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A User Research Toolkit for Startups
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A User Research Toolkit for Startups

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Research Initiative Template

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Link synthesis at the top of the page when complete.

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STATUS

Reviewers:

Reviewer 1
Reviewer 2

CONTEXT + GOALS

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Write a quick paragraph or a few bullet points: What prompted this customer discovery effort? What is the goal for the customer discovery?
What do we want to learn in this research? Do you have a hypothesis about how users might respond?

TIMELINE + PROJECT TEAM

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Do you need this research for a specific project? If so, when do you need to be completed?
What are the major milestones of this project (e.g. survey release date, outreach emails sent to interviewees, synthesis deck created)? And who is in charge of bringing each aspect of the project across each respective finish line?
Are there any projects that depend upon the results of this customer discovery effort? Do those projects offer insight into what the deadlines for this initiative should be?
View of Example Project Team Outline
Due Date
Milestone Name
Description of Work to Be Done
Point Person
1
7/17/2023
Project Kick-off
Team alignment on project goals and timeline, finalizing research methodologies, and defining participant recruitment criteria.
Kyja Kutnick
2
7/19/2023
Recruitment and Scheduling
Inviting and confirming participants for focus groups and user interviews, coordinating schedules, and booking meeting rooms or setting up virtual meetings.
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3
7/24/2023
Focus Groups and User Interviews
Conducting focus groups and user interviews, gathering qualitative data on resident experiences and insights into app usage.
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4
8/1/2023
Quantitative Data Analysis
Analyzing quantitative data related to the aforementioned hypotheses by leveraging app usage metrics.
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5
8/18/2023
Qualitative Data Analysis
Analyzing qualitative data from focus groups & user interviews
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6
8/23/2023
Synthesis
Synthesize data from focus groups, user interviews, and app usage metrics; draw conclusions based on research findings; and develop written recommendations for improving the app.
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7
8/30/2023
Implementation and Follow-up
Collaborating with the development team to implement recommended improvements and tracking progress on KPIs to measure the success of the changes made.
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8
9/12/2023
Report Presentation
Presenting the research report and recommendations to stakeholders and discussing next steps for implementing improvements.
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There are no rows in this table
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RESEARCH METHOD + OUTLINE

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Do you have an idea(s) of how you want to frame this research? Are there pros/cons to each approach?
How are you planning to collect the data you need to achieve the goals of this project?
Once you’ve selected an option below, feel free to move the other options into the archived section to keep the document tidy + concise.

Idea Options

Option 1:

Summary of idea
Pros:

Cons:

Option 2:

Summary of idea
Pros:

Cons:


Option 3:

Summary of idea
Pros:

Cons:


What content is required for the method? Questions for a survey or interview? Low-fidelity wireframes? Outline these on this page for posterity + review.

TARGET AUDIENCE + OUTREACH/RECRUITING

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Will we be pulling from the
User Research Database
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?
ok
When conducting surveys it’s helpful to add an optional question about whether users are open to us reaching out in the future. In doing this, we can move towards creating a ‘opt-in’ user
User Research Database
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.
Will we be pulling from Salesforce?
Existing customers? Previous customers? Potential customers?
What are the max/min number of customers required for this research?

KEY DECISION + QUESTIONS

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Are there key decisions or questions that have been decided (e.g. removing this question because it’s confusing users)?

SYNTHESIS + FUTURE QUESTIONS

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Link to presentations, zoom recordings, summaries, slack messages, reports that aggregate and analyze the data you collected from this initiative.

What questions still remain after you finished this project? What questions were out of scope for this project but are still important to explore? What new questions arose from this research?

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ARCHIVED INFO

Were there any good ideas that didn’t make into the final draft of this project brief?
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