User Research
Overview
Use this skill to gather credible evidence from representative users and reduce product decision risk.
Scope Boundaries
- Product assumptions require validation before high-cost implementation.
- Teams need evidence for unmet needs, friction points, or mental-model mismatch.
- Competing solution options need user-behavior evidence for prioritization.
Templates And Assets
- Research plan template:
assets/user-research-plan-template.md
- Research evidence log:
assets/user-research-evidence-log-template.md
Inputs To Gather
- Decision questions and hypotheses to test.
- Target segments, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and sample constraints.
- Existing analytics, support data, and prior research artifacts.
- Privacy and consent requirements for research operations.
Deliverables
- Research plan with method choice and participant strategy.
- Evidence-backed findings with confidence and sampling limitations.
- Decision implications and recommended next actions.
Workflow
- Define decision-linked hypotheses and success/failure criteria.
- Choose method by evidence gap, timeline, and risk tolerance.
- Recruit representative participants and document sampling risks.
- Run sessions with consistent prompts and structured note capture.
- Distinguish observed behavior from interpretation.
- Synthesize findings, confidence, and implications for product decisions.
Quality Standard
- Findings are traceable to raw evidence.
- Sampling limitations and confidence are explicit.
- Sensitive information handling follows privacy requirements.
- Outputs clearly state what should change and why.
Failure Conditions
- Stop when participant sample is clearly non-representative for the decision.
- Stop when consent or data-retention requirements are not met.
- Escalate when findings are contradictory and decision cannot proceed safely.