Some logistical headaches are inevitable. Many can be relieved with a well-structured, well-written, research plan. Heres a go-to reference for crafting one effectively. Words by Nikki Anderson-Stanier, Visuals by Alisa Harvey
When we think about what we love about our work—what excites us, what inspires us, what triggers the next big “a-ha” moment—we rarely think about processes or documentation.
But when we think about what frustrates us about our work—”next steps” that get delayed, projects that feel unfocused, little logistics that hold up our plans—we often blame processes and documentation.
Even if you don’t consistently reference a research plan, it can help ensure your next project goes more smoothly.
This walk-through will teach you how to write a plan in 15 minutes that’ll save you hours of work down the road.
Get our time-saving research plan templates (with a sample plan, and handy walkthrough) for free here.
What do you mean by user research plan? And why do I need one? A user research plan is a concise reference point for your project’s timeline, goals, main players, and objectives. It’s not always used extensively after the project has started. But sometimes youll use it to remind stakeholders of a project’s purpose, or explain certain logistical decisions (like why certain types of participants were recruited).
Overall, research plans offer an overview about the initiative taking place and serve as a kick-off document for a project. Their beauty lies in their capacity to keep your team on track, to ensure overarching goals are well-defined and agreed upon, and to guarantee those goals are met by the research.
Research plans keep the entire team focused on an outcome and provide an easy reference to keep “need-to-know” stakeholders in the know. They prevent everyone from getting bogged down in the details and from switching the goal of the research in the middle by mistake.
Most importantly, they allow researchers—or whoever is doing the research—to ensure the objectives of the research plan will be answered in the most effective and efficient way possible by the end of the project. We want to make sure we are actually answering the questions we set out to uncover, and research plans enable us to do so.
Imagine you’re working as a researcher at an online food ordering service that allows you to order takeaway delivered to your door from restaurants in your area.
One day, a project lands on your desk. A product manager wants to know how to get people to order takeaway more frequently.
After some back and forth, you get a handle on what the product team is hoping to learn. Their goal is to increase retention rates and user satisfaction. They want to know: Why do customers not order more frequently? And how do customers decide what they want to order?
The team wants to have a better overall understanding of the drivers for customer loyalty, and the pain points that prevent customers from becoming loyal to the platform.
With the project in hand, you’re ready to sit down and write a plan. Then you can share the first draft with the product team to ensure you’re interpreting their aims correctly.
The background section is pretty straightforward. It consists of a few sentences on what the research is about and why it is happening, which orients people to needs and expectations. The background also includes a problem statement (the central question you’re trying to answer with the research findings).
We want to understand the reasons behind why certain customers are reordering at a higher frequency, as well as the barriers encountered by customers that prevent them from reordering on the platform (problem statement).
We will be using generative research techniques to explore the journey users take—both inside and outside of our platform, when they decide to order takeaway—in order to better understand the challenges and needs they face in these circumstances.
Objectives are one of the hardest parts of the research plan to write. They’re the specific ideas you want to learn more about during the research and the questions you want to be answered. Essentially, the objectives drive the entire project. So, how do you write them effectively?
First, start with the central problem statement: to understand the reasons behind why certain customers are reordering at a higher frequency, as well as the barriers encountered by customers that prevent them from reordering on the platform.
Our research objectives should address what we want to learn and how we are going to study the problem statement.
A well-crafted research plan is essential for guiding your research project towards success. Whether conducting academic studies or market research for business, having a thoughtful plan sets you up to generate meaningful insights and conclusions
This step-by-step guide will teach you how to write a clear, actionable research plan to keep your project on track.
Define the Core Research Problem
Start by clearly defining the fundamental problem your research aims to address Concisely explain
- What gap in understanding or need for knowledge exists?
- Who is affected by this problem?
- Why is it important to address?
For example, a research problem could be: “Childhood obesity has tripled over the past 30 years. This epidemic needs to be better understood so preventative health programs can be improved.”
Articulating the research problem provides focus and frames the significance of your study. It’s the catalyst for the entire endeavor.
Identify the Research Goals and Objectives
Once the research problem is established, specify your goals and objectives.
The goals are the overarching achievements you hope to accomplish. Common examples are:
- Discover new information about a topic
- Prove or disprove a hypothesis
- Develop solutions to an existing problem
Objectives are the specific aims you will complete to reach the larger goals. For instance:
- Conduct surveys gathering input from 500 patients
- Interview 25 doctors working in related healthcare fields
- Analyze trends in childhood obesity rates across 10 years of CDC data
Well-defined goals and objectives keep the project sharply focused on outcomes that address the research problem. They also establish clear milestones for measuring progress.
Choose the Research Methods
Your objectives point to the specific research methods you’ll use to conduct the study. Outline the techniques you’ll leverage to gather and analyze data.
