User Research Plans, Part 1 13Jul05

Screenshot: adaptivepath.com

Mike Kuniavsky from adaptive path started an article series about user research plans at uigarden. In his first article he is talking about Goals: Why you�re doing the research.

"Every piece of user research is part of an ongoing research program, even if that program is informal. However, making a program formal provides a number of advantages: It gives you a set of goals, a schedule that stretches limited user-research resources, and results when they�re needed most. It also helps you avoid unnecessary, redundant, or hurried research.
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Before you begin writing a research plan, determine corporate priorities and set research goals that can meet them. Hopefully everyone in an organization knows the general goals of a project (�Get more revenue,� �Bleed less money,� �Get more exposure for the brand,� etc.), but there will be a natural spectrum of understanding about what this means. Each department team invariably has a different method for figuring out how goals apply to them and for measuring their success at completing goals. Thus, you�ll need to do some internal discovery before you can make a complete research plan."

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Crafting a User Research Plan