user research summary examples

• How it works

Online Usability Testing

Understand user behavior on your website.

Mobile & Tablet UX Testing

 Test usability on mobile devices and tablets.

Moderated Testing

Conduct live, guided user testing sessions.

Information Architecture Testing

Design or refine your information architecture.

Unmoderated Testing

Allow users to test without assistance.

True Intent Studies

Understand visitors’ goals and satisfaction.

A/B Testing

Determine which design performs better.

UX Benchmarking

Analyze your website against competitors.

Prototype Testing

Optimize design before development.

Search Engine Findability

Measure ease of finding your online properties.

Explore all Loop11 features →

Reporting Features

AI Insights

Gain deeper insights using the power of AI.

Clickstream Analytics

Track users’ clicks and navigation patterns.

Heatmap Analysis

Visualize user engagement and interaction.

User Session Recording & Replay

 Capture user interactions for usability analysis.

Get access to all Loop11 features for free. Start free trial

• Clients & Testimonials

Written by Bridgette Hernandez

3 September, 2020

Writing good user research summaries can be hard.

They’re supposed to communicate complex, detailed user testing findings in a really concise and simple way. This can be a bit of a challenge for non-writer folks like UX designers.

Are you one of them?

If yes, you’re in the right place. This article is here to help you write clearly, so you don’t end up with a huge summary that no one really wants to read.

Keep reading to know how to write a great research summary everyone will want to get credit for.

How to Write a User Research Summary: Step-by-Step Instructions

Now, let me walk you through the nine steps of writing that epic user research summary.

Step 1. Go Over Research Findings Once Again

Used-based testing is complex. To make sense of the insights from testers, you have to pay attention to every single detail. Not to mention that some critical thinking skills are necessary to read between the lines and make meaningful recommendations.

How to make sure to cover all bases? Read/analyze/watch research materials once again before writing. Not only does this refresh your memory, but it also gives one more chance to spot something important.

So, go over the results and make notes for yourself. The goal would be to summarize the results and make it easier for yourself to structure the summary.

Step 2. Make an Outline

With the research findings and notes fresh in your mind, proceed to outline your summary. It’ll be helpful to structure your thoughts and present everything in a logical order.

There’s no magical formula for the best summary structure, but you can go for this one. It ensures a logical flow of information and covers all important areas.

Report Outline Example

• Research goals and objectives (research questions)
• Summary of the most important findings
• Methodology + participants
• The findings in more detail
• Bugs and other issues
• Recommendations.

Sounds good? If yes, read more about each section next.

Step 3. Research Goals and Objectives (Research Questions)

The first section of your report should give a quick project background. It will give context to the goals and objectives. Describing them will be the most important part to help readers understand how the project contributed to making a better product.

For example:

“For this user testing project, our team was looking to understand the user’s impressions and perceptions of ABC app.”

Consider using a bullet list to describe your goals. This format clarifies writing and is easy to spot and read.

Pro tip: Include a sentence describing the goal of your summary. It can be something like:

“This report describes the user testing process, how the data was collected, the most important results, and recommendations.”

Related: User Testing a Mobile App Prototype: Essential Checklist.

Step 4. Summary of the Most Important Findings

“So what did they find? What do I need to know?

This section should answer these questions. The findings you need to describe are the themes that occurred across more than one tester, e.g., three users struggling to understand how to complete a certain action.

Struggling to keep the sentences you’re writing short and clear? Consider getting professional writing help from tools like Hemingway Editor . Remember that a clear description is critical to making the entire summary useful.

One way to give a clear explanation is to group the findings by themes, e.g., “Navigation.” If you wish to introduce more structure, also consider giving each finding a priority value (low, medium, and high). For example, the findings that point to the most severe issues can be given a “high” priority.

Step 5. Methodology + Participants

Describe the methods that were used to complete the testing.

Say, you invited 30 people between the ages of 20 and 40 to your office and several coffee houses around the city. You asked them to test your new app and tell you their thoughts.

After they “played” with your app for about 20 minutes, you sat down with each tester and talked. So, the primary method of collecting data was an interview.

There were two parts to it. During the first part, the tester shared their experiences with the interviewer. The second part had the interviewer asking the tester a series of pre-written questions, e.g., “ Did you find it difficult to book a breakfast via our app?”

To describe this plausible UX research methodology, you can use this structure:

• Interview plan + questions . Here, list the structure of the interview, e.g., “ The interview started with a quick introduction…”
• Most important interview questions . Describe the questions in a bullet list and add your reasoning to each (see the next point)
• The reasoning behind questions. Include a short explanation of why a particular question was asked, e.g., “ With this question, we were trying to learn how to present information about additional hotel features in a way that even skeptical app users would click to see more”
• Participant description . Let the readers know how many testers participated, and give some demographic details like age, gender, and why they were chosen.

Pro tip : Consider giving the participants fake names in the summary. It’ll make them easier to remember compared to generic “Participant I” or “Participant II.” To make this process more fun, use the famous Fake Name Generator .

Related: Top 10 Questions When Recruiting Participants for User Tests.

Step 6. Test Findings, in More Detail

You’ve given some idea of test findings already, but now it’s time to really go in detail. In this section, you don’t just state the findings, but also provide your explanation of why the test ended this way.

Here’s how you can write the explanation (a very concise one, go for more details):

“The testers weren’t interested in viewing the extra booking features on the app’s home page. According to them, they rarely got to the bottom of the page where the banner was placed. To engage more users, we need to move it up close to the search feature.”

Jenny Amendola, a UX writer from SupremeDissertations , advises to “Differentiate the results by assigning values like ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ to them. This way, you can make it easier to understand the results.”

Let the readers know how you organized, analyzed, and grouped the results into themes, too.

Step 7. Bugs and Other Issues

In this section, provide the description of problems discovered during the test that affected the results. Feel free to make it into a bullet list where each bug/issue comes with an explanation.

Categorizing them is also a good idea to clarify the text. For example…

Important! Be sure to include screenshots and images to visualize each issue. It’ll help UX designers understand what you mean.

Step 8. Recommendations

It’s time for your critical thinking genius to shine. In this section, list the ideas for improvement, from most important to least important.

Feel free to follow the structure we’ve used so far: the themes, categories, and bullet lists with explanations. Also, consider supporting each recommendation with a quote from a tester.

“Recommendation 1: We need to focus more on making extra booking options visible above the fold on the home page:

Tester review: ‘I rarely scroll down to the bottom of the home page, so I didn’t see that banner.’”

Some visuals with your recommendations could also be useful even if you create something really simple in an image processing app.

Need some help with spotting improvement opportunities and coming up with useful recommendations? Read a beginner-friendly, simple guide below to get started.

Read the Guide: A Beginner’s Guide to User Experience Testing .

Just One More Thing…

Put your name on that awesome summary.

As a UX researcher or someone involved in doing user research, you’ll be writing many more summaries in the future. Keep this outline to make the next one easier.

Happy writing!

• Recent Posts
• How to Write Actionable User Research Summaries -

Were sorry to hear about that, give us a chance to improve.

Article contents

Related articles

How to Use Rating Scale Questions in Your UX Research

Are you trying to figure out what your audience really wants? How can you improve the customer experience (CX) unless you know what they prefer? Doing user experience (UX) research can take on many different tools and tactics. One excellent way to figure out what your customers need is by conducting some rating scale question […]

How To Track The Value Of UX In Your Project

User experience projects are often ambiguous and challenging, especially in terms of tracking value. Remember the three constraints: cost, scope, and time. Stakeholders are unlikely to consider a project if it costs them much for too little value. Tracking value becomes a bit hard for UX projects for numerous reasons. *Enter UX benchmarking.* UX benchmarking […]

Screener Questions to Find Great Research Participants

Recruiting participants for user experience research is a formidable hurdle in any burgeoning project. It can be a lengthy, tedious process — full of rejections, reschedules, and no-shows. But, one foolproof way to guarantee your UX research study proceeds smoothly with little fuss is to filter out the bad apples early on.  That’s where screener […]

Create your free trial account

• Free 14-day trial. Easy set-up. Cancel anytime
• No UX or coding experience required

We love sharing interesting UX topics and work by creatives out there. Follow us for weekly UX posts, inspirations and reels!

Follow us on Instagram

Maybe next time!

Integrations

What's new?

Prototype Testing

Live Website Testing

Feedback Surveys

Interview Studies

Card Sorting

Tree Testing

In-Product Prompts

Participant Management

Automated Reports

Templates Gallery

Choose from our library of pre-built mazes to copy, customize, and share with your own users

Browse all templates

Financial Services

Tech & Software

Product Designers

• Product Managers

User Researchers

By use case

Concept & Idea Validation

Wireframe & Usability Test

Content & Copy Testing

Feedback & Satisfaction

Content Hub

Educational resources for product, research and design teams

Explore all resources

Question Bank

Research Maturity Model

Guides & Reports

Help Center

Future of User Research Report

The Optimal Path Podcast

Maze Guides | Resources Hub

What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

0% complete

How to write and present actionable UX research reports

Regardless of how thorough or valuable your user research is, it quickly becomes meaningless if you’re unable to succinctly put it together and present it in a digestible UX research report.

UX research reporting is a skill just as valuable as being able to conduct the research in the first place. It lets you showcase methodology and findings of your research, and ensure a product’s user experience delivers with the first iteration.

Luckily, how to write and present UX research reports is something you can learn. What’s more, this chapter will guide you through it (and provide free templates for your UX report).

What is a UX research report?

A user research report is an easy-to-digest summary of a user research project that aims to update product stakeholders on results, inform product decisions with user data, and harmoniously guide a product build or iteration.

Once upon a time, UX research reporting was a cumbersome, dreaded box to tick. It was notorious for resulting in unnavigable reports that product teams would rather leave at the bottom of their inbox than try to consume.

The word 'report' conjures images of lengthy word documents, a PDF one-pager, or hour-long presentation with an occasional GIF—but a research report doesn't have to mean that.

Kevin Rapley , Senior User Researcher at Justice Digital, explains a UX report as being “about arming our teammates with data that allows them to decide on the direction of a product or service.”

A useful UX report includes:

• The research goals and research process
• Research questions the report is hoping to answer
• A recap of the UX research plan
• What UX research methods were used and why
• Quantitative and qualitative data sets and conclusions
• Key insights & actionable takeaways
• An expanded data appendix

Why do you need a user research report?

Product teams need a user research report to reflect on research activities and accurately guide a product’s scope with key insights. A UX research report helps sort information, defend research, and affirm (or disprove) a hypothesis. No matter how well-organized your research repository is, sometimes simply having the research results available is not enough. A succinct report will align entire teams in one sitting by presenting findings in a unique way.

In short, a research report helps to:

• Positively influence UX design
• Make sense of data sets and explain complicated graphs or other quantitative research results
• Provide actionable recommendations on next steps
• Summarize key findings, so they can be translated into every role and responsibility of the product team

Where UX research enables product teams to understand the user, prove or disprove hypotheses, and prioritize and generate ideas, a UX research report ensures the user is at the center of every product decision. Presenting that UX report then aligns team members on goals and priorities, and provides authentic user insights to inform every product decision.

We’ve covered what a research report is , but what is it not ? A UX research report is not a static, one-time document that your team reads once. It’s an ongoing reference point; the guardrails and guiding insights that guarantees the entire build stays on track.

How to write an effective UX research report: the essential elements

No matter how you choose to present your research study, there are a few elements that every report needs to include for it to be both useful and effective. Let’s look at how to create a report.

Introduction

Your introduction should lay out your research goals, plan, and scope. It should cover your product team’s pain points, and give a clear study overview. You need to answer what you did and why. The introduction can go on to include sales support data and competitive product analysis that inspired or guided this research project.

It’s a good idea to set up how this research helps to support and answer related company goals, team-level goals, and product-dev goals: so all stakeholders know it’s got something for them.

You can include questions from your UX research strategy you had originally hoped to answer, even if your results have gone on to answer other questions as well. Now’s also a good time to introduce research stakeholders: your fellow research team members.

As a secondary step to your introduction, ensure you’re including the approach you took to your UX research process : i.e. what research methods you used, as well as participant profiles and your user personas .

Don’t feel you need to spend too much time on this, says Charlie Herbozo Vidal , Senior User Experience Researcher at CVS Health. “As researchers, it’s not uncommon to dwell on the methodology for longer than needed. While interrogating methods might be valuable to other researchers, business partners might be disengaged by them.”

Ultimately, while methodology is important, it’s the results that most people are here for.

Key findings

This is where you get people on the edge of their seats! Give an overview of your findings, before breaking them down into more detail. Remind your audience ‘what we thought’ vs. what you actually learned.

Artifacts to use are:

• User personas built
• Insights from customer interviews
• User journey maps
• Prototype testing
• Storyboards
• Feedback & satisfaction reports

At the end of this section, and continuing throughout your presentation, you can pepper relevant atomic research nuggets.

Make sure you champion the user's needs throughout, and make special notes of 'offhand' comments users make. Often, it's the random comments that provide the most insight—they must not be forgotten about when writing the report.

Jack Dyer , Designer at Interactive Schools

Summarize your quantitative and qualitative research , and how they’ll both impact your product design and growth. Lay out opportunities versus risks, good-to-knows versus must-knows. Here you’ll want to convey the impact of each suggested step, roadmap designs, and figure out the long and short-term project scope. A few things to cover in your next steps are:

• Long and short-term goals
• ICE framework (Impact, confidence, ease)
• Roles and responsibilities for each task
• A timeline of events and project map
• A request for resources
• Desired outcomes

No matter how you’re presenting your research, be it asynchronously or not, you’ll need to include a Q&A. These can be subjective (based on what you think your team is likely to ask), pre-collected ahead of the presentation, answered live, or an opportunity to build an FAQ later.

What’s important is to acknowledge and be open to receiving questions. After all, questions are a positive thing—it means people are actually listening!

It’s easy to overlook the appendix after putting together a detailed report, but all that glorious research data needs to be accounted for and referenced clearly. Plus, you never know to what extent your team will want to dive into it. Your appendix is also where you’ll want to include secondary research that didn’t make the cut but backs up your research.

9 Ways to present UX research findings

UX research reporting will look a little different depending on your internal personas and organizational culture. First, ask yourself: who is your audience? Who needs to see the report, and who will benefit from seeing it? This will help determine how to present your user research report.

A few things to consider:

• Are you working with internal or external stakeholders? Tool limitation and file-sharing will differ for both.
• Are you working with an in-office, fully-remote, or hybrid team?
• Are you sitting in the same time zone or not?
• What are the knowledge levels like within your team?
• How does your team communicate daily/weekly/monthly?
• Are there any predetermined knowledge bases or tools your team is comfortable with?

The most common players across a UX team that need to understand your UX research report are:

• Product Designers (UX/UI)
• Fellow Product Researchers
• UX/UI Writers

However , it doesn’t stop at your product decision-making team. More often than not, there will be other stakeholders that can benefit from your research presentation. Your marketing, finance, sales, and even C-suite executives will massively benefit from your findings too. If you can tailor versions of your report or provide key summaries for each collective, even better!

Psst 👉 This is much easier to do when you have a research team that can host stakeholder interviews ahead of your research process.

