Research Template
Keep all your user research in one place and collaborate with your team.
About the Research Template
Teams can document findings from usability testing sessions and customer interviews into a systematic, flexible user research template. Collecting everyone’s observations into a centralized location makes it easier to share insights company-wide and suggest new features based on user needs.
Keep reading to learn more about the Research Template.
What is a Research Template
Research templates can be adapted to work with different design methods or user research techniques. When it’s your job to ask questions, take notes, learn more about your user, and test iteratively, a Research Template can help you validate your assumptions, find similarities across different users, and articulate their mental models, needs, and goals.
User research helps teams avoid designing for themselves, and instead turn their attention to who will actually use your product, in what context they’ll be using your product or service, and what they need or expect from your brand or organization.
Research templates can be used to record two different types of data or observations:
Quantitative: numbers-based research, or anything you can count. This includes the number of users and percentage changes. It helps teams understand what is happening on a website or app.
Qualitative: opinion-based research, or anything that can take place in the form of a question-and-answer format (closed questions), or conversational exchange (open questions).
Whichever way you choose, a Research Template will help you keep your designs informed, contextual, and user-centric.
When to use Research Templates
A Research Template can be used at any stage of the product or service design life cycle.
Right now: No time like the present. The earlier you start your research, the bigger the impact your research findings will have on your product or service.
At every stage of the design process: User research can reveal important findings that can be applied to your product or service. This increases its value.
In the earliest stage of the project: Not every team can budget for research every step of the way. In that case, do the most research as early as possible in the project. Make sure to reserve some time and budget for conducting supplementary research later on in the process, too.
Create your own Research Template
Participating in user research efforts as a team is important. Everyone can get involved, better understand the user they’re designing for, and clarify why certain decisions are based on user research findings.
Get started by selecting the Research Template, to make one of your own:
Record your observations and make revisions where needed. Assemble a cross-functional team who can empathize with your users: designers, engineers, product managers, user researchers, marketers, and support team members will all have valuable input to contribute. Nominate someone in your group to facilitate. This person will lead the conversation with the user participant. Everyone else will listen and watch for potential roadblocks and epiphanies for the user.
Take notes. The user research template’s columns and rows are customizable and can be renamed to record elements such as observational goals, tester details, and emotions that emerge during the conversation. These notes can also be useful for people unable to attend the session.
Bring it all together. After the user interview sessions are done, group similar notes into themed clusters. What are the pain points for the customer? Where were the opportunities for delight? Sometimes notes will come together into logical themed clusters, but sometimes you’ll have “odd one out” observations that don’t fit anywhere. You can gather these into a “basket” or collect them into a separate area in case they may become useful later.
Adapt as needed throughout the research and design process. Ideally, this process will help you develop features side-by-side as a team, rather than go through a hand-off process with all the involved departments. The Research Template is flexible enough to be adapted to best serve your team’s needs.
Get started with this template right now.
Prune the Product Tree Template
Works best for:
Design, Desk Research, Product Management
Prune the Product Tree (also known as the product tree game or the product tree prioritization framework) is a visual tool that helps product managers organize and prioritize product feature requests. The tree represents a product roadmap and helps your team think about how to grow and shape your product or service by gamifying feedback-gathering from customers and stakeholders. A typical product tree has four symbolic features: the trunk, which represents the existing product features your team is building; the branches, each of which represents a product or system function; roots, which are technical requirements or infrastructure; and leaves, which are new ideas for product features.
Mind Map Template
Works best for:
Design
Based on Joseph Novak's innovation, Concept Mapping, this template helps to organize ideas and demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of a subject. It visually arranges all the details about a topic, which fosters shared understanding. This technique is particularly useful when explaining different facets or related topics.
HEART Framework Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Project Management, User Experience
Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. Those are the pillars of user experience — which is why they serve as the key metrics in the HEART framework. Developed by the research team at Google, this framework gives larger companies an accurate way to measure user experience at scale, which you can then reference throughout the product development lifecycle. While the HEART framework uses five metrics, you might not need all five for every project — choose the ones that will be most useful for your company and project.
Sitemap Template
Works best for:
Mapping, Software Development, Diagrams
Building a website is a complex task. Numerous stakeholders come together to create pages, write content, design elements, and build a website architecture that serves a target audience. A sitemap is an effective tool for simplifying the website design process. It allows you to take stock of the content and design elements you plan to include on your site. By visualizing your site, you can structure and build each component in a way that makes sense for your audience.
Competitive Analysis Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Decision Making
Developing a great product starts with knowing the lay of the land (meaning who you’re up against) and answering a few questions: Who are your competitors? How does your product or service compare? What makes you stand out? A competitive analysis will help find the answers, which can ultimately shape your product, value prop, marketing, and sales strategies. It’s a great exercise when a big business event is about to occur — like a new product release or strategic planning session.
E-Commerce Wireframe Template
Works best for:
Wireframe, UX, Design
The E-commerce Website Wireframe template is designed to guide you through your e-commerce website wireframing journey. Start with a basic black-and-white wireframe, which includes all the essential elements and screens for a full UI design — just customize it to your needs. This template is ideal for any e-commerce business and can be easily adapted for a restaurant, clothing store, grocery shop, or tech retailer. With customizable components and an editable color scheme, you can quickly personalize the wireframe to fit your specific business.