Ranking Different Research Insight Documentation Approaches

Should you create a report, a user-journey map, an affinity map or an opportunity solution tree to document your research insights?

If we're going to compare different methods we will need a way of comparing them. For this I recommend:

1. Accessibility - how easily can people find and access insights?

2. Maintainability - is it ease to support long term?

3. Actionability - does the method help people translate insights into actionable next steps?

Of the three I would argue that actionability is the most important because the biggest risk for research is that it sits on a shelf gathering dust. To be actionable though we need to link our insights to both the customer problem and the product strategy. And we need to be able to easily compare and prioritise options.

In my article below, I use these categories to compare some common documentation approaches. Check it out below and let me know if you agree with my rankings or not.

This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

Strategy Is Not War; It’s Gardening by Christina Wodtke
Christina compares strategic planning to gardening, focusing on the importance of market selection, foundational decisions, and nurturing long-term growth rather than focusing on competition.

How Passion.io Applies Continuous Discovery To The Employee Experience by Melissa Suzuno
Apply continuous discovery methods—such as conducting employee interviews and building opportunity solution trees—to treat employee experience as a product, leading to iterative improvements and increased engagement.

Product Direction

Clarity For Product Managers: Directional Clarity by Arne Kittler
The significance of directional clarity in product management depends heavily on how a well-defined direction aligns team efforts toward a common goal.

Transformation As A Project by Marty Cagan
Treating transformation as a project can slow things down. A more iterative, product-like approach with pilot teams leads to better, long-term change.

Continuous Research

Ranking Different Research Insight Documentation Approaches by Rory Madden
This is a framework for evaluating and ranking different documentation approaches based on their effectiveness in making insights accessible, maintainable, usable, and actionable for product teams.

The Biggest Challenges Practitioners Encounter Working In UX by Kim Flaherty & Taylor Dykes
Dive into the five main challenges in UX: inaccurate perceptions of UX, difficulty in measuring impact, lack of stakeholder buy-in, insufficient resources, and a depleted job market.

Continuous Design

The Value Of Risk Mitigation In UX Research: How To Quantify Prevention by Optimal Workshop
UX research proactively identifies potential issues in product development, allowing teams to make informed decisions and adjustments early in the process, thereby reducing costly redesigns and enhancing user satisfaction. [Sponsored Content]

Creativity In UX Design: How AI Can Help by Dr Maria Panagiotidi
AI can help within UX design by automating repetitive tasks, generating design variations, and providing data-driven insights, thereby fostering creativity and efficiency.

Continuous Delivery

Focus On Building Resilient Interactions, Not Just Resilient Services by Raul Junco
Build resilient systems through strong service interactions, using strategies like: caching, retries, and asynchronous communication to prevent failures.

Product Discovery Should Speed Up Delivery, Not Slow It Down by Ant Murphy
Involving engineering teams in the discovery process can help to foster collaboration, reduce back-and-forth, and accelerate delivery.

It’s Time To Transform and Grow!
Don’t miss these upcoming talks at UXDX USA 2025

Ready to accelerate business transformation and drive sustainable growth? Here’s what you can look forward to at UXDX USA 2025 in New York:

• Michelle Parsons takes us through the "Framework for Balancing Short-Term Wins with Long-Term Product Goals," sharing strategies for maintaining a balance between immediate impact and long-term strategic growth.

• Joann Wu will share "Designing for Business Impact: A Transformation Journey at Uber," revealing how design can drive real business results and create lasting value across an organization.

• Amit Sathe & Marina Lin introduce us to "The UX Scorecard: Transforming Research into Measurable Impact Across the Org," showing how to integrate UX research into business decisions for measurable success.

These sessions are great for anyone looking to align design, product strategy, and business goals to fuel growth and transformation. Book your tickets today and be part of the conversation shaping the future of business and product innovation!

THE UXDX MAJOR EVENTS

FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS 

Check out more upcoming community events 

Video of the Week
Transforming Complex Experiences
by Focusing on the Key Control Points

Jehad Affoneh, Chief Design Officer at Toast, reveals how his team tackled the challenges of supporting over 100,000 restaurants during high-stress rush hours. By focusing on the right control points (like async chat support), they defragmented fragmented customer experiences, improved authentication, empowered agents with AI, and enhanced knowledge bases.

Learn how Toast turned complexity into seamless support by pulling the right thread. Dive into the full session here 👇

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question: How happy are you with your skill / ability to run productive interviews?

Over one third, 37.4% of people, are unhappy with their skills in running research interviews. With the increased speed of software development using AI, making sure that we build the right thing is going to become even more important.

On the positive side, 41.5% of people are happy with their interviewing skills. I think this will be a really interesting statistic to look at again in a year or so and see how preferences have changed.

If you want to boost your interview skills and get more meaningful insights, check out our course on Continuous Research.