Now, let’s get into the report formats to consider:

1. Workshops: for real-time, collaborative reports

First up, workshops. Workshops are a unique way of keeping your report interactive and engaging. They can be held remotely or in-person, but are almost impossible to hold asynchronously—so time zones are a big factor here.

You’ll also want to consider workshopping tools if you’re hosting digitally—a few to consider are: Miro, Mural, FigJam, and Gather.

A plus with workshops is that your stakeholders will actively have a say early on in the product development process , allowing you to foster more diverse inputs, minimize research bias you may have accumulated in your summaries, and build a sense of responsibility for the product’s success early on.

A negative of workshops is that they can be culprits to in-the-room or bandwagon bias. People are quick to ride on the coattails of a strong conclusion, without fully understanding or trialing another (less popular) conclusion or suggestion.

2. Slack channels: for an asynchronous and interactive research repository

Slack is a great option (especially if you’re already using it) if your research team needs to deliver insights to a fully-distributed collection of stakeholders. Slack tends to be the go-to channel for startups and creative companies, and there’s some key features you can tap into:

• Canvas: Store files, images, videos, and more in one place
• Huddles: Jump on a quick chat to fill in any gaps
• Clips: Post audio, video, or screen-sharing clips
• Connect: Team up with freelancers and agencies working on the project with you
• Workflow: Build drag-and-drop processes from your findings
• Knowledge sharing: Tag your data accordingly so it's easy to find later

3. Knowledge bases: for self-serve UX research reports

Knowledge bases can be a great home for your research presentation, and work especially well for distributed teams working across different time zones.

However your team is set up, research repositories are incredibly valuable. Sharing your report in a centralized location, regardless of the other ways you distribute findings, can democratize research , showcase the impact of your work, and disseminate valuable insights throughout your entire organization.

Keep in mind that knowledge bases can be tough to navigate if poorly organized or tagged. If you’re storing your UX research report in a knowledge base, ensure you provide clear instructions on how someone can find it, and how to navigate through the report itself.

If you have the time, run a card sorting test with an internal focus group to see how you can logically sort your research for those who are going to be looking for it.

4. Presentations / slide decks: great for the PAS framework

Live presentations tend to be the most impactful, but do risk being short-lived if you don’t have a follow-up plan for after your presentation.

While they’re great for sharing metrics and visuals, and can provide a beautiful overview of your research project, presentations can be a little one-sided. This one-way presentation style can prevent collaboration and innovation from the rest of the team. Consider how you can make your presentation interactive or engaging, whether it’s taking questions throughout or doing a ‘choose your own adventure’ session and asking people which sections they want to review first.

Kevin Rapley , Senior User Researcher at Justice Digital, recommends presenting slides using the PAS framework:

• Problem: State the problem you set out to overcome
• Agitate: Detail the impact or opportunity missed by not meeting the problem
• Solution: Offer a route forward from the research findings and insights, the next steps, and likely outcomes by solving the problem

Kevin explains that the PAS framework cuts to the detail people are invested in: “Stakeholders want to know the path forward: Are we on the right track to build this service? Have we uncovered user engagement or uptake issues? Have we learned that our assumptions are incorrect and we now have a better understanding of user needs? Presenting slides in this way delivers what’s needed.”

5. Written reports: for direct and simple sharing

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. A written report is probably the idea that jumped to the front of your mind when you read the title of this chapter. For many, this may seem like the ‘OG’ of UX reports.

These types of reports often come as a PDF or a word document, making them static, reluctant to change, and resulting in low engagement or re-reads. Delivering a written report via email also means you can’t guarantee your audience is going to read it. On the other hand, written reports can be incredibly detailed, scanable for different stakeholders, and include all kinds of results from visual data to qualitative findings.

For many teams this method still works, especially if you’re trying to communicate findings to a distributed, asynchronous team. Written UX reports enable people to go through things in their own time—and come back to it when they need to.

6. Atomic research nuggets: to eliminate ‘bad research memory’

Deriving from an atom—the smallest unit of matter—atomic UX research nuggets are minute and succinct conclusions from data points. They’re always aligned and tagged with a product direction. Formalized by Tomer Sharon and Daniel Pidcock , it’s described as “the concept of breaking UX research down into its constituent parts”:

Experiments: “We did this…” Facts: “…and we found out this…” Insights: “…which makes us think this…” Conclusions: “…so we’ll do that.”

Atomic research nuggets help to fight ‘bad research memory’—the idea that knowledge gets lost or forgotten amid the depths of a larger report. These nuggets are accessible, usable, and searchable. They can be delivered (or accessed) throughout an entire product build, serving as North Stars for micro goals. Research nuggets can be a firm reminder your team is, or isn’t, taking the right action.

7. Pre-recorded video: for better knowledge retention

People retain 90% of the information they receive via video versus text. There’s no question that, for many, video is a better way of onboarding and remembering information. At the same time, it can be easier to share information via video if your UX researchers aren’t the most confident of writers.

Although pre-recorded video is an easy way to share a UX research report with a team, as with other formats on this list, you’ll need to ensure people actually watch it.

Loom can be a great screen-sharing video recording tool. Some of their features and paid plans will enable you to see who from your team has watched your video, as well as spark conversation and engagement opportunities throughout the video. Alternatively, you can share the video as a watch-along during a synchronous meeting and discuss afterwards, while still sharing the video with those who can’t attend live.

8. Case studies: for sticky storytelling

Case studies aren’t just for winning potential customers. At their very core, case studies are put together to convince someone of something due to a real-life story. This is why they can be great if your UX research report needs to convince a diverse or largely cautious selection of stakeholders.

What’s more, case studies tend to rely on storytelling tactics and a strong narrative to get their point across. They can pull from user personas to further a point and make it more relatable for your design team. Muhammad Ahmad , UX Designer at VentureDive, shares the value presenting reports as case studies holds:

“Case studies show how you think. As a UX Researcher or Designer, how you percieve problems and what framework you use to evaluate them matters a lot. Your case studies are supposed to show just that.”

9. Maze reports: for all-in-one research and reporting

Automate your reporting with Maze. Maze automatically generates a report for each test you run, turning it into an easy-to-navigate dashboard. Add comments to generate conversation, highlight key responses and generate usability scores for your prototype testing .

If you’re working with moderated research, Maze AI can speed up the reporting process with automated sentiment tagging, project naming, and even generating summaries and identifying critical learnings from user interviews . So you can sit back, and let Maze take care of the data processing.

When you’re happy with your report, generate a custom link that you can share with your team, and further internal and external stakeholders.

Using Maze reports will enable you to share:

• Introduction and mission slides
• An analysis of each UX research method: From card sorting to live website testing
• In-depth breakdowns of research data
• Overviews of the report metrics: From misclicks to bounce rates and time-on-screen
• A usability score

These reports will also allow you to download CSV files of your data, and customzie filters and views to bring your stakeholders the numbers they need, fast. Your team will be able to collaborate in a comments section and let AI identify key themes and takeaways if you’re struggling to spot them.

Overall, UX research tools with in-built reporting are a great way to translate and share all of your research into visual data sets that can be digested by the rest of the team in a few clicks.

7 UX research report templates

There are some fantastic research report templates to help get you started on your journey. Here are some of our favorites to help you better present those deliverables, key learnings, and everything in between.

Maze: Usability testing report

Hosted on Pitch, this report template is clear, simple, and follows a lot of the design and framework best practices shared in this chapter.

Access the template here

Aadil Khan: UXR report with examples

A straightforward report template is designed by Aadil Khan , UX Researcher at IBM, who says: “I made this template based on tons of mentoring calls I’ve been in with people looking to land UXR jobs where we discuss how to present UXR case studies during interviews and such. Oftentimes their case studies were too lengthy and lacked some sort of narrative structure to make it easier to present.”

EaTemp: Key findings report

A beautifully-designed template hosted on Figma. Get access to personas, empathy maps, and card sorting. All colors, fonts, and shapes are customizable.

Miro: Research repository template

Build a centralized research hub on Miro. Connect your team in a few clicks and allow them to collaborate with this free template. Note: you’ll need to sign up for a (free) Miro account.

Furquan Ahmad: UX research report template

A sleek and vibrant presentation, this template was created by Furquan Ahmad , Product Designer at Meta, “to help people focus their energy and time on the insights they're providing rather than worry about what the presentation will look like. I'm always shocked at how many people have benefited from the community.”

Estefanía Montaña Buitrago: Atomic UX research canvas

Beautifully designed on FigJam, this canvas by Estefanía Montaña Buitrago , UX Designer at Globant, has been used by over 7,000 people and now comes with several useful remixes too.

Muhammad Ahmad: UX research kit

Muhammad Ahmad , UX Designer at VentureDive, shared this minimalistic template. Here you’ll get 60+ customizable templates in both light and dark modes. There’s a free version, or a (paid) premium version which may be worth the investment for you.

Best practices for writing an effective UX research report

The functionality of your research report will come down to how you write it. Sitting down and being faced with copious amounts of data can make UX reporting feel like a daunting task—here’s some techniques and tips to help you along the way.

Take a leaf from your UX design book with user-friendly copy

No matter the format, you want your UX report to be as accessible and skim-able as possible for your audience. It’s a good idea to mimic some of the same mentalities you would use in UX design.

Gestalt grouping principles are good to consider for UX report writing. Think similarity , proximity , and common-region for grouping relevant information.

Similarly, UI design principles such as the figure-ground and focal point will help direct your readers’ eyes to the most important information first, as well as make for a more accessible read.

Lastly, Gestalt’s continuity principle is a great one to apply to your UX report. Readers naturally follow patterns for easier flows in information, so if you’re including stylistic elements like bolding, italics, asides, indenting, or something else, ensure these run consistently throughout your report.

At the same time, think about the structure, layout, and formatting of your written report. Are you leaving enough negative space for your reader to process information? These are especially important for readers with dyslexia, but will generally lift your readability on the whole:

• Is all of your copy aligned left?
• Is your font choice clear with a good amount of spacing between letters and words?
• Are you bolding important words and sentences rather than underlining them?
• Are you peppering your report with enough headings and subheadings?

Release oxytocin: Follow storytelling tactics

A Forbes article reported that “immersive storytelling releases the empathy-related chemical oxytocin in our brains.” If you’re not familiar with oxytocin, it’s known as a natural ‘feel-good’ chemical, promoting feelings of trust and attachment.

Why else do you think case studies are so effective? They rely on storytelling: they have characters, plots, beginnings, endings, peaks, and pits. User research reports that mimic storytelling threads and tactics are more likely to create sticky data points, as well as hold your readers’ attention throughout. This is why the PAS framework works so well, but whatever format your report takes, bear in mind a story-like structure with a beginning, middle, and end.

Ask your editor to edit your research presentation with the three Cs in mind

Clear , Concise , Compelling . These core principles exist everywhere the written word does, but it can be hard to spot them when editing your own work. Just because something is clear, concise, and compelling for you, doesn’t mean it is for someone else—ask a colleague to read your report (or, better yet—a content editor).

Failing that, if you don’t have access to an editor or are in a time crunch, here are some tools to help you edit your own work.

• Grammarly: Good for catching those little typos and grammatical errors
• Hemingway Editor: Gives a readability score and helps to simplify sentences

Consider your reader, and rethink the jargon

Tailoring your report to meet the needs and knowledge level of each stakeholder is a balancing act. Many will tell you to avoid jargon, acronyms, and technical language at all costs. But, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, using industry jargon is the most direct way of getting your point across, and if you know your reader understands it, go for it.

However, keep in mind that if your report is going to other teams: sales, C-suite, finance, etc, then you may need to find alternative terms that aren’t department-specific—or provide a glossary or acronym dictionary within the report.

Muhammad shares more: “Typically UX folks (or even product folks) are not that well-equipped with research terminologies. So giving them the summary of the research in plain language is the approach that works best for me.”

Wrapping up how to present user research findings

There you have it, a complete guide on how you can write and present your user experience research in a way that everyone can benefit from it.

Remember, be conscious of your audience, your format, and your language. Different stakeholders and team cultures require different reporting styles, it’s up to you to curate the information into a report that delivers the insights you’ve uncovered.

Generate UX reports that have impact

From AI-generated summaries of your user interviews, to usability scores for your prototype tests, automate UX research reporting with Maze.

Finish reading

Product Design Bundle and save

User Research New

Content Design

UX Design Fundamentals

Software and Coding Fundamentals for UX

• UX training for teams
• Hire our alumni
• Journal of UX Leadership
• Our mission
• Advisory Council

Education for every phase of your UX career

Professional Diploma

Learn the full user experience (UX) process from research to interaction design to prototyping.

Combine the UX Diploma with the UI Certificate to pursue a career as a product designer.

Professional Certificates

Learn how to plan, execute, analyse and communicate user research effectively.

Learn the principles of content design, from mastering tone and style, to writing for interfaces.

Understand the fundamentals of UI elements and design systems, as well as the role of UI in UX.

Short Courses

Gain a solid foundation in the philosophy, principles and methods of user experience design.

Learn the essentials of software development so you can work more effectively with developers.

Give your team the skills, knowledge and mindset to create great digital products

Join our hiring programme and access our list of certified professionals.

Learn about our mission to set the global standard in UX education

Meet our leadership team with UX and education expertise

Members of the council connect us to the wider UX industry

Our team are available to answer any of your questions

Fresh insights from experts, alumni and the wider design community

Read stories from our students who have made successful careers in UX after completing our course

A complete guide to presenting UX research findings

In this complete guide to presenting UX research findings, we’ll cover what you should include in a UX research report, how to present UX research findings and tips for presenting your UX research.

Free course: Introduction to UX Design

What is UX? Why has it become so important? Could it be a career for you? Learn the answers, and more, with a free 7-lesson video course.

User experience research sets out to identify the problem that a product or service needs to solve and finds a way to do just that. Research is the first and most important step to optimising user experience.

UX researchers do this through interviews, surveys, focus groups, data analysis and reports. Reports are how UX researchers present their work to other stakeholders in a company, such as designers, developers and executives.

In this guide, we’ll cover what you should include in a UX research report, how to present UX research findings and tips for presenting your UX research.

Components of a UX research report

How to write a ux research report, 5 tips on presenting ux research findings.

Ready to present your research findings? Let’s dive in.

[GET CERTIFIED IN USER RESEARCH]

There are six key components to a UX research report.

Introduction

The introduction should give an overview of your UX research . Then, relate any company goals or pain points to your research. Lastly, your introduction should briefly touch on how your research could affect the business.

Research goals

Simply put, your next slide or paragraph should outline the top decisions you need to make, the search questions you used, as well as your hypothesis and expectations.

Business value

In this section, you can tell your stakeholders why your research matters. If you base this research on team-level or product development goals, briefly touch on those.

Methodology

Share the research methods you used and why you chose those methods. Keep it concise and tailored to your audience. Your stakeholders probably don’t need to hear everything that went into your process.

Key learnings

This section will be the most substantial part of your report or presentation. Present your findings clearly and concisely. Share as much context as possible while keeping your target audience – your stakeholders – in mind.

Recommendations

In the last section of your report, make actionable recommendations for your stakeholders. Share possible solutions or answers to your research questions. Make your suggestions clear and consider any future research studies that you think would be helpful.

1. Define your audience

Most likely, you’ll already have conducted stakeholder interviews when you were planning your research. Taking those interviews into account, you should be able to glean what they’re expecting from your presentation.

