user-research_skill

Overview

This skill provides practical user research methods for planning studies, conducting interviews and observations, creating personas and journey maps, and synthesizing findings into actionable design recommendations. It focuses on repeatable templates, question techniques, and synthesis patterns that help teams turn evidence into prioritized product decisions. Use it to run reliable studies and produce clear, stakeholder-ready outputs.

How this skill works

The skill outlines when to choose common research methods (interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, surveys, diary studies) and gives concrete protocols for running sessions. It includes interview structures, question techniques, observation templates, affinity mapping and insight formulas, plus persona and journey-map templates to convert raw data into prioritized recommendations. It is designed to be applied iteratively and validated with additional data.

When to use it

• Planning and scoping user research studies or recruiting participants
• Running or moderating one-on-one user interviews and think-aloud sessions
• Observing users in context to capture real workflows and workarounds
• Synthesizing notes into themes, insights, and prioritized opportunities
• Creating research-backed personas and journey maps for design decisions
• Validating concepts or onboarding flows with target users

Best practices

• Choose the method that matches the question: depth for interviews, scale for surveys, context for field work
• Follow a structured interview flow: intro, warm-up, context, deep dive, exploration, wrap-up
• Ask open-ended questions, use silence, and follow up to surface motivations
• Capture single observations per note for affinity mapping; cluster before naming themes
• Write insights as: [user group] needs [need] because [motivation], but currently [pain], which means [consequence]
• Validate personas and journey maps with stakeholders and additional data before wide adoption

Example use cases

• Design team preparing a 6-week usability and interview study to improve onboarding
• Product manager running contextual inquiries to understand support ticket causes
• Researcher synthesizing interview transcripts into an affinity map and prioritized insight list
• UX lead creating 3 research-backed personas to align roadmap decisions
• Cross-functional workshop using journey maps to identify quick-win improvements