Common qualitative methods include:
- One-on-one interviews asking open-ended questions
- Focus groups for group discussions
- Observation gathering descriptive field notes
- Case studies examining individuals or events in-depth
Quantitative methods often entail:
- Surveys with closed-ended questions
- Experiments manipulating variables under controlled conditions
- Systematic statistical analysis of numerical datasets
Choose methods that allow you to best answer your research questions with credible, relevant data. Be specific on tools and analytical approaches.
Recruit Research Participants
If your methods involve surveys, interviews, focus groups or other direct interactions with people, outline your participant recruitment plan.
Define:
- How many participants you aim to include
- Their key demographic qualifications (e.g. age, gender, location)
- How you will find and screen qualified participants
- Incentives you’ll provide in exchange for their time
Thoughtful recruiting is essential for getting enough participants with characteristics critical to your research goals. Take care to recruit ethically and avoid sampling bias.
Craft an Informative Research Summary
After defining the core elements above, draft a short summary clearly explaining:
- The research problem and goals
- Specific objectives
- Methods for collecting and analyzing data
- Participant recruitment plan
- Anticipated timeline
This high-level summary gives interested parties a quick understanding of the scope before they dive into the details. It’s a valuable part of your research proposal or application.
Build a Detailed Timeline
With goals identified, flesh out a realistic timeline for each phase. Typical steps include:
- Background reading – 2 weeks
- Research method design – 3 weeks
- Participant recruitment – 3 weeks
- Data collection – 5 weeks
- Data analysis – 4 weeks
- Conclusions, results and recommendations – 3 weeks
Schedule time for delays, revisions and unexpected roadblocks. Finishing late can decrease the value of your findings, so leave ample margins.
Tools like GANTT charts help visualize key milestones over the project timeline. Reviewing your timeline often keeps momentum going.
Plan Your Findings Report
It’s never too early to start planning how you’ll share eventual findings. Will you produce a detailed final paper? Present results at a conference? Write an executive summary for sponsors?
Define expected report elements such as:
- Statistical charts and graphs
- Highlights of major discoveries
- Recommendations based on conclusions
- Appendices with raw data or research artifacts
Consider your target audiences and tailor report formats to optimize value for each. How you share discoveries is part of the process.
Write Concisely to Showcase Expertise
Keep language clear, specific and concise throughout your research plan. Avoid excessive jargon that could confuse readers. Show you thoroughly understand the methodology at hand vs. relying on generic descriptions.
A well-written plan quickly establishes you as an expert. It instills confidence in your ability to conduct rigorous research that adds meaningful insights. Sloppy plans raise doubts.
Refine drafts until the plan encapsulates your research aims as succinctly as possible. Precision demonstrates you are ready to skillfully execute.
Emphasize Significance to Secure Support
Take every opportunity to emphasize why your research matters. Explain how it addresses important gaps or problems. Outline the practical applications of expected insights.
Funders won’t invest precious resources without believing useful knowledge will result. Help them visualize the positive impacts on organizations, communities or society at large.
Depending on the project scope, you may need to submit proposals to boards for formal approval. Convince them of merits through articulate planning.
Adjust Expectations as Needed
Research rarely goes exactly according to the initial plan. As work progresses, adjust timelines, methods and goals as needed while keeping the core aims intact.
For example, you may need to revise recruiting criteria to increase participation. Or new discoveries mid-project might lead to adding interviews for richer data.
View your plan as a guiding framework rather than unbreakable contract. Stay nimble and adaptable, but don’t lose sight of the end goalposts.
Maintain Momentum With Project Management
Throughout execution, diligently track progress against your plan. Tools like Asana, Trello and Excel help you:
- Manage timelines with reminders for upcoming milestones
- Update stakeholders on project status
- Prioritize next actions and mark items complete
- Identify any roadblocks or resource gaps
Think of your plan as a working document. Referring to it often drives momentum and keeps efforts aligned.
Celebrate Hitting Major Milestones
Research requires intense focus and persistence. But don’t forget to celebrate progress along the way.
Take time to recognize when you complete:
- Secondary objectives like finishing initial interviews
- Primary goals like collecting all survey data
- The final report compiling all insights
Acknowledging wins motivates you through slogs. Share updates with colleagues and sponsors to maintain engagement.
Careful planning sets you up to generate research that provides true value. Avoid underplanning and risk wasting significant time. Overplanning wastes energy better directed elsewhere.
Finding the right balance takes practice across projects. Use this guide to build rigorous plans that steer impactful research delivering meaningful results.
Interested in more articles like this?
Nikki Anderson-Stanier is the founder of User Research Academy and a qualitative researcher with 9 years in the field. She loves solving human problems and petting all the dogs.