Tailor your presentation to the types of findings that are most relevant, how those findings might affect their work and how they prefer to receive information. Only include information they will care about the most in a medium that’s easy for them to understand.

Do they have a technical understanding of what you’re doing or should you keep it a non-technical presentation? Make sure you keep the terminology and data on a level they can understand.

What part of the business do they work in? Executives will want to know about how it affects their business, while developers will want to know what technological changes they need to make.

2. Summarise

As briefly as possible, summarise your research goals, business value and methodology. You don’t need to go into too much detail for any of these items. Simply share the what, why and how of your research.

Answer these questions:

• What research questions did you use, and what was your hypothesis?
• What business decision will your research assist with?
• What methodology did you use?

You can briefly explain your methods to recruit participants, conduct interviews and analyse results. If you’d like more depth, link to interview plans, surveys, prototypes, etc.

3. Show key learnings

Your stakeholders will probably be pressed for time. They won’t be able to process raw data and they usually don’t want to see all of the work you’ve done. What they’re looking for are key insights that matter the most to them specifically. This is why it’s important to know your audience.

Summarise a few key points at the beginning of your report. The first thing they want to see are atomic research nuggets. Create condensed, high-priority bullet points that get immediate attention. This allows people to reference it quickly. Then, share relevant data or artefacts to illustrate your key learnings further.

Relevant data:

• Recurring trends and themes
• Relevant quotes that illustrate important findings
• Data visualisations

Relevant aspects of artefacts:

• Quotes from interviews
• User journey maps
• Affinity diagrams
• Storyboards

For most people you’ll present to, a summary of key insights will be enough. But, you can link to a searchable repository where they can dig deeper. You can include artefacts and tagged data for them to reference.

[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]

4. Share insights and recommendations

Offer actionable recommendations, not opinions. Share clear next steps that solve pain points or answer pending decisions. If you have any in mind, suggest future research options too. If users made specific recommendations, share direct quotes.

5. Choose a format

There are two ways you could share your findings in a presentation or a report. Let’s look at these two categories and see which might be the best fit for you.

Usually, a presentation is best for sharing data with a large group and when presenting to non-technical stakeholders. Presentations should be used for visual communication and when you only need to include relevant information in a brief summary.

A presentation is usually formatted in a:

• Case studies
• Atomic research nuggets
• Pre-recorded video

If you’re presenting to a smaller group, technical stakeholder or other researchers, you might want to use a report. This gives you the capacity to create a comprehensive record. Further, reports could be categorised based on their purpose as usability, analytics or market research reports.

A report is typically formatted in a:

• Notion or Confluence page
• Slack update

You might choose to write a report first, then create a presentation. After the presentation, you can share a more in-depth report. The report could also be used for records later.

1. Keep it engaging

When you’re presenting your findings, find ways to engage those you’re presenting to. You can ask them questions about their assumptions or what you’re presenting to get them more involved.

For example, “What do you predict were our findings when we asked users to test the usability of the menu?” or “What suggestions do you think users had for [a design problem]?”

If you don’t want to engage them with questions, try including alternative formats like videos, audio clips, visualisations or high-fidelity prototypes. Anything that’s interactive or different will help keep their engagement. They might engage with these items during or after your presentation.

Another way to keep it engaging is to tell a story throughout your presentation. Some UX researchers structure their presentations in the form of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey . Start in the middle with your research findings and then zoom out to your summary, insights and recommendations.

2. Combine qualitative and quantitative data

When possible, use qualitative data to back up quantitative data. For example, include a visualisation of poll results with a direct quote about that pain point.

Use this opportunity to show the value of the work you do and build empathy for your users. Translate your findings into a format that your stakeholders – designers, developers or executives – will be able to understand and act upon.

3. Make it actionable

Actionable presentations are engaging and they should have some business value . That means they need to solve a problem or at least move toward a solution to a problem. They might intend to optimise usability, find out more about the market or analyse user data.

Here are a few ways to make it actionable:

• Include a to-do list at the end
• Share your deck and repository files for future reference
• Recommend solutions for product or business decisions
• Suggest what kind of research should happen next (if any)
• Share answers to posed research questions

4. Keep it concise and effective

Make it easy for stakeholders to dive deeper if they want to but make it optional. Yes, this means including links to an easily searchable repository and keeping your report brief.

Humans tend to focus best on just 3-4 things at a time. So, limit your report to three or four major insights. Additionally, try to keep your presentation down to 20-30 minutes.

Remember, you don’t need to share everything you learned. In your presentation, you just need to show your stakeholders what they are looking for. Anything else can be sent later in your repository or a more detailed PDF report.

5. Admit the shortcomings of UX research

If you get pushback from stakeholders during your presentation, it’s okay to share your constraints.

Your stakeholders might not understand that your sample size is big enough or how you chose the users in your study or why you did something the way you did. While qualitative research might not be statistically significant, it’s usually representative of your larger audience and it’s okay to point that out.

Because they aren’t researchers, it’s your job to explain your methodology to them but also be upfront about the limitations UX research can pose. When all of your cards are on the table, stakeholders are more likely to trust you.

When it comes to presenting your UX research findings, keep it brief and engaging. Provide depth with external resources after your presentation. This is how you get stakeholders to find empathy for your users. This is how you master the art of UX.

Need to go back to the basics and learn more about UX research? Dive into these articles:

What is UX research? The 9 best UX research tools to use in 2022

Subscribe to our newsletter

Get the best UX insights and career advice direct to your inbox each month.

Thanks for subscribing to our newsletter

You'll now get the best career advice, industry insights and UX community content, direct to your inbox every month.

Upcoming courses

Professional diploma in ux design.

Learn the full UX process, from research to design to prototyping.

Professional Certificate in UI Design

Master key concepts and techniques of UI design.

Certificate in Software and Coding Fundamentals for UX

Collaborate effectively with software developers.

Certificate in UX Design Fundamentals

Get a comprehensive introduction to UX design.

Professional Certificate in Content Design

Learn the skills you need to start a career in content design.

Professional Certificate in User Research

Master the research skills that make UX professionals so valuable.

Upcoming course

Build your UX career with a globally-recognised, industry-approved certification. Get the mindset, the skills and the confidence of UX designers.

You may also like

The ultimate guide to usability testing for UX in 2024

A beginner’s guide to typography design

How to conduct a heuristic evaluation in UX design: a step-by-step guide

Build your UX career with a globally recognised, industry-approved qualification. Get the mindset, the confidence and the skills that make UX designers so valuable.

A Guide to User Research Analysis

When designers perform user interviews, field observations, or usability tests, they gather tons of notes and data to help inform design decisions and recommendations. But how do they make sense of so much qualitative data? Talking to customers is great, but most people walk away feeling overwhelmed by the sense of more information than they know what to do with. Learning how to properly analyze UX research helps turn raw data into insights and action.

What Is User Research Analysis?

User research analysis is a vital part of any research process because it is the very act of making sense of what was learned so that informed recommendations can be made on behalf of customers or users.

As researchers conduct analysis, they’re spending time categorizing, classifying, and organizing the data they’ve gathered to directly inform what they’ll share as outcomes of the research and the key findings.

Why Should Researchers Spend Time on Analysis?

Our natural instinct is to believe we can remember everything we heard or saw in an interview. But following impulsive decisions made from raw notes and data can be misleading and dangerous. Recommendations based on a single data point can lead a team down the path of solving the wrong problem.

Further, doing so is simply reacting to data, not making sense of it. This can cause companies to focus on incremental improvements only and miss important opportunities to serve customers in more meaningful, innovative ways.

A great example of this is when we see teams sharing research findings like, “6 out of 10 people had difficulty signing in to our application.” On the surface, a reasonable recommendation could be to redesign the sign-in form. However, proper research analysis and finding the meaning behind what that data represents is when the real magic happens. Perhaps the reason people had trouble signing in was due to forgotten passwords. In this case, redesigning the sign in form wouldn’t necessarily solve this problem.

Performing the necessary analysis of user research data is an act of asking “why” the “6 out of 10 people had difficulty signing into the application.” Analysis transforms the research from raw data into insights and meaning.

Consider what Slack did with their sign-in process. Slack allows a user to sign in by manually typing their password or having a “magic link” sent to their email which the person simply needs to click from their inbox.  They get signed in to their Slack team and get started.

Slack offers a magic link instead of asking users to type their password.

Slack emails a magic link within seconds that saves the user typing their password.

This decision wasn’t an accident; it came from a deep understanding of a customer pain point. That deep understanding came from making sense of user research data and not simply jumping to a conclusion. Slack’s example demonstrates the power of spending time in analyzing user research data to go beyond reacting to a single observation and instead understanding why those observations occurred.

When to Do Research Analysis

Before the research begins.

Great analysis starts before research even begins. This happens by creating well-defined goals for the project, research, and product. Creating clear goals allows researchers to collect data in predefined themes to answer questions about how to meet those goals. This also allows them to create a set of tags (sometimes known as “codes”) to assign to notes and data as they conduct their research, speeding up analysis dramatically.

Before any research session begins, craft clear goals and questions that need to be answered by the research. Then brainstorm a list of tags or descriptors for each goal that will help identify notes and data that align to the goals of the research.

During the Research

Researchers often tag or code data they gather in real time. This can be done multiple ways using spreadsheets, document highlighting or even a specialized research tool like Aurelius.

When taking notes in a spreadsheet, tags can be added to individual notes in an adjacent column and later turned into a “ rainbow spreadsheet .”

For teams physically located in the same space, an affinity diagram with sticky notes on the wall works well. Here, each note can be added to an individual sticky note with top level tags or themes grouped physically together.

A student stands in front of an affinity exercise on a whiteboard. Photo via Wikimedia

There are also software tools like Aurelius that help researchers tag and organize notes as they’re taken which also makes for quick viewing and analysis of those tags later.

View of analyzing notes and tags in Aurelius.

It’s also useful for teams to have a short debrief after each research participant or session to discuss what they learned. This keeps knowledge fresh, allows the team members to summarize what they’ve learned up to that point, and often exposes new themes or tags to use in collecting data from the remaining research sessions.

When the Research Is Done

This is where most of the analysis happens. At this point researchers are reviewing all the notes they’ve taken to really figure out what patterns and insights exist. Most researchers will have a good idea of which tags, groups, and themes to focus on, especially if they’ve done a debrief after each session. It then becomes a matter of determining why those patterns and themes exist in order to create new knowledge and insight about their customers.

How to Analyze User Research

Tag notes and data as you collect it.

Tagging notes and data as they’re collected is a process of connecting those tags to research questions and the research questions back to the project or research goals. This way you can be confident in the tags and themes being created in real time. Here’s how to make the connection between tags, research questions and project goals.

Imagine the research goals for the project are:

• Increase the number of people signing up for our product free trial
• Increase the number of people going from free trial to a paid account
• Educate trial customers about the value of our product prior to signing up for a paid account

From there, research questions can be formed such as:

• “Does the website communicate the right message to share the value of a free trial?”
• “Is it easy for a new customer to sign up?”
• “Are new customers easily able to start a free trial and begin using the product?”

From those questions, we can extract topics and themes. Since we’re researching the free trial, sign up process and general usability of that process, they become clear choices for tags. Also, since the research is meant to answer a question about whether or not potential customers understand the value of our product and free trial, this too provides a clear topic and tag we can use. So, useful tags based on those questions would be:

• #free-trial
• #value-prop
• #signup-reason
• #signup-process
• #onboarding

As the team conducts the research, they can tag notes and observations according to those themes that align to the high level goals and questions for the project. All of this highly increases the ease and effectiveness of research analysis later.

Analysis After Each Session

A common user research practice is for the team to debrief after each interview, usability test, or field study to discuss what was learned or observed. Doing this while also reviewing the notes and observations helps researchers hear the same information from a new perspective.

Let’s imagine the team found the following patterns while conducting their research:

• Potential customers visited the product page, free trial sign-up page, and went back to the product page several times prior to starting a free trial.
• Some people had multiple browsers open with competitor sites pulled up while signing up for the free trial.
• Potential customers mentioned waiting for the “right time” to start their free trial on several occasions.

This may help the researchers create new tags (or codes) for remaining sessions, such as:

• #right-time
• #competitor-review
• #feature-comparison

Using these new tags adds another dimension to analysis and provides deeper meaning to patterns the team is finding. You can see how the combination of these tags and themes already begin to paint a picture of customer needs without any detailed notes!

Here are some good tips for knowing when to tag or code a note:

• It aligns directly to a project/research goal.
• The participant specifically said or implied that something is very important.
• Repetition – a thing is said or heard multiple times.
• Patterns – when certain observations are related or important to other tags and themes already established in the project goals or research.

Steps for Analyzing Research Once It’s Done

Once all the research is done, it’s time to dig in to find patterns and frequency across all the data gathered .

Step 1 – Review the notes, transcripts, and data for any relevant phrases, statements, and concepts that align to the research goals and questions.

Step 2 – Tag and code any remaining data that represents key activities, actions, concepts, statements, ideas and needs or desires from the customers who participated in the research.

Step 3 – Review those tags and codes to find relationships between them. A useful tip for this is to pay close attention to tags that have notes with multiple other tags. This often indicates a relationship between themes. Create new tags and groups where appropriate to review more specific subsets of the data. Continue this process until meaningful themes are exposed. Once that happens, ask questions like:

• Why do these patterns or themes exist?
• Why did participants say this so many times?
• Does the data help answer the research questions?
• Does the data inform ways to meet the research goals?
• Does one tag group or theme relate to another? How? Why?

Sharing Key Insights from User Research

A key insight should answer one or more of your research questions and directly inform how to meet one or more of the established business goals. When sharing key insights, be sure to make a clear connection between one of the business goals, research questions and why the key insight is relevant to both. The most effective way of turning research into action is by helping teams make a connection between key insights and business outcomes.

3 Parts to a Key Insight

There are three parts to creating a key insight from user research :

• Statement of what you learned
• Tags that describe the insight (often used from the analysis, but can also be new tags entirely)
• Supporting notes, data, and evidence that give further context to the key insight and support the statement of what was learned

A key insight from the example project might be:

“Prospective customers are worried they might not have enough time to review our product during the free trial.” #right-time #signup-process #free-trial

This represents the pattern observed of customers mentioning the “right time” to sign up for a free trial and comparing the product to competitors. It also goes beyond sharing the quantitative data that those things occurred and offers a qualitative explanation of why they happened. All of this leads to clearer recommendations and the ability for other teams to take action on the research findings.

Creating key insights from the research in this way allows for the most effective sharing and reuse later. By providing supporting notes to each insight, stakeholders and others consuming the research findings can learn more detail about each key insight if they so choose.

Next Steps for User Research Analysis

Conducting detailed analysis of user research data helps teams clearly share what was learned to provide more actionable recommendations in design and product development.

Here are some tips for making user research analysis faster and easier on upcoming projects:

• Begin the user research by creating well defined questions and goals.
• Create tags based on each goal.
• Tag research notes and data as it’s collected to speed up analysis later.
• Debrief after each research session.
• Review the data once research is finished to find patterns, frequency, and themes.
• Make statements about each pattern or theme that was uncovered, describing what it means and why it’s important (aka: create key insights).
• Share the key insights!
• An Analytics-First Approach to UX, Part 1
• Putting Big Data in Context
• 4 Quick Tips for Getting the Most out of Google Analytics

Analytics is more than just a numbers game. It's a way of tracking and analyzing user behavior over time. In this article, we explore this intersection of user experience and data, so that budding designers can add productive web analytics to their process.

