daily meta

Summary of Chapter 5, “The Research Plan,” from Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky

The research plan should specify: why you’re doing the research, when you’re going to do it, and how much it will cost.

To clarify your goals, you much know why you’re doing the research and how your results will be implemented.

Why you’re doing the research:
- Know your corporate priorities
- Understand your development processes

Make a list of how the product’s experiences affect company goals. Your research should not only be about the customer experience.

1. Collect issues and prioritize them as goals
2. Prioritize the goals
3. Rewrite the goals as questions to be answered

To collect issues, talk to every product stakeholder and ask them what their goals are. Remember that users are also stakeholder so take their goals into consideration, as well.

Prioritize the goals by which impact revenue most significantly.

Research methodologies should progress from the more general questions to the more specific ones.

Cluster the questions by what research methodology is most appropriate for answering them.

Break each methdology out, along with its proposed schedule and relevant question.

Each project should address short-term questions as well as longer-term questions that are fundamental to the product as a whole.

Create a grid of the different questions that are being addressed and the project that addresses them.

Also create a scheduling grid to display which projects are being planned and implemented each week.