Bad versus better objectives:
Here are some additional examples I have generated in order to exemplify good versus bad objectives.
Bad: Understand why participants order food.
Better: Understand the end-to-end journey of how and why participants choose to order food online.
Why: “Understand why participants order food” is still too broad. It feels more like a problem statement that you’d want to break down into further objectives. You haven’t set a direction or boundaries.
Bad: Find out how to get participants to order food online.
Better: Uncover participants’ thought processes and prior experiences behind ordering food online.
Why: Trying to learn how to make someone do something is a challenging perspective with which to go into research. How would we ask good questions to get that information?
We are more interested in seeing what their thought process is behind the process, and if/why they have done so in the past. That’s a better foundation to build from.
Bad: Find out why people use Postmates to order food.
Better: Discover the different tools participants use when deciding to order food, and how they feel about each tool
Why: This could be helpful if Postmates is a tool your users frequently use instead of your platform, and you’re setting out to do a competitive analysis.
However, in this case, we’re doing generative research—defined by the product team’s needs and the plan’s background statement.
So in this case, it’s more useful to rely on the research to uncover what kinds of other tools are used. Otherwise, you’re hyper-focused and might miss other opportunities to explore.
Now that we’ve defined our problem statements and objectives, it’s time to define the type of participants we’ll rely on to get the insights we need.
One of the most important elements to any project is talking to the right people. If you don’t have a set vision for who you want to recruit, approximate your user, and include that approximation in your plan.
This will help optimize recruiting efforts to ensure you have the best participants you need for your study. Here are a few ways to approach this:
Bring in internal stakeholders that may have a good idea of what the target user will look like (such as marketing, sales, and customer support). With these stakeholders you can create hypotheses about who your users are, which is a great starting point for who you should be talking to.
Recruit based on their audiences. You can even recruit people who use the competitors product and, during the interview, ask them how they would make it better.
This will get you the participants you need.
- Is there a particular behavior you are looking for (such as ordered takeout X# amount of times in the past three months)?
- Is it necessary they have used your product (or a competitor’s product)?
- Do they need to be a certain age or hold a certain professional title?
Make sure you include the right criteria in order to evaluate whether or not that person would be your target participant.
It’s often useful to attach your screener questions to this part of the plan.
Compared to the others, this step is fairly easy. In this section, talk briefly about the chosen methodology and the reasons behind why that particular method was chosen.
Example methodology
For this study, we’re using one-on-one generative research interviews. This method will enable us to dig deeper into understanding our customers, fostering a strong sense of empathy and enabling us to answer our objectives.
If you’ll be talking to your users in real time, an interview guide is a valuable cheat sheet. It reminds you of which questions will help you meet your objectives, and can keep your discussions on track.
If you’re doing longitudinal or unmoderated research—like unmoderated usability testing, or a diary study—your interview guide might include the exact prompts or triggers you’ll be sending your participants to complete.
Even if you don’t actively refer to your interview guide, writing one ensures everyone else on the team has a place to input their questions. And if you’re outlining questions or prompts for unmoderated research, making those questions public for reference gives your team a chance to alert you if something is unclear.
For moderated research, my interview guides consist of the following sections:
The introduction details what you will say to the participant before the session begins, and serves as a nice preview of all the different points you’ll be discussing. It’s especially helpful if you are nervous about going into a session.
Example introduction
Hi there, I’m Nikki, a user researcher at a takeaway delivery company. Thank you so much for talking with me today. I am really excited to have a conversation with you!
During this session, we are looking to better understand what makes you order food from our service. Imagine were filming a small documentary on you, and are really trying to understand all your thoughts. There are no right or wrong answers, so please just talk freely, and I promise we will find it fascinating.
This session should take about 60 minutes. If you feel uncomfortable at any time or need to stop/take a break, just let me know. Everything you say here today will be completely confidential.
Would it be okay if we recorded today’s session for internal notetaking purposes? Do you have any questions for me? Let’s get started!
This portion of the interview guide is the trickiest to write. In this section, we’re writing down some of the open-ended questions we want to ask users during the session.
For most types of qual research, you won’t always have a long list of detailed questions, since it’s more of a conversation than an interview. But readying a few open-ended questions you can then follow up on can serve as useful prep.
Pro tip: Questions to avoid in your interviews and interview guides
- Priming users – Forces the user to answer in a particular way
- Leading questions – May prohibit the user from exploring a different avenue
- Asking about future behavior – Instead of focusing on the past/present
- Double-barreled questions – Asking two questions in one sentence
- Yes/no questions – Ends the conversation. Instead, we focus on open-ended questions
Examples of priming/leading questions:
- Priming: “How much do you like being able to order takeaway online?”
- Leading: “Could you show me how you would reorder the same order by clicking on the button?”