UX Booth is trusted by over 100,000 user experience professionals. Start your subscription today for free.

Skip navigation

• Log in to UX Certification

World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

UX Research Cheat Sheet

February 12, 2017 2017-02-12

• Email article
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Twitter

User-experience research methods are great at producing data and insights, while ongoing activities help get the right things done. Alongside R&D, ongoing UX activities can make everyone’s efforts more effective and valuable. At every stage in the design process, different UX methods can keep product-development efforts on the right track, in agreement with true user needs and not imaginary ones.

In This Article:

When to conduct user research.

One of the questions we get the most is, “When should I do user research on my project?” There are three different answers:

• Do user research at whatever stage you’re in right now . The earlier the research, the more impact the findings will have on your product, and by definition, the earliest you can do something on your current project (absent a time machine) is today.
• Do user research at all the stages . As we show below, there’s something useful to learn in every single stage of any reasonable project plan, and each research step will increase the value of your product by more than the cost of the research.
• Do most user research early in the project (when it’ll have the most impact), but conserve some budget for a smaller amount of supplementary research later in the project. This advice applies in the common case that you can’t get budget for all the research steps that would be useful.

The chart below describes UX methods and activities available in various project stages.

Each project is different, so the stages are not always neatly compartmentalized. The end of one cycle is the beginning of the next.

The important thing is not to execute a giant list of activities in rigid order, but to start somewhere and learn more and more as you go along.

When deciding where to start or what to focus on first, use some of these top UX methods. Some methods may be more appropriate than others, depending on time constraints, system maturity, type of product or service, and the current top concerns. It’s a good idea to use different or alternating methods each product cycle because they are aimed at different goals and types of insight. The chart below shows how often UX practitioners reported engaging in these methods in our survey on UX careers.

If you can do only one activity and aim to improve an existing system, do qualitative (think-aloud) usability testing , which is the most effective method to improve usability . If you are unable to test with users, analyze as much user data as you can. Data (obtained, for instance, from call logs, searches, or analytics) is not a great substitute for people, however, because data usually tells you what , but you often need to know why . So use the questions your data brings up to continue to push for usability testing.

The discovery stage is when you try to illuminate what you don’t know and better understand what people need. It’s especially important to do discovery activities before making a new product or feature, so you can find out whether it makes sense to do the project at all .

An important goal at this stage is to validate and discard assumptions, and then bring the data and insights to the team. Ideally this research should be done before effort is wasted on building the wrong things or on building things for the wrong people, but it can also be used to get back on track when you’re working with an existing product or service.

Good things to do during discovery:

• Conduct field studies and interview users : Go where the users are, watch, ask, and listen. Observe people in context interacting with the system or solving the problems you’re trying to provide solutions for.
• Run diary studies to understand your users’ information needs and behaviors.
• Interview stakeholders to gather and understand business requirements and constraints.
• Interview sales, support, and training staff. What are the most frequent problems and questions they hear from users? What are the worst problems people have? What makes people angry?
• Listen to sales and support calls. What do people ask about? What do they have problems understanding? How do the sales and support staff explain and help? What is the vocabulary mismatch between users and staff?
• Do competitive testing . Find the strengths and weaknesses in your competitors’ products. Discover what users like best.

Exploration methods are for understanding the problem space and design scope and addressing user needs appropriately.

• Compare features against competitors.
• Do design reviews.
• Use research to build user personas and write user stories.
• Analyze user tasks to find ways to save people time and effort.
• Show stakeholders the user journey and where the risky areas are for losing customers along the way. Decide together what an ideal user journey would look like.
• Explore design possibilities by imagining many different approaches, brainstorming, and testing the best ideas in order to identify best-of-breed design components to retain.
• Obtain feedback on early-stage task flows by walking through designs with stakeholders and subject-matter experts. Ask for written reactions and questions (silent brainstorming), to avoid groupthink and to enable people who might not speak up in a group to tell you what concerns them.
• Iterate designs by testing paper prototypes with target users, and then test interactive prototypes by watching people use them. Don’t gather opinions. Instead, note how well designs work to help people complete tasks and avoid errors. Let people show you where the problem areas are, then redesign and test again.
• Use card sorting to find out how people group your information, to help inform your navigation and information organization scheme.

Testing and validation methods are for checking designs during development and beyond, to make sure systems work well for the people who use them.

• Do qualitative usability testing . Test early and often with a diverse range of people, alone and in groups. Conduct an accessibility evaluation to ensure universal access.
• Ask people to self-report their interactions and any interesting incidents while using the system over time, for example with diary studies .
• Audit training classes and note the topics, questions people ask, and answers given. Test instructions and help systems.
• Talk with user groups.
• Staff social-media accounts and talk with users online. Monitor social media for kudos and complaints.
• Analyze user-forum posts. User forums are sources for important questions to address and answers that solve problems. Bring that learning back to the design and development team.
• Do benchmark testing: If you’re planning a major redesign or measuring improvement, test to determine time on task, task completion, and error rates of your current system, so you can gauge progress over time.

Listen throughout the research and design cycle to help understand existing problems and to look for new issues. Analyze gathered data and monitor incoming information for patterns and trends.

• Survey customers and prospective users.
• Monitor analytics and metrics to discover trends and anomalies and to gauge your progress.
• Analyze search queries: What do people look for and what do they call it? Search logs are often overlooked, but they contain important information.
• Make it easy to send in comments, bug reports, and questions. Analyze incoming feedback channels periodically for top usability issues and trouble areas. Look for clues about what people can’t find, their misunderstandings, and any unintended effects.
• Collect frequently asked questions and try to solve the problems they represent.
• Run booths at conferences that your customers and users attend so that they can volunteer information and talk with you directly.
• Give talks and demos: capture questions and concerns.

Ongoing and strategic activities can help you get ahead of problems and make systemic improvements.

• Find allies . It takes a coordinated effort to achieve design improvement. You’ll need collaborators and champions.
• Talk with experts . Learn from others’ successes and mistakes. Get advice from people with more experience.
• Follow ethical guidelines . The UXPA Code of Professional Conduct is a good starting point.
• Involve stakeholders . Don’t just ask for opinions; get people onboard and contributing, even in small ways. Share your findings, invite them to observe and take notes during research sessions.
• Hunt for data sources . Be a UX detective. Who has the information you need, and how can you gather it?
• Determine UX metrics. Find ways to measure how well the system is working for its users.
• Follow Tog's principles of interaction design .
• Use evidence-based design guidelines , especially when you can’t conduct your own research. Usability heuristics are high-level principles to follow.
• Design for universal access . Accessibility can’t be tacked onto the end or tested in during QA. Access is becoming a legal imperative, and expert help is available. Accessibility improvements make systems easier for everyone.
• Give users control . Provide the controls people need. Choice but not infinite choice.
• Prevent errors . Whenever an error occurs, consider how it might be eliminated through design change. What may appear to be user errors are often system-design faults. Prevent errors by understanding how they occur and design to lessen their impact.
• Improve error messages . For remaining errors, don’t just report system state. Say what happened from a user standpoint and explain what to do in terms that are easy for users to understand.
• Provide helpful defaults . Be prescriptive with the default settings, because many people expect you to make the hard choices for them. Allow users to change the ones they might need or want to change.
• Check for inconsistencies . Work-alike is important for learnability. People tend to interpret differences as meaningful, so make use of that in your design intentionally rather than introducing arbitrary differences. Adhere to the principle of least astonishment . Meet expectations instead.
• Map features to needs . User research can be tied to features to show where requirements come from. Such a mapping can help preserve design rationale for the next round or the next team.
• When designing software, ensure that installation and updating is easy . Make installation quick and unobtrusive. Allow people to control updating if they want to.
• When designing devices, plan for repair and recycling . Sustainability and reuse are more important than ever. Design for conservation.
• Avoid waste . Reduce and eliminate nonessential packaging and disposable parts. Avoid wasting people’s time, also. Streamline.
• Consider system usability in different cultural contexts . You are not your user. Plan how to ensure that your systems work for people in other countries . Translation is only part of the challenge.
• Look for perverse incentives . Perverse incentives lead to negative unintended consequences. How can people game the system or exploit it? How might you be able to address that? Consider how a malicious user might use the system in unintended ways or to harm others.
• Consider social implications . How will the system be used in groups of people, by groups of people, or against groups of people? Which problems could emerge from that group activity?
• Protect personal information . Personal information is like money. You can spend it unwisely only once. Many want to rob the bank. Plan how to keep personal information secure over time. Avoid collecting information that isn’t required, and destroy older data routinely.
• Keep data safe . Limit access to both research data and the data entrusted to the company by customers. Advocate for encryption of data at rest and secure transport. A data breach is a terrible user experience.
• Deliver both good and bad news . It’s human nature to be reluctant to tell people what they don’t want to hear, but it’s essential that UX raise the tough issues. The future of the product, or even the company, may depend on decisionmakers knowing what you know or suspect.
• Track usability over time . Use indicators such as number and types of support issues, error rates and task completion in usability testing, and customer satisfaction ratings, to show the effectiveness of design improvements.
• Include diverse users . People can be very different culturally and physically. They also have a range of abilities and language skills. Personas are not enough to prevent serious problems, so be sure your testing includes as wide a variety of people as you can.
• Track usability bugs . If usability bugs don’t have a place in the bug database, start your own database to track important issues.
• Pay attention to user sentiment . Social media is a great place for monitoring user problems, successes, frustrations, and word-of-mouth advertising. When competitors emerge, social media posts may be the first indication.
• Reduce the need for training . Training is often a workaround for difficult user interfaces, and it’s expensive. Use training and help topics to look for areas ripe for design changes.
• Communicate future directions . Customers and users depend on what they are able to do and what they know how to do with the products and services they use. Change can be good, even when disruptive, but surprise changes are often poorly received because they can break things that people are already doing. Whenever possible, ask, tell, test with, and listen to the customers and users you have. Consult with them rather than just announcing changes. Discuss major changes early, so what you hear can help you do a better job, and what they hear can help them prepare for the changes needed.
• Recruit people for future research and testing . Actively encourage people to join your pool of volunteer testers. Offer incentives for participation and make signing up easy to do via your website, your newsletter, and other points of contact.

Use this cheat-sheet to choose appropriate UX methods and activities for your projects and to get the most out of those efforts. It’s not necessary to do everything on every project, but it’s often helpful to use a mix of methods and tend to some ongoing needs during each iteration.

Free Downloads

Related courses, discovery: building the right thing.

Conduct successful discovery phases to ensure you build the best solution

User Research Methods: From Strategy to Requirements to Design

How to pick the best UX research method for each stage in the development process

Personas: Turn User Data Into User-Centered Design

Successfully turn user data into user interfaces. Learn how to create, maintain and utilize personas throughout the UX design process.

Related Topics

• Research Methods Research Methods
• Design Process

Learn More:

Please accept marketing cookies to view the embedded video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_sFVYfatXY

Always Pilot Test User Research Studies

Kim Salazar · 3 min

Level Up Your Focus Groups

Therese Fessenden · 5 min

Inductively Analyzing Qualitative Data

Tanner Kohler · 3 min

Related Articles:

Project Management for User Research: The Plan

Susan Farrell · 7 min

Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions in User Research

Maria Rosala · 5 min

Formative vs. Summative Evaluations

Alita Joyce · 5 min

UX Research Methods: Glossary

Raluca Budiu · 12 min

What a UX Career Looks Like Today

Rachel Krause and Maria Rosala · 5 min

Pilot Testing: Getting It Right (Before) the First Time

Amy Schade · 5 min

What is User research? Methods & Examples.

• Bartek Dziegiel

What is User Research?

User research  is a study of users who will use a product. It aims to give designers insight into users’ frustrations, problems, and needs. Armed with this insight, designers can create better products.

User research is a continuous part of the product development life cycle. The data gathered during the research form patterns that tell you how to create better products.

UX research aims to improve websites and apps for those who use them. It’s all about understanding users — what they like, their frustrations, and what they need.

User research, however, equips you with valuable insights. It ensures your design decisions are based on facts, not just guesses.

Why Should You Do User Research?

User research may seem like an extra step in the design process, but it’s undeniably crucial. Many designs fail specifically because of the lack of proper user research. User research helps to formulate the problem the product is trying to solve. 

By understanding your users, you can build digital experiences based on them. You can create a product that meets their expectations and solves their problems, which, as a result, makes them satisfied. Actionable insights you gain from your study lead to better designs.

Better designs lead to happier users who are more likely to keep using your product and even recommend it to others. Plus, it can save you time and money in the long run by helping you avoid having to change the design after the development stage.

It is easier to correct the errors before the development stage. This is why conducting extensive user research early on is so important.

In a nutshell, user research helps create better designs. Conducting user research allows you to make your digital creations more user-friendly and, as a result, successful.

User Research Methods

UX researchers can use various methods and strategies to gain knowledge about their users. Several methods of gathering data are standard among UX researchers. These methods can be broadly categorized into two main types:  qualitative  and  quantitative  research.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research methods are a way to learn about  why  users act in a specific way and  how  they perform tasks. Understanding that can lead to insights into how designers can improve a product.

Qualitative methods involve interviews and different forms of user observation and testing. It helps designers understand their motivations and emotions on every step of users’ journey and the thought processes behind their actions. You uncover a lot of valuable information by simply having a conversation with your users.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research , comparatively, focuses on collecting numerical data. If qualitative research answers the question “how users behave,” quantitative methods answer “how many users act like this.”

This type of research often involves methods like surveys that gather answers from a large number of participants, different analytics tools, A/B testing, and others. Various tools and software help with collecting and analyzing this type of data. Quantitative methods provide actual numbers about users’ behaviors. They enable researchers to identify trends and the prevalence of specific user behaviors.

Combining qualitative and quantitative user research methods allows researchers to understand what design choices are essential for creating user-centered digital experiences.

Methods of Qualitative Research

As mentioned before , qualitative research  is all about diving into the complexities of human experience. To learn about them, researchers can use some of these essential commonly used methods:

User interviews

Interviews involve having one-on-one conversations with users. By asking open-ended questions, researchers can learn much about the users — their needs, frustrations, expectations, and problems. It is also an opportunity to ask your users follow-up questions. Moreover, researchers can ask study participants to elaborate on their answers. Comparatively, that opportunity never arrives during surveys, even though they are somehow similar to the interviews. Conversation with users lets you explore their thoughts in detail. Gathered insights will improve your design. 

Focus groups

Focus groups are much like user interviews but within a small group. Researchers ask questions, and users are asked to discuss their experiences and opinions. This method can uncover group dynamics and shared perspectives, providing insights that individual interviews might miss.

