to:
- Include more detailed and visual deliverables
- Identify cross-product insights for a more cohesive user experience
- Experiment with new technology (e.g. AI tools to assist heuristic evaluations)
🎯 Business Impact:
Continuous iteration keeps the program relevant, improves research quality, and maximizes long-term business value; helping to avoid stagnation, adapt to evolving needs, and drive sustained impact.
The Results
In just under two years, the SWIFT Research Lab has conducted over 50 studies, including:
- 28% Heuristic Evaluations
- 32% Citizen Content Terminology Studies
- 40% Research Engine Studies
Post-study surveys showed a 100% satisfaction rating among designers, content designers, and product managers. SWIFT continues to gain ongoing organizational investment, including resourcing to scale the program further.
Key Takeaways
✅ Thorough research upfront helps mitigate risks, align strategies with organizational needs, and ensure a smoother program launch.
✅ A focus on a stakeholder engagement plan strengthens collaboration, aligns stakeholders, and ensures research insights get used.
✅ A strong infrastructure and templatization can boost efficiency, reduce turnaround times, and maintain research consistency across teams.
✅ Tracking success and pulse metrics allows teams to fine-tune their approach, measure impact, and continuously improve research effectiveness.
✅ Continuous iteration keeps the program relevant, enhances research quality, and ensures long-term value for the organization
Are You Building a Research Program? Let’s Connect!
If you’re working on launching or scaling a research program, we’d love to hear from you! Reach out to share your experiences, ask questions, or exchange insights. Let’s build better research together.