I always outline my interview guide questions with the TEDW approach. TEDW stands for the following structures:
- “Tell me…”
- “Explain….”
- “Describe….”
- “Walk me through….”
Beyond that, one cool trick for question generation is to use your research objectives. Your questions should be able to give you insights that answer your objectives.
So when you ask a participant a question, it is ultimately answering one of the objectives. Turn each objective into 3–5 questions.
So, let’s take our central research problem and objectives and form some research questions.
Central research problem: To understand the reasons behind why certain customers are reordering at a higher frequency, as well as the barriers encountered by customers that prevent them from reordering on the platform.
Objectives
- Discover users’ motivations behind reordering, both inside and outside of the website/app
- Uncover other websites/apps customers are using to order takeaway
- Learn about any pain points users are encountering during their process, and what improvements they might make
Research questions
Objective 1: Discover users’ motivations behind reordering, both inside and outside of the website/app
- Think about the last time you ordered takeaway on our website/app. Walk me through the entire process, starting with what sparked the idea.
- Explain how you made the decision to reorder food on our particular website/app.
- Describe why you decided to reorder takeaway rather than cooking your own dinner and/or going out to eat.
- Who were you talking to?
- What time of day was it?
- How were you feeling?
- Did you have other websites/apps open?
Objective 2: Learn about any pain points users are encountering during their process, and what improvements they might make.
- Describe the last time you struggled with reordering food, what was that like?
- How did you solve the problem?
- What would be the most ideal scenario for reordering takeaway from the website/app (crazy ideas included!)?
- How would you change or improve the process of reordering food outside of our website/app? Inside our website/app?
Objective 3: Uncover other websites/apps customers are using to order takeaway.
- Talk me through the other websites/apps you have used multiple to order takeaway (or even groceries).
- Describe your experience with these other websites/apps.
- What are the other websites/apps you use to help you make a decision about whether or not to order takeaway?
Each of these research questions is a jumping off point for a more open conversation. They get at the core of your objectives, which in turn gets to the core of the central problem you’re trying to solve.
The wrap-up is a reminder of all the items to mention during the end of an interview. Generally, you cover information such as compensation, asking if they would be interested in future research, and assuring them that you’re thankful for their time.
Example wrap up
Those are all the questions I have for you today. I really appreciate you taking the time. Your feedback was extremely helpful, and I am excited to share it with the team to see how we can improve.
Since your feedback was so useful, would you be willing to participate in another research session in the future? You have my direct email, so if you have any problems with the compensation or any questions or feedback in the future, please feel free to email me at any time.
Do you have any other questions for me? Again, thank you so much for your time and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day!
I place an approximate timeline in my research plans, so people know what to expect for start and end dates.
Some researchers stay away from this timeline, as it can solidify a deadline that may prove more difficult to meet than expected. I always stress that it is a basic approximation.
Example timeline
- Research start date: Monday, August 5th
- Research plan creation and review: Wednesday, August 7th
- Recruitment begins: Thursday, August 8th
- Interviewing begins: Thursday, August 15th
- Interviewing ends: Friday, August 23rd
- Synthesis begins: Monday, August 26th
- Synthesis ends: Wednesday, August 28th
- Report presentation: Friday, August 30th
In this section, I make sure it’s easy for everyone to find:
- Links to the research sessions
- Any synthesis documents
- Notes
- The presentation
- Any development/design tickets, prototypes or concepts
- Any follow-up information which would give context to the study
Your user research plan is your research project in miniature. It’s the simplest way to align expectations, solicit feedback, and generate enthusiasm and support for your study.
Whether it actively guides your interviews, or just provides an active structure for organizing your thoughts, a solid research plan can go a long way towards guaranteeing a solid research project.
How to Write a Successful Research Proposal | Scribbr
What is a research plan?
A research plan is a documented overview of a project in its entirety, from end to end. It details the research efforts, participants, and methods needed, along with any anticipated results. It also outlines the project’s goals and mission, creating layers of steps to achieve those goals within a specified timeline.
How do I create a research plan for my project?
The first step to creating a research plan for your project is to define why and what you’re researching. Regardless of whether you’re working with a team or alone, understanding the project’s purpose can help you better define project goals.
How to write a research proposal?
A research proposal adheres to a clear and logical structure that ensures your project’s effectiveness. In the research plan structure, consider organizing its core components as in the following outline. Often referred to as the ‘need for study’ or ‘abstract,’ the introduction serves as the initial platform for your idea.
What makes a good research plan?
There’s general research planning; then there’s an official, well-executed research plan. Whatever data-driven research project you’re gearing up for, the research plan will be your framework for execution. The plan should also be detailed and thorough, with a diligent set of criteria to formulate your research efforts.