Diary Studies

Another method of qualitative research is diary studies. Researchers ask users to keep a diary of their interactions with a product over time. Study participants capture their frustrations, which researchers can use to identify pain points in the design. This method captures insights from long-term usage patterns.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a method to understand how users categorize and organize information. Imagine that you are trying to find an item on an e-commerce website. Finding an item will be easier when it is attributed to a specific category. Card sorting is a valuable tool to determine which object should be in which category. It works by creating a list of items (which are often written on separate cards – hence the name). Participants of this study sort the things into categories. After several times, the researcher can learn how their audience will expect how particular objects should be categorized. It helps optimize the structure of content or navigation.

Usability study

It is one of the most commonly used research methods. Researchers perform usability study once the first draft of the design is created. The design, in the form of a prototype or a developed product, is confronted with users who are asked to perform specific tasks. By observing how users interact with it, the researcher can determine what part of the design needs improvement early on.

Each qualitative research method has unique strengths and is suited to different research objectives. Researchers always choose methods appropriate to what they need to learn in a specific scenario. By employing these methods, you can get valuable information on how to create user experiences that resonate with your target audience. As a matter of fact, it can help you find your target audience.

Methods of Quantitative Research

In contrast to qualitative research,  quantitative research  is all about numbers and measurable data. It is basically gathering evidence to support your case. Quantitative research supports the data collected by qualitative research. Here are some essential methods commonly used in quantitative user research:

Surveys are like questionnaires that can be distributed to a large number of users. Similarly to ser interviews, they involve creating a series of questions for users. However, unlike interviews, surveys are the most effective only when they ask mainly closed-ended questions. Nevertheless, their main strength is that they can gather a large amount of data in a short amount of time. The data you collect will form statistical patterns researchers can translate into actionable insights. 

Analytics tools can track user interactions with your website or app. They can inform researchers by providing data on metrics like page views, bounce rates, conversion rates, and others. This method offers insights into user behavior on a broader scale. 

A/B Testing

A/B testing presents a design’s two versions (A and B). The study participants answer which version they prefer. Alternatively, their interaction with the design is measured. A/B test aims to establish which version of the design performs better. This method helps quantify the impact of design changes on user behavior and preferences.

Heatmaps are a visual representation of users’ interaction with a design. They show where users put most of their attention in the design. Heatmaps present where users click, how they move their cursors, or where they spend the most time on a webpage. They offer a visual summary of user interactions with a design. If the users’ attention is misplaced in some way – for example, the CTA button is gathering less focus than one may hope – it can inform about potential issues.

Quantitative research methods are instrumental if designers are in a position where they need to justify their design decisions. They can help make data-driven decisions. Moreover, they provide solid arguments for why specific design changes are required. By using these methods, researchers can gain a comprehensive understanding of user behavior and preferences at scale, informing their design choices and optimizing user experiences.

Examples of User Research

User research is a broad concept. However, a study performed by a researcher often aims to answer a particular question. Planning a user’s study involves considering a research question you must answer.

It becomes more evident when we explore real-world examples. Here are some scenarios where user research can make a significant impact

User Research for an E-commerce Websites

Imagine you’re the owner of an online store specializing in electronics. You sell laptops, smartphones, etc. Unfortunately, you’ve noticed that your website’s sales have plateaued. Something on your website makes users abandon their intent to buy. In this situation, user research can uncover problems on your website and discover ways to boost revenue.

Research Methods

You choose various research methods, including user interviews, website analytics, and heat maps.

During interviews, you ask shoppers about their preferences, pain points, and overall experiences on your online store.

Simultaneously, you analyze data from your analytics tools. You track page abandonment rates, conversion rates, and other metrics.

At the same time, heatmaps provide visual insights into which product categories and features attract the most attention and where users drop off.

Research results

As the data begins to pour in, patterns emerge.

During interviews, you discover that users frequently search for specific product categories like smartphones and laptops. Additionally, you learn that they often struggle with finding relevant accessories.

Your analytics reveal that a significant number of users abandon their shopping carts at the shipping and payment stage, hinting at potential pain points in the checkout process. 

Heatmaps show that certain design elements, like prominent call-to-action buttons and clear product images, receive the most interaction, which is a desirable outcome.

Taking Action on Insights

With these insights in hand, you’re equipped to make targeted improvements.

You decide to modify the product categorization and search functionality. That should make it easier for users to find accessories. You can also create a way for users to have accessories automatically suggested for the item (like a laptop or smartphone) they just bought or showed interest in.

To reduce cart abandonment, you streamline the checkout process, implement a guest checkout option, and introduce trust signals like security badges.

The results of your user research not only boost sales but also enhance the overall user experience. Customers find discovering and purchasing products easier, increasing satisfaction and loyalty. This can also lead them to suggest your store to their friends, which can definitely be beneficial for your business. 

User Research for Mobile App Development

User research is crucial when the product is very early in its lifecycle. Imagine you’re part of a team creating a new fitness-tracking app. To build a great product, you must first understand your target audience’s specific needs and preferences. In a nutshell, you must first understand what you need to develop.

After some background research, you and your team came up with a first draft of the design. You created a prototype and want to test whether you are on the right track.

Consequently, your team conducts a usability study. You invite a group of potential users to interact with the app’s prototype while you observe and gather feedback. During the testing, participants perform tasks like setting fitness goals, tracking workouts, and reviewing their progress. As they navigate through the app, you take note of any problems users may have, any confusion, or areas where users express frustration. You also collect qualitative feedback through open-ended questions, asking participants about their overall experience and any suggestions for improvement.

Research Results

During the usability study, participants revealed that they struggled to find the option to customize their workout plans. Additionally, some users find the interface overwhelming, with too many features visible simultaneously. Moreover, participants appreciate the app’s tracking accuracy but would like more personalized recommendations for workouts based on their fitness goals.

You start by simplifying the app’s interface. You declutter the dashboard and make the customization options easier to find. To address users’ desire for personalized recommendations, you integrate an algorithm that tailors workout suggestions based on individual goals and progress. You also add customization queries to the onboarding experience of your app.

After implementing these changes, you conduct a follow-up usability test with the same participants. This time, users find the app easier to navigate and express higher satisfaction. They praise the personalized workout suggestions and feel more motivated to use the app.

This example showcases how, by listening to the voices of their target audience, designers can transform initial challenges into opportunities for improvement, resulting in a more seamless and user-friendly experience.

The Take away

These examples illustrate how user research can be tailored to specific industries and products. Regardless of the context, user research helps designers and businesses make informed decisions that lead to better digital products and happier users.

Sources and where to learn more

User research is a vast topic. UX research can (and should) be done at any stage of the product life cycle. The research can improve a product, regardless of whether the product is just being made or has already been launched.

To further explore the fascinating world of user research and UX design, there are abundant resources available:

Baymard Institute:  https://baymard.com/

Nielsen Norman Group:  https://www.nngroup.com/

Smashing magazine:  https://www.smashingmagazine.com/

UX Collective:  https://uxdesign.cc/

Interaction Design Foundation:  https://www.interaction-design.org/

CareerFoundry:  https://careerfoundry.com/

Articles about user research

UX Research: 5 Fundamental Research Methods for E-Commerce Sites

https://baymard.com/learn/ux-research

KickMaterial — Fan-made Kickstarter for Android concept.

https://medium.com/android-by-outline/kickstarter-for-android-6dffe4edd2dc

Secrets of Perfect User Interview by Talebook

https://medium.com/ux-planet/secrets-of-perfect-user-interview-by-talebook-ee61a7e155c7

Kickstart your research with Talebook.

If you are considering starting your journey with user research, we recommend  Talebook , an interactive research repository. It provides you with valuable tools that facilitate user interviews, presenting your research, and other features that will help you on your journey of becoming a UX designer.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Working with sources
• How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on November 23, 2020 by Shona McCombes . Revised on May 31, 2023.

Summarizing , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

• Read the text
• Break it down into sections
• Identify the key points in each section
• Write the summary
• Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or evaluating the source . You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about summarizing.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarize an article or other source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
• To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
• To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyze or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarizing is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

• Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
• Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
• Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

• Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
• Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
• Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organized into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction , methods , results , and discussion .

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarize this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Davis et al. (2015) set out to empirically test the popular saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Apples are often used to represent a healthy lifestyle, and research has shown their nutritional properties could be beneficial for various aspects of health. The authors’ unique approach is to take the saying literally and ask: do people who eat apples use healthcare services less frequently? If there is indeed such a relationship, they suggest, promoting apple consumption could help reduce healthcare costs.

The study used publicly available cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Participants were categorized as either apple eaters or non-apple eaters based on their self-reported apple consumption in an average 24-hour period. They were also categorized as either avoiding or not avoiding the use of healthcare services in the past year. The data was statistically analyzed to test whether there was an association between apple consumption and several dependent variables: physician visits, hospital stays, use of mental health services, and use of prescription medication.

Although apple eaters were slightly more likely to have avoided physician visits, this relationship was not statistically significant after adjusting for various relevant factors. No association was found between apple consumption and hospital stays or mental health service use. However, apple eaters were found to be slightly more likely to have avoided using prescription medication. Based on these results, the authors conclude that an apple a day does not keep the doctor away, but it may keep the pharmacist away. They suggest that this finding could have implications for reducing healthcare costs, considering the high annual costs of prescription medication and the inexpensiveness of apples.

However, the authors also note several limitations of the study: most importantly, that apple eaters are likely to differ from non-apple eaters in ways that may have confounded the results (for example, apple eaters may be more likely to be health-conscious). To establish any causal relationship between apple consumption and avoidance of medication, they recommend experimental research.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or meta analysis you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Using national survey data, Davis et al. (2015) tested the assertion that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and did not find statistically significant evidence to support this hypothesis. While people who consumed apples were slightly less likely to use prescription medications, the study was unable to demonstrate a causal relationship between these variables.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

• You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
• You haven’t missed any essential information
• The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarizing many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• ChatGPT vs human editor
• ChatGPT citations
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Using ChatGPT for your studies
• What is ChatGPT?
• Chicago style
• Paraphrasing

 Plagiarism

• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Consequences of plagiarism
• Common knowledge

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words. Want to make your life super easy? Try our free text summarizer today!

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarizing, and on the purpose of the summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

• As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
• For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
• To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
• In a paper , to summarize or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarizing an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Cite the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarize the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarize a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

All can be done within seconds with our free text summarizer .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 31). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 7, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/how-to-summarize/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, how to paraphrase | step-by-step guide & examples, how to quote | citing quotes in apa, mla & chicago, the basics of in-text citation | apa & mla examples, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

User Research Report Template

A UX template to create a user research report for your team! Concentrating on the synthesis and actions of your field research is one of the most important parts of the UX research process.

Watch my YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/bpRr8S_rz0g

I've put this template together to allow you to just cut and paste all your findings into the template so you concentrate on making world class findings and delivering amazing presentations!

• Resources Home 🏠
• Try SciSpace Copilot
• Search research papers
• Add Copilot Extension
• Try AI Detector
• Try Paraphraser
• Try Citation Generator
• April Papers
• June Papers
• July Papers

How To Write A Research Summary

It’s a common perception that writing a research summary is a quick and easy task. After all, how hard can jotting down 300 words be? But when you consider the weight those 300 words carry, writing a research summary as a part of your dissertation, essay or compelling draft for your paper instantly becomes daunting task.

A research summary requires you to synthesize a complex research paper into an informative, self-explanatory snapshot. It needs to portray what your article contains. Thus, writing it often comes at the end of the task list.

Regardless of when you’re planning to write, it is no less of a challenge, particularly if you’re doing it for the first time. This blog will take you through everything you need to know about research summary so that you have an easier time with it.

What is a Research Summary?

A research summary is the part of your research paper that describes its findings to the audience in a brief yet concise manner. A well-curated research summary represents you and your knowledge about the information written in the research paper.

While writing a quality research summary, you need to discover and identify the significant points in the research and condense it in a more straightforward form. A research summary is like a doorway that provides access to the structure of a research paper's sections.

Since the purpose of a summary is to give an overview of the topic, methodology, and conclusions employed in a paper, it requires an objective approach. No analysis or criticism.

Research summary or Abstract. What’s the Difference?

They’re both brief, concise, and give an overview of an aspect of the research paper. So, it’s easy to understand why many new researchers get the two confused. However, a research summary and abstract are two very different things with individual purpose. To start with, a research summary is written at the end while the abstract comes at the beginning of a research paper.

A research summary captures the essence of the paper at the end of your document. It focuses on your topic, methods, and findings. More like a TL;DR, if you will. An abstract, on the other hand, is a description of what your research paper is about. It tells your reader what your topic or hypothesis is, and sets a context around why you have embarked on your research.

Getting Started with a Research Summary

Before you start writing, you need to get insights into your research’s content, style, and organization. There are three fundamental areas of a research summary that you should focus on.

• While deciding the contents of your research summary, you must include a section on its importance as a whole, the techniques, and the tools that were used to formulate the conclusion. Additionally, there needs to be a short but thorough explanation of how the findings of the research paper have a significance.
• To keep the summary well-organized, try to cover the various sections of the research paper in separate paragraphs. Besides, how the idea of particular factual research came up first must be explained in a separate paragraph.
• As a general practice worldwide, research summaries are restricted to 300-400 words. However, if you have chosen a lengthy research paper, try not to exceed the word limit of 10% of the entire research paper.

How to Structure Your Research Summary

The research summary is nothing but a concise form of the entire research paper. Therefore, the structure of a summary stays the same as the paper. So, include all the section titles and write a little about them. The structural elements that a research summary must consist of are:

It represents the topic of the research. Try to phrase it so that it includes the key findings or conclusion of the task.

The abstract gives a context of the research paper. Unlike the abstract at the beginning of a paper, the abstract here, should be very short since you’ll be working with a limited word count.

Introduction

This is the most crucial section of a research summary as it helps readers get familiarized with the topic. You should include the definition of your topic, the current state of the investigation, and practical relevance in this part. Additionally, you should present the problem statement, investigative measures, and any hypothesis in this section.

Methodology

This section provides details about the methodology and the methods adopted to conduct the study. You should write a brief description of the surveys, sampling, type of experiments, statistical analysis, and the rationality behind choosing those particular methods.

Create a list of evidence obtained from the various experiments with a primary analysis, conclusions, and interpretations made upon that. In the paper research paper, you will find the results section as the most detailed and lengthy part. Therefore, you must pick up the key elements and wisely decide which elements are worth including and which are worth skipping.

This is where you present the interpretation of results in the context of their application. Discussion usually covers results, inferences, and theoretical models explaining the obtained values, key strengths, and limitations. All of these are vital elements that you must include in the summary.

Most research papers merge conclusion with discussions. However, depending upon the instructions, you may have to prepare this as a separate section in your research summary. Usually, conclusion revisits the hypothesis and provides the details about the validation or denial about the arguments made in the research paper, based upon how convincing the results were obtained.

The structure of a research summary closely resembles the anatomy of a scholarly article . Additionally, you should keep your research and references limited to authentic and  scholarly sources only.

Tips for Writing a Research Summary

The core concept behind undertaking a research summary is to present a simple and clear understanding of your research paper to the reader. The biggest hurdle while doing that is the number of words you have at your disposal. So, follow the steps below to write a research summary that sticks.

1. Read the parent paper thoroughly

You should go through the research paper thoroughly multiple times to ensure that you have a complete understanding of its contents. A 3-stage reading process helps.

a. Scan: In the first read, go through it to get an understanding of its basic concept and methodologies.

b. Read: For the second step, read the article attentively by going through each section, highlighting the key elements, and subsequently listing the topics that you will include in your research summary.

c. Skim: Flip through the article a few more times to study the interpretation of various experimental results, statistical analysis, and application in different contexts.

