- A product decision needs evidence from the people who do the work
- You do not yet know the jobs, language, or constraints well enough to spec
- Stakeholders keep arguing from opinion and you need quotes with coverage
- You already have a flow and need to see if people can finish a task. Use usability testing
- You need counts from many people on questions you already know. Use a survey
- You have one week to pick a concept and prototype. That is a design sprint
Steps
Each step hands the next one a concrete artifact, so the readout can point back to what people said.
Research Planning
Write the question that would change a product decision. That question chooses the method: interview, survey, or both.
Recruitment Planning
Define who has the experience you need, then write a screener that finds them. Book a couple of extras so the calendar still holds.
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User Research Recruitment Plan
Create participant criteria and recruitment materials for user research studies.
user-researchrecruitmentparticipants - Research
Participant Screener Survey Builder
Draft a recruitment screener with intro copy, behavioral and qualifying items, explicit disqualifiers, routing notes, and recruiter guidance. Goes deeper than a high-level recruitment plan.
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Participant Consent & Session Comms
Plain-language consent and logistics: recording, data use, how to stop, incentive, and calendar copy. Variants for interviews, usability tests, surveys, and diaries.
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Interview Guide Creation
Build the guide around the last time they did the work. Behavioral questions give you answers you can quote. If the session has tasks or a prototype, use the Moderated Discussion Guide instead.
Conduct Interviews
Run the sessions. After each one, turn the transcript into a debrief so synthesis is clustering evidence, not reconstructing memory.
This is time with participants. Record with permission and capture the lines you will want later.
Research Synthesis
Cluster debriefs into themes with coverage counts. Then write insight statements. Do not skip to a mixed-source report from raw notes.
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Affinity Mapping Assistant
Synthesize raw qual data (interviews, usability, diaries) using an affinity-style flow: clean, code, cluster into themes with evidence counts, outliers, severity-weighted ranking, and surprises.
affinity-mappingsynthesisqualitative-research - Research
Research Insight Statement Writer
Turn themes and observations into decision-ready insight statements (Observation, Pattern, Implication, Recommendation) plus a short exec "So What" summary. Use after synthesis or affinity output.
insightssynthesisstakeholder-communication
Share Findings
Open the readout with what should change and the evidence behind it. Method belongs in the appendix.
Frequently asked questions
I already have research questions. Do I start over?
Keep them. Go to recruitment if you still need participants, or to the interview guide if people are already booked.
Does this have to take weeks?
A narrow question with people already lined up can be five interviews and a synthesis the next morning. Give synthesis its own block of time so the readout has themes, not only notes.
How do I keep the study together across ChatGPT or Claude threads?
Put the research objectives at the top of every new thread, then the last step’s output. The model stays on the same study.
When should I use usability testing instead?
Use this workflow while you are still forming the problem. Use usability testing when you have a flow and need to see whether people can complete a task.