Research
What stakeholders think research is vs what it actually is
Stakeholders often expect research to give them certainty. What it actually gives them is understanding.
Why research is often treated like a task with neat answers, when its real value is in changing how teams understand the problem.
In short
Why research is often treated like a task with neat answers, when its real value is in changing how teams understand the problem.
Why teams frame research the wrong way
For them, serviceUser ResearchUnderstand user behaviour, validate ideas, and make clearer product decisions with evidence you can act on.Open service was something you ran. You recruit a set number of users, schedule glossarySessionA session is a single period of user interaction with a product, from entry to exit within a defined timeframe.Open glossary term, ask questions, and at the end you get a set of findings. A step in the glossaryProcessA process is a defined sequence of steps used to achieve a specific outcome.Open glossary term — a phase, a deliverable, something you complete before moving into design.
serviceUser ResearchUnderstand user behaviour, validate ideas, and make clearer product decisions with evidence you can act on.Open service gets scoped like a task. Five users, ten users, a week of glossarySessionA session is a single period of user interaction with a product, from entry to exit within a defined timeframe.Open glossary term, a report at the end. There's a start point, an end point, and an expectation that once it's done, the answers are there. It feels controlled. It feels predictable.
Stakeholders often expect research to reduce ambiguity. In reality, good research usually reshapes how they understand the problem first.
What actually happens when research starts working
On that same project, once we got into the glossarySessionA session is a single period of user interaction with a product, from entry to exit within a defined timeframe.Open glossary term, things started to shift almost immediately. Users weren't behaving the way the team expected. They weren't following the journeys in the same order, they weren't interpreting things in the same way, and they were getting stuck in places no one had flagged internally. After two or three sessions, it was already clear that the original assumptions didn't hold up. The question of how many users do we need became irrelevant. The question changed to: what are we actually learning here?
Key takeaway
The real question in research is rarely how many users you need. It is what you are actually learning and how it changes the problem.
What stakeholders expect vs what research gives you
What glossaryStakeholderA stakeholder is any individual or group with an interest in a product, project, or outcome, including internal teams and external parties.Open glossary term often expect is certainty: clear answers, clear problems, clear next steps, something that reduces ambiguity and makes decisions easier. What serviceUser ResearchUnderstand user behaviour, validate ideas, and make clearer product decisions with evidence you can act on.Open service actually gives you is understanding. And that often comes with more nuance than people expect.
I've been in situations where early findings made things feel less clear, not more. Where a simple problem turned out to have multiple layers. Where different users approached the same journey in completely different ways. That can feel uncomfortable if you're expecting a clean answer. But that's where the value is.
What research actually uncovers
On Travelbag work, the initial thinking was that users were dropping off because parts of the journey weren't clear enough. What actually came out was more subtle: users weren't just struggling with glossaryClarityClarity is how easily users can understand what is happening and what they need to do.Open glossary term, they were losing glossaryConfidenceConfidence is the level of certainty in a decision or outcome based on available evidence.Open glossary term at specific points, particularly when decisions started to carry more weight. It wasn't about making things easier to understand. It was about making the experience feel more trustworthy. That's a different problem entirely.
Good serviceUser ResearchUnderstand user behaviour, validate ideas, and make clearer product decisions with evidence you can act on.Open service isn't a checklist and it doesn't wrap up neatly with a set of answers. The most valuable research creates movement. It changes how people think about the problem, shifts the conversation, challenges assumptions that felt settled. And that's usually where I spend most of my time — not just running glossarySessionA session is a single period of user interaction with a product, from entry to exit within a defined timeframe.Open glossary term, but helping teams interpret what they're seeing and understand what it means for the product.