Sincerely go through different headings and subheadings as it will allow you to understand the underlying concept of each section. You can try reading the introduction and conclusion simultaneously to understand the motive of the task and how obtained results stay fit to the expected outcome.

2. Identify the key elements in different sections

While exploring different sections of an article, you can try finding answers to simple what, why, and how. Below are a few pointers to give you an idea:

• What is the research question and how is it addressed?
• Is there a hypothesis in the introductory part?
• What type of methods are being adopted?
• What is the sample size for data collection and how is it being analyzed?
• What are the most vital findings?
• Do the results support the hypothesis?

Discussion/Conclusion

• What is the final solution to the problem statement?
• What is the explanation for the obtained results?
• What is the drawn inference?
• What are the various limitations of the study?

3. Prepare the first draft

Now that you’ve listed the key points that the paper tries to demonstrate, you can start writing the summary following the standard structure of a research summary. Just make sure you’re not writing statements from the parent research paper verbatim.

Instead, try writing down each section in your own words. This will not only help in avoiding plagiarism but will also show your complete understanding of the subject. Alternatively, you can use a summarizing tool (AI-based summary generators) to shorten the content or summarize the content without disrupting the actual meaning of the article.

SciSpace Copilot is one such helpful feature! You can easily upload your research paper and ask Copilot to summarize it. You will get an AI-generated, condensed research summary. SciSpace Copilot also enables you to highlight text, clip math and tables, and ask any question relevant to the research paper; it will give you instant answers with deeper context of the article..

4. Include visuals

One of the best ways to summarize and consolidate a research paper is to provide visuals like graphs, charts, pie diagrams, etc.. Visuals make getting across the facts, the past trends, and the probabilistic figures around a concept much more engaging.

5. Double check for plagiarism

It can be very tempting to copy-paste a few statements or the entire paragraphs depending upon the clarity of those sections. But it’s best to stay away from the practice. Even paraphrasing should be done with utmost care and attention.

Also: QuillBot vs SciSpace: Choose the best AI-paraphrasing tool

6. Religiously follow the word count limit

You need to have strict control while writing different sections of a research summary. In many cases, it has been observed that the research summary and the parent research paper become the same length. If that happens, it can lead to discrediting of your efforts and research summary itself. Whatever the standard word limit has been imposed, you must observe that carefully.

7. Proofread your research summary multiple times

The process of writing the research summary can be exhausting and tiring. However, you shouldn’t allow this to become a reason to skip checking your academic writing several times for mistakes like misspellings, grammar, wordiness, and formatting issues. Proofread and edit until you think your research summary can stand out from the others, provided it is drafted perfectly on both technicality and comprehension parameters. You can also seek assistance from editing and proofreading services , and other free tools that help you keep these annoying grammatical errors at bay.

8. Watch while you write

Keep a keen observation of your writing style. You should use the words very precisely, and in any situation, it should not represent your personal opinions on the topic. You should write the entire research summary in utmost impersonal, precise, factually correct, and evidence-based writing.

9. Ask a friend/colleague to help

Once you are done with the final copy of your research summary, you must ask a friend or colleague to read it. You must test whether your friend or colleague could grasp everything without referring to the parent paper. This will help you in ensuring the clarity of the article.

Once you become familiar with the research paper summary concept and understand how to apply the tips discussed above in your current task, summarizing a research summary won’t be that challenging. While traversing the different stages of your academic career, you will face different scenarios where you may have to create several research summaries.

In such cases, you just need to look for answers to simple questions like “Why this study is necessary,” “what were the methods,” “who were the participants,” “what conclusions were drawn from the research,” and “how it is relevant to the wider world.” Once you find out the answers to these questions, you can easily create a good research summary following the standard structure and a precise writing style.

You might also like

Consensus GPT vs. SciSpace GPT: Choose the Best GPT for Research

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework: Understanding the Differences

Types of Essays in Academic Writing - Quick Guide (2024)

Learn / Guides / UX research guide

Back to guides

7 powerful examples of UX research in action

After a lengthy planning and designing process, you’ve turned your website or app vision into a reality. But maybe you've noticed that despite its visual appeal, conversions are low while bounce rates keep soaring. Often, a poor user experience (UX) is to blame, affecting your brand perceptions and customer conversions.

Last updated

Reading time.

So, how can you create a frictionless, user-centric experience? Strong UX research and smart use of UX research tools are key.

While the research process can be a challenge, analyzing how other brands have successfully conducted UX research can inspire your own approach. This article dives into seven detailed case studies and shows you how to use UX research tools to identify and solve UX challenges and delight your customers.

Empower your team to do great UX research

Use Hotjar for effective end-to-end UX research campaigns that help you deeply understand user needs

Why and when should you perform UX research?

UX research is the strategic process of analyzing target users to understand their needs, behavior, and experience. Teams use UX research, feedback tools, and experimentation techniques to collect contextual insights.

Then, they translate these insights into a user-centric design that generates strong conversions and higher user retention rates.

UX research offers several other benefits, including:

Helping create customer delight: by understanding how users behave, you can design your product more accessibly and empathetically. UX research equips teams to create tailored experiences, maximizing customer satisfaction and improving product experience (PX). 

Replacing guesswork with data-driven insights : UX research involves collecting and assessing qualitative and quantitative data to make decisions based on comprehensive insights, rather than gut feelings.

Providing insight into the user’s needs : the better you know your audience's pain points, the better you can design a product that truly addresses their needs. UX research tells you exactly where your users struggle—so you can come up with solutions. 

Helping you achieve critical KPIs : research methods like concept validation and user feedback ensure every iteration moves you toward better user engagement, conversions, increased retention, and reduced churn, positively impacting your revenue.

The benefits of UX research are clear. So when should you start the process? 

Since you are creating a product for someone else and not for yourself, any time is good to start UX research. The beginning doesn't have to be sophisticated. It can start simple and evolve, adapting to the amount/complexity of the questions about the users and the resources of your business.

You only need curiosity, some time, and a willingness to base your product on facts and not assumptions.

Let’s take a look at how seven companies aced UX research and produced incredible results.

7 UX research examples to get inspired

UX research offers you opportunities for conversion rate optimization and personalization that can significantly increase business growth and enhance customer satisfaction.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t always need a dedicated UX research team: a cost-effective tech stack can do most of the heavy lifting. Product experience insights tools like Hotjar help you assess your users’ experience, measure their behavior, and garner constructive feedback for UX analysis . 

Here are seven examples of great UX research with the help of product experience insights tools to get you inspired.

1. Zenprint: 7% reduction in bounce rate

Zenprint provides order and wholesale digital printing services in the Australian market.

Zenprint’s biggest challenge was identifying factors leading to drop-offs on their website. The brand’s marketing team struggled to figure out:

Where people spent their time

What users were interested in 

What caused them to drop off

They wanted actionable insights into how users interacted with their site . 

Action plan

Zenprint’s marketing team leveraged Hotjar (👋) to analyze web performance and understand user behavior at a granular level. They used:

Funnels to locate the exact drop-off points in the customer journey

Session Recordings to understand how each user behaved on the site, tracing mouse and scroll movements to see which elements users click on

Heatmaps to view color-coded representations of popular and unpopular site elements to help discover areas where users spend the most time and determine those that need improvement

This action plan helped the team zero in on their pricing table as a major blocker.

Once Zenprint identified the problem, the next step was split testing multiple layouts to optimize the pricing table. With a simple change in their pricing plan, the Zenprint team reduced drop-off rates by 7% and boosted its conversion rate by 2%. 

Key takeaways

For stellar UX research, collect real-time insights from users across different stages of the conversion funnel to identify bottlenecks. Supplement quantitative analytics with qualitative feedback by analyzing Hotjar Recordings and Heatmaps to understand user behavior.

2. Matalan: 400% ROI

Matalan is a British fashion and homeware retail and ecommerce brand.

Without qualitative UX research to interpret data points, Matalan's UX team was forced to make decisions based on gut feelings, relying on quantitative data alone, which gave them limited visibility. The checkout process was showing high drop-offs and they weren’t sure why. 

When Matalan migrated to a responsive website, its UX team used Hotjar to record and assess user responses to this change, and compare performance through A/B testing. They also viewed Session Recordings that flagged bugs and glitches early in the migration process.

They used Hotjar's Feedback tools to collect user feedback in real-time to capture the customer’s voice and make product changes to improve the user experience. Combined with user recordings, these provided a complete overview of the user journey, which helped eliminate areas of friction.

Using recordings to closely monitor user behavior, Matalan optimized its checkout process and increased conversions by 1.23%.

They created a bespoke experience dashboard by combining qualitative insights gathered by Hotjar with Google Data Studio analytics for a comprehensive UX research process. 

Instead of relying solely on numbers, collect user perspectives to add depth to your UX research . This concrete feedback can make your team aware of flaws in the user experience so you can proactively offer fixes.

3. Materials Market: 3x conversions

Materials Market is a UK-based marketplace for construction material manufacturers and customers.

Materials Market’s co-founder wanted to optimize their website experience by improving three problem areas:

Poorly placed calls to action (CTAs), where mobile users couldn’t see the CTA clearly enough to click on it

Customer drop-offs at the checkout step because users only wanted to check the delivery time

A complicated cookie policy that caused visitors to bounce as soon as they landed on the website

Materials Market used Hotjar Recordings and Heatmaps to dig deeper into these UX research issues . The result was a gradual upgrade of the website to meet—and exceed—customer expectations. Here’s what happened:

They improved the visibility of CTAs with changes to font, color, and design. The team also included a rating widget next to the CTAs to display social proof. 

They removed the need to set up an account to place an order and added an estimated delivery date for every product

They implemented design changes in the cookie policy pop-up to make it 30% bigger with better color and copy. They also placed the banner on the top of the page. 

Redesigning the checkout flow decreased drop-offs by 86%. On the flip side, the conversion rate more than tripled to 1.6% —massively boosting yearly revenue by more than £10,000.

UX research tools like recordings are a great way to understand user behavior on your website—you can sort and filter recordings with Hotjar by relevance. This can boost your UX research efforts without relying heavily on technical expertise and development knowledge.

4. Totally Promotional: increased sales while enhancing UX

Totally Promotional is a US-based manufacturer and retailer that produces customized promotional products for brands.

Totally Promotional wanted to evaluate on-site user behavior and improve the brand's UX quality but was struggling to collect meaningful user data that offered a complete insight into the user experience.

Relying on Google Analytics alone, the team lacked qualitative feedback to interpret customer needs and design empathetically.

The team added Hotjar to its tech stack to get a better view of user interaction and web experience. They used Hotjar Heatmaps to assess where users spent their time and dropped off—identifying underperforming pages and bugs. 

Hotjar’s Feedback and Survey tools were useful in capturing Voice of the Customer (VoC) insights, allowing Totally Promotional to examine why users behaved the way they did. They also watched Session Recordings to pinpoint where buyers felt stuck in the order process. 

This mix of UX research tools removed the guesswork from Totally Promotional’s website optimization process. The team took an evidence-based approach and incorporated both minor tweaks and significant updates in the ecommerce storefront design. 

However, the most crucial action they took was changing the order process for their branded pens page, which tripled sales for this product.

Behavioral data and user perspectives are both necessary for excellent UX research. Intuitive tools like Hotjar’s Feedback widget can help you collate meaningful information to supercharge your UX research campaign and implement strategic website changes. 

5. Hussle: fixed one bug every week

Hussle is a subscription-based network of gyms, spas, and digital fitness solutions. 

Hussle’s biggest challenge was high customer churn: the brand’s product team wanted to better understand why this was happening and deploy UX research to reduce churn with an unparalleled product experience. 

Hussle’s team leveraged Surveys and Recordings to find answers as to why users were leaving. 

It turned out there were three core reasons behind churn:  

High subscription cost

Changes in the user’s location 

Purchase of direct gym membership 

Deploying UX research tools to understand churn led to an improved UX and user interface and boosted Hussle’s growth. The team saw great results, including: 

A preemptive bug fix that would’ve hindered the buying process 

Streamlined the bug-fixing process by detecting and deleting at least one bug weekly

Gathered meaningful insights from users through 1000+ survey responses and over 73,000 seconds of Hotjar Session Recordings

The team has continued to use Session Recordings and Heatmaps to stay one step ahead—whether detecting bugs or finding where users get stuck. 

User feedback is a great way to understand the reasons behind churn so you can address them and improve retention . Additionally, you can also gather data to proactively fix bugs and improve UX.

6. Turum-burum: +55% conversion rate

Turum-burum is a digital UX design agency that provides conversion rate optimization strategies for clients like Intertop, one of Ukraine's biggest shoe retailers.

Intertop saw a rapid increase in traffic on their website and used Turum-burum’s services to maximize conversions from this influx of visitors. They used UX research to address three crucial challenges:

Simplifying and enhancing the customer journey once a visitor lands on Intertop’s homepage

Testing and implementing UX changes as quickly as possible

Anticipating and mitigating any potential risks resulting from UX changes

Using Hotjar’s exit-intent Surveys , the Turum-burum team identified a major problem in the conversion funnel: their complicated checkout process.  

Hotjar helped the team in two main ways:

They used the user feedback coming in through Surveys to prioritize improvements 

They used Heatmaps and Session Recordings to understand customer blockers and pain points 

Drawing on these UX research insights, the team decided to add a few small but crucial details to Intertop’s storefront, such as filters, intuitive product lists, and an improved checkout flow.

Product experience insights helped the team pinpoint exact bottlenecks and run feedback-driven experiments.  

These changes skyrocketed Intertop's conversion rate by 54.68% and reduced bounce rates by 13.35%. They also enhanced the product page and lists to increase conversion from the cart to the checkout page by 36.6%.   

Mapping the customer journey through your sales funnel is a critical part of successful ecommerce UX research. Monitor user needs at every stage through heatmaps, recordings, and feedback tools. 

7. eShopWorld: better UX and conversion fluctuation awareness 

eShopWorld delivers global ecommerce solutions to help brands scale their business at the international level. 

One of eShopWorld’s key services is conversion rate optimization. They monitor conversions for every client to identify drops and discrepancies. 

However, the team didn't have a reliable tool for evaluating user behavior and countering occasional dips in the conversion rate.

eShopWorld used Hotjar Feedback tools on its checkout page to collect real-time user opinions: customers were able to flag issues right before ordering, and the eShopWorld team could dig deeper into understanding the context behind their comments via Session Recordings .

Heatmaps also provided actionable insights into customer behavior so the team could holistically review user issues and prioritize them according to their impact on the UX.

eShopWorld studied all the user feedback to get to the root of key problems. They used research data to plan and communicate UX design and user flow changes to tackle each blocker.

The team also analyzed Hotjar Heatmaps and watched Session Recordings to assess whether UX redesigns and changes produced the intended effect for users.

UX research is a continuous process of striving to understand your customers and their preferences at every stage of design and development. By using research tools to identify key issues and dig deeper into their context, teams can produce user-centric interfaces and make data-informed decisions.

UX research is paramount to product success

For your site to attract quality traffic, deliver seamless buying experiences, and move the needle on conversion rates, you need to understand how your users behave and what they expect.

