User research and discovery

User Research and Discovery

Produce decision-relevant user evidence without turning a convenient sample, memorable quotation, or researcher's interpretation into a population claim. Read references/research-method.md before selecting participants, collecting data, or interpreting findings.

Workflow

1. Bind the study to a decision, target users, context, known evidence, assumptions, unknowns, and evidence that could change the decision.
2. Choose the smallest method mix that can observe the relevant behavior or elicit the relevant experience. Prefer observation of real work over stated preference when the research question concerns behavior.
3. Define a purposive recruitment matrix across material behaviors, access needs, experience, context, and risk. State excluded groups and coverage limits; do not call a qualitative sample representative.
4. Establish consent, privacy, recording, compensation, safeguarding, accessibility, retention, withdrawal, and sensitive-topic handling before recruitment. Collect only data required by the study.
5. Write and pilot a protocol. Use neutral prompts, realistic tasks, consistent probes, and explicit stopping or escalation rules. Do not coach participants toward the intended design.
6. Preserve traceability from session evidence to observations, interpretations, themes, and recommendations. Separate what a participant did or said from what the researcher inferred.
7. Analyze iteratively across participants. Search for negative cases, contradictory segments, researcher effects, non-response, proxy-user error, and alternative explanations. Do not manufacture saturation from repetition in a narrow sample.
8. Connect findings to the original decision. Rank findings by consequence, evidence coverage, and confidence; state unresolved questions and the next evidence needed.

Artifact

Produce a User Research Protocol and Findings:

• decision, research questions, users, context, scope, and prior evidence;
• method, recruitment matrix, inclusion and exclusion, consent, privacy, accessibility, retention, and study materials;
• session ledger with evidence locators and material deviations;
• findings with supporting and disconfirming observations, affected groups, coverage, confidence, and limitations;
• design or service implications, non-claims, unresolved risks, and decision handoff.

If only the protocol or only the findings are requested, produce that section without inventing the missing study phase.

Boundaries

• Use market-research-synthesis for category, competitor, pricing, or demand evidence from market sources.
• Use product-feedback-learning-loop for recurring post-use feedback intake, triage, prioritization, and closure.
• Use product-analytics-instrumentation-review for event definitions, telemetry coverage, and quantitative behavioral measurement.
• Use product-experiment-review for randomized, holdout, switchback, or staged product experiments; use causal-inference-analysis for causal effect claims.
• Do not generalize prevalence from qualitative evidence. Hand a prevalence question to an appropriately sampled quantitative study.