From UX insight to impact in 6 steps
A UX research framework to identify and fill gaps in product knowledge, effectively communicate insights, and measure the impact of your work.
What I talk about when I talk about UXR
Research is more than just “talking to users”. It is about communication and relationships. It’s about understanding what information is needed, how to get that information, and how to communicate it so it has an impact. In other words, research is purposeful knowledge creation.
At the same time, your purpose as an employee is to generate more value for your employer than it costs to pay you.
Taken together, I see my job as a UXR as:
UX Research = Generating value for your employer + Purposeful knowledge creation
But how exactly can you do this?
“Simply” follow the 6 steps to go from Insight to Impact. This framework is inspired by the Knowledge-to-Action framework for generating impact by working through a cycle that turns knowledge into practice, a well-known evidence-based process used in healthcare.
Step 1: Identify the knowledge gap
Action: Plan your research. Ex.: Research plan in a Word document
You’re doing research for someone. Identify whose decision will be informed by your research and understand the knowledge they need. The space between what a person knows and what they need to know to perform an action is the knowledge gap. Once that gap is identified, your job is to build a bridge between what they know and what they need to know using research. This starts by writing a research plan.
Things to consider when writing a research plan
Which method will give you the information you need? Luckily, there are a small number of “common” UX research methods and there are tons of great articles to help you pick the right one (I like How to choose the right research method).
You’ll also want to consider these two dimensions of your work.
At what level are you working?
- Feature: Are you improving a specific design?
- Product: Are you adding a new feature?
- System: Are you trying to understand how people use your product in their day-to-day?
This will inform the research method you’ll use and the type of questions you’ll ask. You’re doing research to inform a decision and that decision exists on one of those levels. Tailoring your research plan with this in mind will make your insights useful.
What type of knowledge will you generate?
- Directional: Inform a specific design recommendation.
- Foundational: Establish an understanding of the problem space.
- Strategic: Identify new higher-level opportunities.
The intended impact of your research should be clear before starting. This will help inform the appropriate research method.
Additional reading:
Step 2: Do the research
Action: Do research. Ex: Perform semi-structured user interviews
You planned it, now go out and research!
Additional reading
Step 3: Speak to your audience
Write a research report. Ex.: Word document with methods, results, next steps
It’s your responsibility to do something with your research findings. You should have identified stakeholders during your planning who are your findings’ audience.
Be very thoughtful about how you will communicate with them.
Think of it this way: Your stakeholders have a decision to make (Step 1’s decision to inform) and they asked you for advice. Having done the research, you have an evidence-informed opinion of what their decision should be. Both your and your stakeholders’ ultimate goal is to provide value to the company, but there might be other teams giving them advice. Your stakeholders want to make the best decision they can, and ideally, you want that decision to be based on your recommendations.
To determine how to best communicate your findings, start with these questions:
- Who is your audience?
- What is the format of the business information they typically consume?
Specifically, you’ll want to determine the:
- Medium: What type of document are you generating? Your company might mandate that reports be in a very specific format. Ex. Email, PowerPoint, Slack message, Word doc.
- Format: How will you convey your insights? What do your stakeholders find more impactful? If they’re used to working with customer feedback, quotes might be more impactful than a graph or a table.
- Language: Which words will you use? Often, the same word can mean different things to different people. Make sure to use the words of your stakeholders when you write your report to avoid being misinterpreted.
Lastly, you’ll want to think about packaging your research for future readers. What would someone need to understand of your research if your product was suddenly sunset? This not only helps any future researcher and ensures your insights have a long life, but it will also help you if you ever need to revisit your research in a few years.
Additional resources
Step 4: Plan for impact
Plan to track your impact. Ex.: Impact section in your Research Report
This could fit in step 3, but it’s so important that it merits its own step. There are many types of impact your research could have, and there are even more ways you could measure it. Once you’ve done your research and written about it, you’ll want to think about the “so what”. Find answers to these questions and keep them either in your research plan or in the research report:
- What could be the research’s impact? Ex. Reduce churn, increase click on a call to action, fast time-to-value.
- How will you measure this? Ex. Analytics, follow-up interviews, financial metrics.
- Who will measure this? Ex. You, a Product person, your ResearchOps team.
- Where will you keep these measures? Ex. Regular impact reports, appendices, maintained spreadsheet.
What type of impact can you have on the business?
I love this table with the 20 levers for design impact. I spent a few years working on research impact in academia and healthcare, and I couldn’t stop thinking about this framework the first time I heard of it on this podcast. I recommend you read more about it if you’re interested in business impact from a UX perspective.
Additional reading
Step 5: Bridge the gap
Support the implementation of your findings. Ex.: Put the next steps in other teams’ Azure DevOps
In my opinion, this is the hardest step because it requires you to hand off your findings to the person who will make them happen.
To do this, you need to know exactly who will implement the findings, their workflow, and the language they use. This is an opportunity for cross-disciplinary collaboration (and you might uncover opportunities for indirect/save money impact by understanding your colleague’s processes)! You’ll need to understand how they use their project management tool, figure out the information they need to do their job, and their prioritization process.
Another challenging aspect of this step is that you probably don’t assign work to the person implementing the findings. You might need to convince that person’s manager that your findings are important enough to prioritize.
The last challenge with this step is that you might not think this is your job! You did the research and you wrote it up, now it’s someone else’s job to make it happen (plus you have actual research to do). While true, remember that it’s unlikely the person you expect to implement your findings will share your deep understanding of the topic. They might have the best intentions, but the implementation could end up looking like a game of broken telephones rather than a seamless collaboration between disciplines.
Some things to think about for this step:
- How do your partners work and how can you position the knowledge to increase the likelihood of uptake?
- How can you advocate for your findings?
Step 6: Evaluate your impact
Track the impact of your research. Ex.: Maintain impact tracking Excel document.
In this step, you need to implement your impact tracking plan (step 4). You’ll want to evaluate what happened after your insights were implemented. You should have already planned exactly how you wanted to track your impact, so you just need to put your impact tracking plan into action.
During this step, you’ll gather data points that show your impact on a specific aspect of the user experience. If you have pre/post research metrics, you might even be able to link your impact to key business metrics (ex. Did an improved check-out experience lead to more sales?). This ties back to the idea of generating value for your employer.
Additional reading
Repeat
These 6 steps are generally cyclical meaning the knowledge from previous research should feed into identifying the knowledge gap for a new research project. The result of this is increasing your organization’s understanding of its users the more you move through this cycle.