UX research tools can help you stay on top of your customer needs. Feature-packed PX insights tools allow you to easily observe user behavior, synthesize user feedback, and perform experiments to drive product growth. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What does ux research involve.

UX research is the process of studying the target audience to examine user behavior and identify opportunities for improving designs and workflows. UX research typically involves:

Monitoring user behavior 

Assessing what users like and dislike based on their activity

Collecting feedback and suggestions for potential bugs or friction areas

Experimenting to see user reactions and validate any design improvements

Asking users for feedback to bring the users’ voice into the design and development process.

What are some UX research methods?

UX research varies in terms of methodology. You can use qualitative, quantitative, behavioral, and attitudinal methods for conducting your research. Each method uncovers unique insights about the user experience, such as:

Qualitative : why and how users behave on a page

Quantitative : numerical assessment of their activity

Behavioral : what users do on a website/product

Attitudinal : how users perceive a website/product

Why do you need UX research?

UX research lays the groundwork for successful UX design strategies. It helps you understand your customers and their needs to create more empathetic designs tailored to your audience. 

It’s an essential factor for achieving goals such as lowering churn, bounce rate, cart abandonment, and improving UX. By helping you iterate your site or product informed by user feedback, UX research allows you to create a bulletproof website that meets user expectations.

UX research tools

Previous chapter

UX research methods

Next chapter

We use cookies to personalize and deliver appropriate content. By clicking "Accept" you agree to our terms.

User Research

Real user research documents from top companies

Explore 119 examples of real user research documents from top companies..

Updated March 19, 2024

User Journey Maps

Check out real user research documents

Sam Crowell Richard, Created as Head of Growth @ ngrok

I created this user journey teardown presentation while interviewing as Head of Growth at ngrok.

Amber Rucker, Created as Director Of Product Design & Research @ CloudBees

When defining user journeys for a product, I use this format to communicate the broad view of each customer's experience and orient each team at the company around a singular purpose.

Lauryn Isford, Created as Head of Growth @ Airtable

When our team was working on onboarding at Airtable, we ran experiments using personalization to drive the completion rate and provide more value to new users of the product.

Bria King, Created while working in product management

I created this while our organization was exploring a product opportunity with a new, broad target audience on a broad issue. This exercise allowed us to define the problem to be solved and narrow our target audience.

Vazgen Badalyan, Created as Group Product Manager | Yandex Market @ Yandex

This is a user intent diagram that served as the foundation for our AI/ML product strategy.

Amber Rucker, Created as Advisor @ Aikido Security

I created this six-step guide for PMs, researchers, and designers seeking to drive organizational change through user journeys.

I used this template as the first step in mapping out the user journey. It can be shared with designers, researchers, PMs, support, and professional services to gain diverse perspectives on the lifecycle stages and ultimately synthesize each user journey.

User journey research goes nowhere if you don't present and drive it forward. I used this template to align cross-functional teams at CloudBees toward a common goal.

Satheesh Kumar, Created as Senior Software Engineering Manager - Growth & Monetization @ GoDaddy

This was a hackathon experiment aimed at improving onboarding and activation using the psych framework from Darius Contractor and Reforge.

I created this template to help PMs and researchers get the right insights quickly when creating user journeys.

View all 29 examples of user journey maps from top companies

Browse by category

Research Plans

Tabish Gilani, Created as Head of Product (Director) @ Replit

I created this to teach others how we conducted user interviews at Replit using a Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework. It covers everything from how to source, prep, and conduct user interviews to get the most learnings.

Dan Wolchonok, Created as Head of Data @ Reforge

This feedback collection process for analyzing customer input helped me get the people's attention, re-prioritize roadmaps, and rally the team around how to allocate resources for work on a payments page.

Behzod Sirjani, Created as Senior User Experience Researcher @ Facebook

I used this framework to design a creative research approach that would get us the evidence we needed to redesign the Audience Insights tool.

Monil Shah, Created as Lead Product Manager - Subscription Growth and Monetization @ Clover

At Clover the PM uses this template to provide details to their Designer or User Researcher and then design their study based on input they gather here.

Behzod Sirjani, Created as Head of Research Operations @ Slack

In order to better understand how to improve the experience of managing Slack at scale, I created this discussion guide to conducted interviews with Slack Admins at our largest customers.

Lisa Dziuba, Created as Head of Growth Product Marketing @ Lemon.io

When I started the power user research at Lemon.io, my first action was to create a well-structured research project. The research project (research plan) is a must-have PMM document that focuses all the research efforts on the business outcomes. The beauty of this document lies in its ability to keep research on track and be a repository of all docs and tasks, as well as one source of truth.

Paul Timmermann, Created as Senior Director of Product @ Toptal

This artifact outlines how we actively use feedback rivers at Toptal to continue to deliver the best experience for our talent and clients.

Thomas Christensen, Created as Senior Product Manager, Growth @ VEED.IO

At Veed we book customer interview sessions based on user behavior by automatically filtering to a set of users, emailing them, and booking time across the team's shared availability.

Daniel Andor, Created as Product Design and Strategy Specialist | Founder @ Durran

This is the framework I use to walk clients through a thorough product discovery process, setting up the entire remaining development of the product.

Olena Avramenko, Created as Head of Product (Interim) @ Sitly

I created this research plan to understand how parents in different markets search and select babysitters on Sitly.

View all 23 examples of research plans from top companies

Reforge has everything you need to get more done, faster

Research Reports

Ginny Mineo, Created as Product Lead @ Reforge

This is a recap of an analysis I did with the Reforge growth team to better understand why users hadn’t paid for a membership plan.

Ramani Siva Prakash, Created as Principal Product Manager @ Thoughtworks

This customer research explored the interest level among consumers for making a vehicle purchase online.

Leading participatory interviews requires flexibility, preparation, and empathy. I designed this script to enable us to capture the right insights from users about how they worked.

Ali Riehle, Created as User Experience Designer & Researcher @ LUMA Institute

My slides serve to summarize a round of user interviews conducted by the LUMA Design & Development team to help kick off the ‘Revealing the Value of Workplace’ project in June 2019.

This Miro board provides a structure and visual outline for debriefing user interviews.

Mike Fiorillo, Created as CRO Consultant @ Optimology (Self-Employed)

When working with the team at Clubhouse, I used this survey report to share survey findings about the user onboarding experience.

Sarah Foster, Created as Freelance UX Designer @ SarahFosterDesign

I created this research report — including user personas, design recommendations, and an implementation plan — for a client who wanted to improve their SmartWatch Fitness App.

Scott Coleman, Created as Head of Growth & International Product @ Pinterest

This document provides a “thumbnail sketch” of the Indian market before we visited with a select group of company stakeholders.

Ellen Naruse, Created as Product Strategy and Development Lead, Units @ Reforge

This deck summarizes how we analyzed and made updates to one of our key courses. This gave non-product stakeholders an inside look at what we changed and why.

When working with the team at Clubhouse, I used this analysis to process open-text survey data about the user onboarding experience.

View all 16 examples of research reports from top companies

User Interview Guides

Jack McDermott, Created as Senior Manager, Growth @ Chegg

I used this interview log to get a better sense of our target users, their motivations, and their willingness to pay.

Ali Riehle, Created as Senior Product Designer @ Reforge

As a hiring team member in search of an excellent Lead User Researcher at Reforge, I used this format to run the interview, take notes, and keep what she was looking for in candidates top of mind during the interview.

Sachin Rekhi, Created as Head of Product, Sales Solutions @ LinkedIn

I designed this script to go beyond the typical user interview. This guide offers an example of how to avoid confirmation bias and validate all six product strategy dimensions in a single interview: problem to solve, target audience, value proposition, competitive advantage, growth strategy, and business model.

Having launched countless product and marketing surveys, I collected 50+ of the most effective survey questions for gathering market research, measuring product-market fit, and discovering insights from your target audience.

Mike Adams, Created as Co-Founder & CEO @ Grain

We created this guide to run qualitative interviews with existing customers to define our ideal customer profile.

Div Manickam, Created as Product Marketing, Career, and Leadership Mentor @ Explore with Div

This interview template is aimed at customers to learn company and competition strengths and weaknesses. Using this, I was able to glean insights into customer pain points and the greater marketplace to begin a messaging/positioning shift.

Iryna Struk, Created as Product Manager @ HandsHQ

Consistently conducting win-loss interviews has helped us uncover meaningful opportunities to improve our sales and marketing processes.

Lade Falobi, Created as Product Growth Manager @ Motherboard

This script helped us develop personas as the company took on a major product redesign.

View all 15 examples of user interview guides from top companies

When working with the team at Clubhouse (now Shortcut), I used this survey script to better understand the user onboarding experience.

Vishal Gupta, Created as Co-Founder & CEO @ Momspresso

We surveyed users to figure out why a new offering wasn’t being used. We took the insights, created a gamified version, and increased engagement.

Tracey Saenz, Created as a Senior Brand Manager at Enterprise Biotech Company

A key part of successful agency management is monitoring client satisfaction. This survey explores various aspects of the agency/client relationship to encourage healthy communication and drive successful outcomes.

Austin Hay, Created while working in Martech

This internal survey helped me gauge how my team was doing according to our stakeholders.

Phil Carter, Created as Advisor @ uDocz

This artifact summarizes the survey analysis I conducted and the recommendations I made that ultimately informed uDocz’s subscription pricing and packaging strategy.

Khushi Lunkad, Created as Growth Lead @ Streamline

I ran this survey to identify the ideal price point of a new offering for a different audience segment.

Ebube Ojimadu, Created as Senior Product Manager @ Quidax

A user activation/deposit flow to help prevent drop-offs after initial sign-up. This process helped yield a 30% increase in general fiat deposit volume and customer engagement.

View all 15 examples of surveys from top companies

Rupa Chaturvedi, Created as Sr UX Designer, Alexa Shopping @ Amazon

This PRFAQ document describes our vision for Alexa as a Nutrition Assistant and our plan to build and iterate to achieve this vision.

Crafting a compelling B2B product story is key to GTM success, but can be difficult. I’ve used this worksheet at Chegg and Panorama Education to craft stories that resonate with customers and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Tori Curtis, Created as Head of Product Marketing @ A.Team

A mock PR / FAQ exercise is all about working backwards by writing a customer-facing document to align internal stakeholders around a common vision and pressure test your new features, product strategy or roadmap.

Vikram Aditya, Created as Senior Design Director @ Sprinklr

This framework helps product teams draft product documentation, which helps everyone on the team anchor their efforts.

Tara Wellington, Created as Vice President Of Product Management @ PandaDoc

Consistent storytelling helped PandaDoc’s product team transition from feature-based development to impact-driven work using OKRs.

Tara Wellington

A structured communication plan helped me understand my audiences, build alignment, and maintain support for a complex customer segment.

Jessica Dewald, Created as Executive Consultant for Product Management, Product Strategist, Interim Product Leader @ Fly High, Dive Deep. | Product Management Consulting

PR/FAQs are a great way to keep the eventual user experience at the center of product development.

Tara Wellington, Created as Senior Director of Product Management @ GoDaddy

This story structure laid the foundation for a broad product strategy shift to focus on customer segments after GoDaddy’s new CEO joined.

Tara Wellington, Created as Senior Director of Product Management @ BILL

Our complex design system was slowing down product development. Here’s how I drove internal adoption at every level of the company.

View all 9 examples of story maps from top companies

Shelly Eisen-Livneh, Created as Sr. Product Marketing Manager - Solutions & Audience Strategy @ Heap

At Heap we conducted this lean research approach to help inform GTM/product roadmap iterations.

Kofo Are, Created as Head of Marketing @ RouteMagic Solutions

This is the persona and segmentation document I created for our product, RouteMagic. It helps us understand what the executives or small business owners are mandated to achieve within their roles or business so that we can identify our value propositions for each segment.

Renan Serrano, Created as Founder @ visto.bio

I developed this heatmap as a unique approach to identifying personas and narrowing my list down to an actionable number.

Ala Eddine Abid, Created as Product Marketing Manager @ Vndit.io

This positioning document helped us express how a product or feature uniquely fills a customer’s need in a way competitors’ don’t. This work is complementary and heavily reliant on persona research.

Julia Ankudinova, Created as Growth Product Manager @ Business Match

This in-depth user research process allowed us to land on segments and personas that better served our business.

Yue Zhao, Created as Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO) @ Fuzzy

A set of vision stories we developed for an investor pitch deck, outlining several ICP scenarios we were building toward before Fuzzy shut down.

Manoj Surya, Created as Product, Growth @ Alohaa

A customer persona research and discovery (utilizing Reforge frameworks) I use to help find clients and customers.

View all 12 examples of personas from top companies

User Experience Audits

I used this template with my research team to document user insights and evaluate whether our research approach was getting us the evidence we needed.

Mark Lamb, Created as Product Design Consultant & Startup Advisor @ Mark Lamb

This is the recommendations that resulted from a UX analysis we completed, focused primarily on activation and onboarding.

Adam Green, Created as Lead Product Designer @ Reforge

This UX flow map helped us evaluate the complete purchase journey for our users and identified steps in the journey to target for growth experiments.

Mindy Wagner, Created as Head of Product Design @ Whimsical

As we’ve worked on codifying our design system at Whimsical, we’ve routinely found minor inconsistencies. Creating a board like this gives me a quick and easy way to communicate those issues to our engineering team.

This artifact highlights the approach I took to review each screen in the company’s onboarding flow and recommend improvements based on established best practices.

Tim Chen, Created as Business Analyst @ Bokksu

A search keywords and conversion analysis for an online alcohol ecommerce site. It addresses challenges with search alignment, visibility into star performers, and helping identify ways to optimize low conversion.

Phil Vander Broek, Created as Co-Founder @ Dopt

Conducting a thorough audit of onboarding flows across the industry helped us identify patterns that could inform our own approach.

At Thinkful, I created this conjoint analysis to decipher user preferences by feature ranking in surveys, revealing comparative values in aspects like mentorship versus cost.

View all 13 examples of user experience audits from top companies

Usability Tests

As Reforge changed their subscription model, I needed to learn what pushed some users to successfully complete payment, while others did not. This moderated user research project used Zoom interviews to learn just that.

When working with the team at Clubhouse (now Shortcut), I used this usability testing data capture to collect and process data about the user onboarding experience.

When working with the team at Clubhouse (now Shortcut), I used this usability testing script to better understand the user onboarding experience.

Ali Riehle, Created as Lead Product Designer @ Reforge

While building artifacts 0-1, we needed a lightweight way to track our hypotheses and discoveries.

Federico Blundo, Created as Senior Product Manager @B2C Marketplace

A brief overview of using user analytics to enhance product experience and strategy refinement, drawing from my PM role at an online travel agency.

Andrey Andreev, Created as Head of eMerchandising @ METRO/MAKRO

A report for a homepage banner A/B test for a client. Using hypothetical numbers, this report demonstrates how we execute and report a critical split test for our clients.

View all 6 examples of usability tests from top companies

Other categories

• Privacy Policy

Buy Me a Coffee

Home » Research Summary – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Research Summary – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Summary

Definition:

A research summary is a brief and concise overview of a research project or study that highlights its key findings, main points, and conclusions. It typically includes a description of the research problem, the research methods used, the results obtained, and the implications or significance of the findings. It is often used as a tool to quickly communicate the main findings of a study to other researchers, stakeholders, or decision-makers.

Structure of Research Summary

The Structure of a Research Summary typically include:

• Introduction : This section provides a brief background of the research problem or question, explains the purpose of the study, and outlines the research objectives.
• Methodology : This section explains the research design, methods, and procedures used to conduct the study. It describes the sample size, data collection methods, and data analysis techniques.
• Results : This section presents the main findings of the study, including statistical analysis if applicable. It may include tables, charts, or graphs to visually represent the data.
• Discussion : This section interprets the results and explains their implications. It discusses the significance of the findings, compares them to previous research, and identifies any limitations or future directions for research.
• Conclusion : This section summarizes the main points of the research and provides a conclusion based on the findings. It may also suggest implications for future research or practical applications of the results.
• References : This section lists the sources cited in the research summary, following the appropriate citation style.

How to Write Research Summary

Here are the steps you can follow to write a research summary:

• Read the research article or study thoroughly: To write a summary, you must understand the research article or study you are summarizing. Therefore, read the article or study carefully to understand its purpose, research design, methodology, results, and conclusions.
• Identify the main points : Once you have read the research article or study, identify the main points, key findings, and research question. You can highlight or take notes of the essential points and findings to use as a reference when writing your summary.
• Write the introduction: Start your summary by introducing the research problem, research question, and purpose of the study. Briefly explain why the research is important and its significance.
• Summarize the methodology : In this section, summarize the research design, methods, and procedures used to conduct the study. Explain the sample size, data collection methods, and data analysis techniques.
• Present the results: Summarize the main findings of the study. Use tables, charts, or graphs to visually represent the data if necessary.
• Interpret the results: In this section, interpret the results and explain their implications. Discuss the significance of the findings, compare them to previous research, and identify any limitations or future directions for research.
• Conclude the summary : Summarize the main points of the research and provide a conclusion based on the findings. Suggest implications for future research or practical applications of the results.
• Revise and edit : Once you have written the summary, revise and edit it to ensure that it is clear, concise, and free of errors. Make sure that your summary accurately represents the research article or study.
• Add references: Include a list of references cited in the research summary, following the appropriate citation style.

Example of Research Summary

Here is an example of a research summary:

Title: The Effects of Yoga on Mental Health: A Meta-Analysis

Introduction: This meta-analysis examines the effects of yoga on mental health. The study aimed to investigate whether yoga practice can improve mental health outcomes such as anxiety, depression, stress, and quality of life.

Methodology : The study analyzed data from 14 randomized controlled trials that investigated the effects of yoga on mental health outcomes. The sample included a total of 862 participants. The yoga interventions varied in length and frequency, ranging from four to twelve weeks, with sessions lasting from 45 to 90 minutes.

Results : The meta-analysis found that yoga practice significantly improved mental health outcomes. Participants who practiced yoga showed a significant reduction in anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as stress levels. Quality of life also improved in those who practiced yoga.

Discussion : The findings of this study suggest that yoga can be an effective intervention for improving mental health outcomes. The study supports the growing body of evidence that suggests that yoga can have a positive impact on mental health. Limitations of the study include the variability of the yoga interventions, which may affect the generalizability of the findings.

Conclusion : Overall, the findings of this meta-analysis support the use of yoga as an effective intervention for improving mental health outcomes. Further research is needed to determine the optimal length and frequency of yoga interventions for different populations.

References :

• Cramer, H., Lauche, R., Langhorst, J., Dobos, G., & Berger, B. (2013). Yoga for depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Depression and anxiety, 30(11), 1068-1083.
• Khalsa, S. B. (2004). Yoga as a therapeutic intervention: a bibliometric analysis of published research studies. Indian journal of physiology and pharmacology, 48(3), 269-285.
• Ross, A., & Thomas, S. (2010). The health benefits of yoga and exercise: a review of comparison studies. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 16(1), 3-12.

Purpose of Research Summary

The purpose of a research summary is to provide a brief overview of a research project or study, including its main points, findings, and conclusions. The summary allows readers to quickly understand the essential aspects of the research without having to read the entire article or study.

Research summaries serve several purposes, including:

• Facilitating comprehension: A research summary allows readers to quickly understand the main points and findings of a research project or study without having to read the entire article or study. This makes it easier for readers to comprehend the research and its significance.
• Communicating research findings: Research summaries are often used to communicate research findings to a wider audience, such as policymakers, practitioners, or the general public. The summary presents the essential aspects of the research in a clear and concise manner, making it easier for non-experts to understand.
• Supporting decision-making: Research summaries can be used to support decision-making processes by providing a summary of the research evidence on a particular topic. This information can be used by policymakers or practitioners to make informed decisions about interventions, programs, or policies.
• Saving time: Research summaries save time for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders who need to review multiple research studies. Rather than having to read the entire article or study, they can quickly review the summary to determine whether the research is relevant to their needs.

Characteristics of Research Summary

The following are some of the key characteristics of a research summary:

• Concise : A research summary should be brief and to the point, providing a clear and concise overview of the main points of the research.
• Objective : A research summary should be written in an objective tone, presenting the research findings without bias or personal opinion.
• Comprehensive : A research summary should cover all the essential aspects of the research, including the research question, methodology, results, and conclusions.
• Accurate : A research summary should accurately reflect the key findings and conclusions of the research.
• Clear and well-organized: A research summary should be easy to read and understand, with a clear structure and logical flow.
• Relevant : A research summary should focus on the most important and relevant aspects of the research, highlighting the key findings and their implications.
• Audience-specific: A research summary should be tailored to the intended audience, using language and terminology that is appropriate and accessible to the reader.
• Citations : A research summary should include citations to the original research articles or studies, allowing readers to access the full text of the research if desired.

When to write Research Summary

Here are some situations when it may be appropriate to write a research summary:

• Proposal stage: A research summary can be included in a research proposal to provide a brief overview of the research aims, objectives, methodology, and expected outcomes.
• Conference presentation: A research summary can be prepared for a conference presentation to summarize the main findings of a study or research project.
• Journal submission: Many academic journals require authors to submit a research summary along with their research article or study. The summary provides a brief overview of the study’s main points, findings, and conclusions and helps readers quickly understand the research.
• Funding application: A research summary can be included in a funding application to provide a brief summary of the research aims, objectives, and expected outcomes.
• Policy brief: A research summary can be prepared as a policy brief to communicate research findings to policymakers or stakeholders in a concise and accessible manner.

Advantages of Research Summary

Research summaries offer several advantages, including:

• Time-saving: A research summary saves time for readers who need to understand the key findings and conclusions of a research project quickly. Rather than reading the entire research article or study, readers can quickly review the summary to determine whether the research is relevant to their needs.
• Clarity and accessibility: A research summary provides a clear and accessible overview of the research project’s main points, making it easier for readers to understand the research without having to be experts in the field.
• Improved comprehension: A research summary helps readers comprehend the research by providing a brief and focused overview of the key findings and conclusions, making it easier to understand the research and its significance.
• Enhanced communication: Research summaries can be used to communicate research findings to a wider audience, such as policymakers, practitioners, or the general public, in a concise and accessible manner.
• Facilitated decision-making: Research summaries can support decision-making processes by providing a summary of the research evidence on a particular topic. Policymakers or practitioners can use this information to make informed decisions about interventions, programs, or policies.
• Increased dissemination: Research summaries can be easily shared and disseminated, allowing research findings to reach a wider audience.

Limitations of Research Summary

Limitations of the Research Summary are as follows:

• Limited scope: Research summaries provide a brief overview of the research project’s main points, findings, and conclusions, which can be limiting. They may not include all the details, nuances, and complexities of the research that readers may need to fully understand the study’s implications.
• Risk of oversimplification: Research summaries can be oversimplified, reducing the complexity of the research and potentially distorting the findings or conclusions.
• Lack of context: Research summaries may not provide sufficient context to fully understand the research findings, such as the research background, methodology, or limitations. This may lead to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of the research.
• Possible bias: Research summaries may be biased if they selectively emphasize certain findings or conclusions over others, potentially distorting the overall picture of the research.
• Format limitations: Research summaries may be constrained by the format or length requirements, making it challenging to fully convey the research’s main points, findings, and conclusions.
• Accessibility: Research summaries may not be accessible to all readers, particularly those with limited literacy skills, visual impairments, or language barriers.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

You may also like

Data Collection – Methods Types and Examples

Delimitations in Research – Types, Examples and...

Research Process – Steps, Examples and Tips

Research Design – Types, Methods and Examples

Institutional Review Board – Application Sample...

Evaluating Research – Process, Examples and...

Resume Worded   |  Career Strategy

Ux researcher resume summary examples.

Approved by hiring managers, here are proven resume summary examples you can use on your UX Researcher resume. Learn what real hiring managers want to see on your resume, and when to use which.

• UX Researcher
• Junior UX Researcher
• Senior UX Researcher
• UX Research Analyst
• UX Research Consultant
• UX Research Lead
• UX Research Specialist
• UX Researcher & Designer
• UX Researcher resume templates
• Similar summary examples

UX Researcher Resume Summary Example

Showcase your initiative.

By highlighting how you "initiated and spearheaded a user-centric design approach," you're showing potential employers you're proactive. It means you don't wait for things to happen, you make them happen. This quality is highly sought-after, especially in fast-paced environments.

Detail specific strategies and results

Stating that you "implemented mixed-method research strategies" isn't just fluff, it tells me you're versatile in your approach. It's even better when you can tie these strategies to quantifiable results like reducing product development time.

Highlight collaboration with diverse teams

UX research is rarely done in isolation. By stating your experience working with cross-functional teams, you demonstrate your ability to collaborate, communicate, and ensure the user's voice is heard among diverse stakeholders.

Junior UX Researcher Resume Summary Example

Leverage academic achievements.

As a recent graduate, you've used your capstone project to demonstrate real-world application of your skills, which is a fantastic way to bridge the gap between academic theory and practical experience.

Show proficiency in research methodologies

UX research relies heavily on qualitative and quantitative methods, so indicating your competence in both shows you're equipped to tackle diverse research challenges.

Highlight experience in agile environments

Agile development teams require quick thinking and adaptability. By stating your experience in this setting, you're showing potential employers that you can keep pace with rapid development cycles.

Your resume is your first impression to potential employers. Make sure it's a good one with our resume optimization tool. Get an instant score and find out exactly what you need to change to increase your chances of getting hired.

Senior UX Researcher Resume Summary Example

Demonstrate leadership in established corporations.

Leading UX research initiatives for a major company tells me you can handle the pressure of high-stakes environments and have a track record of success. Pointing out a tangible improvement like increased customer satisfaction is a smart move.

Show your expertise in utilizing data

UX research is all about data, so mentioning your proficiency in using behavioral data and user testing methodologies is key. It shows you can turn raw data into actionable insights.

Mention your ability to mentor and foster collaboration

Mentioning that you've mentored junior researchers not only highlights your leadership skills, but also your commitment to fostering a collaborative work environment, which is crucial in a UX team.

UX Research Analyst Resume Summary Example

Transitioning relevant skills.

Switching roles can seem daunting, but you've turned it into an advantage by bringing a data-driven skillset to UX research. This shows you're adaptable and able to apply your abilities across multiple domains. It also implicitly assures recruiters that you're quick to pick up new knowledge and skills, which is prized in the ever-evolving tech industry.

Implementing impactful solutions

You've not only implemented a user analytics system, but you've also quantified the significant improvement it brought in understanding user behavior. This showcases problem-solving skills and the ability to translate your actions into tangible benefits for the company, which can be a compelling narrative for potential employers.

Presenting complex data clearly

Being able to present complex data in a comprehensible way is a crucial skill in UX research. It shows that you can act as a bridge between the technical and non-technical teams, facilitating better understanding and cooperation. This skill is particularly valuable when working with stakeholders who might not be as data-savvy.

UX Research Consultant Resume Summary Example

Freelancing for tech startups.

Working as a freelance consultant for various tech startups shows you're adaptable and capable of handling different projects and company cultures. The consistent improvement in user engagement rates is a testament to your effectiveness. This tells recruiters that you're versatile and results-driven.

Expertise in UX methodologies

Highlighting your expertise in remote user testing and heuristic evaluation methodologies illustrates your specialised skills. This can reassure recruiters that you're well-versed in the tools and techniques necessary for conducting effective UX research.

Remote research and project management

It's one thing to conduct research, but doing so remotely and seeing a project through from start to finish shows a whole other set of skills. This implies that you're self-motivated, organised, and capable of managing tasks with less supervision, all of which are highly sought-after traits in a remote work environment.

UX Research Lead Resume Summary Example

Demonstrate leadership in a specific industry.

When you say you've led UX research in a leading e-commerce company, you're not just showing your leadership skills, but also your expertise in a specific industry, which can be attractive to potential employers.

Highlight proficiency in customer journey mapping and persona development

These are essential parts of UX research, so demonstrating your proficiency in these areas shows that you understand the user experience from all angles.

Showcase global team management

Managing a global team requires a whole new level of communication and cultural understanding. This experience shows that you're capable of leading diverse teams, which is highly valuable in today's globalized workplace.

UX Research Specialist Resume Summary Example

Highlight pioneering role.

Setting up a UX research department is a massive undertaking that requires initiative, leadership, and strategic thinking. Highlighting this achievement sets you apart as a trailblazer in your field.

Demonstrate expertise in specific research methods

By stating your proficiency in ethnographic research and contextual inquiry, you're showing that you're not just a generalist - you have specific methodologies in your toolkit, which can be a major asset.

Showcase project management skills

Managing multiple research projects simultaneously is no easy task. Highlighting this skill shows you're organized, reliable, and can handle a high workload.

UX Researcher & Designer Resume Summary Example

Outline career transition and its benefits.

Stating your transition from graphic design to UX research and design demonstrates your adaptability and willingness to learn new skills. Plus, it tells me you approach UX research with a unique perspective.

Show your impact on the design process

Designing and implementing a user testing system that reduced design iteration cycles shows you can directly contribute to making a team more efficient - a clear win for potential employers.

Highlight industry versatility

Experience in various industries can be a major strength, showing you're adaptable and can perform UX research in different contexts, from tech to healthcare and finance.

UX Researcher Resume Templates

Market researcher.

Design Resume Summary Examples

• > Architect / Architecture Summary Examples
• > Game Design Summary Examples
• > Graphic Designer Summary Examples
• > Interior Designer Summary Examples
• > Production Assistant Summary Examples
• > UX Designer (User Experience Designer) Summary Examples

Design Resume Objective Examples

• > Architect / Architecture Objective Examples
• > Game Design Objective Examples
• > Graphic Designer Objective Examples
• > Interior Designer Objective Examples
• > Production Assistant Objective Examples
• > UX Designer (User Experience Designer) Objective Examples

Design Resume Guides

• > Architect / Architecture Resume Guides
• > Game Design Resume Guides
• > Graphic Designer Resume Guides
• > Interior Designer Resume Guides
• > Production Assistant Resume Guides
• > UX Designer (User Experience Designer) Resume Guides

Thank you for the checklist! I realized I was making so many mistakes on my resume that I've now fixed. I'm much more confident in my resume now.