“How do I turn all my ministry’s raw data into something usable? How do I organize and store it? Do I need to be able to refer back to it once my user research is complete?”
We’re going to answer these questions and more. But we have two caveats:
- We’re going to assume you already understand and believe user research is important. It is.
- We’re not going to talk about how to conduct user research; that’s another topic for another blog post.
We begin every client project with a strategy process that involves discovery, user research, and other information-generating exercises. That might include persona development, user interviews, or a variety of other tools that help us—and you—learn more about your organization’s users.
As the field of user research has grown, many organizations find themselves conducting this type of research without a clear plan for what they should do with all the data they gather. Don’t let essential insights about your ministry go to waste. Read on for strategies to prepare for user research and leverage the data effectively afterward.
How to Prepare for User Research
As with anything in life, preparation can save you time and prevent headaches down the road. (Chefs refer to this as “mise en place” or “everything in its place”).
There are steps you should take before you conduct your first interview or send your first survey to your ministry’s constituents:
Know Why You’re Doing User Research
“Getting to know your users” might seem like a good reason to conduct user research. But it’s important to drill down to figure out what you’re really hoping to find out.
- Why do you need to get to know your users?
- Is it to help you refine the vision and mission of your organization?
- To identify ways you could be better serving them?
- To understand what they’re looking for from your app or website?
Drilling down this way provides concrete goals for your user research. That’s important. It will also guide the type of data you’re collecting as well as how you organize and store it.
Decide What Data You’re Collecting
Which brings us to the next step. There are dozens of things you might want to know about your users. Identifying the main purpose of your research helps you decide which data is most important—and which data is not important—in helping you answer that question.
- Are you looking for demographic data to inform future brainstorming?
- Do you want to understand how users interact with your current website or app?
- Are you considering a new project and need to better understand your users’ needs?
Understand the Legal Implications of Collecting, Sharing, and Storing Data
Just as the law requires websites and apps to have a public privacy policy for users to review, the data you’re collecting, sharing, and storing also has legal implications. You should always have informed consent before you begin a research session.
For example, you should ask permission before recording a video, whether it’s a user interview or a screen capture. You should give participants a clear idea of what data is being collected and how it is stored and/or shared. And if you promise anonymity, you must ensure the data is truly anonymized.
Have a Plan for How You Will Organize and Store Gathered Data
Once you know what data you will be collecting, it’s time to decide how you’ll organize that data. We’ll talk more about user research repositories later. But start thinking about what makes the most sense for organizing this data now.
- Do you need a folder of interview recordings and transcripts?
- A spreadsheet containing the data collected?
- Screen recordings or scanned post-it notes?
By default, you might be tempted to save everything just in case someone wants to reference it in the future. And it’s okay to keep the raw data in an archive. Additionally, curating the data will make it more accessible and useful so people on your team not only can access it but actually will use it.
How to Work with Data as You’re Conducting User Research
One of the biggest roadblocks to organizing your user research is waiting until the research is complete to try to organize it. Not only can that be overwhelming, but you’re also likely to forget details that provide important context for the data, decreasing its usefulness. Try these tips to keep your ministry’s data clean from the get-go:
Organize Data as You Go
You also want to record any important details that may not show up in the raw data. If you’re conducting user interviews, for example, make notes about your impressions of the conversation immediately after it ends. Have the conversation transcribed and review the transcript for anything that needs clarification in its written format. You might even include notes about any updates you have recently made to your app or what’s happening in the broader world at the time you’re conducting the research, since those things can also impact how people respond.
Analyze the Data
Similarly, don’t wait until you have 1,000 user sessions recorded before you begin analyzing the data. Instead, look for patterns early. Note the things that stand out and what that means for your ministry along the way. You’ll have time to refine these insights later— before presenting them to the rest of your organization—but analyzing early and often ensures you don’t miss key insights due to the amount of data you need to wade through or the time that has passed.
Identify Key Insights from Your User Research
While this may seem obvious, make sure your research plan includes the time you need to identify and summarize key insights from your research before filing it away. It’s easy to consider the research complete as soon as the last interview or session is finished, especially if you’ve been analyzing the data throughout the process. But don’t skip this step, even if you aren’t preparing a formal report for anyone else.
- What have you learned about your users’ needs?
- What actions can you take based on these insights?
- What actions should you take considering the impact and time required?
Communicate the Findings
Finally, when communicating your findings with other team members or stakeholders, look for ways to make the data digestible. Rather than giving them the raw data and expecting them to wade through it as analysts, highlight trends, key insights, and your recommendations. Add screenshots or other visuals and, where appropriate, incorporate quotes or video clips to highlight your users’ own words.
What to Do with Your Data after User Research is Complete
Okay, you’ve completed your research, compiled your data, and presented your findings to stakeholders in your organization. Here’s what you should do with all of your ministry’s research:
Label Your Files for Future Accessibility
Label everything—whether it’s raw data or your final presentation—with dates, names (unless it’s anonymous, of course), and any other relevant information, such as the type of research, the research question, or whether action was taken. Follow the same naming conventions across all of your research to make it easier to refer back to in the future.
Set an Expiration Date for the Data
You don’t need to keep data indefinitely. Keeping all of your data means more for someone to wade through when looking for relevant information. It can also contribute to poor decision making in the future based on out-of-date research.
Instead, decide how long you’ll keep raw data. Then, clearly mark your summaries and presentations with the date the research was completed (and even an expiration date).
Make a Plan for Proper Data Disposal
Digital data is a lot easier to dispose of than physical data. However, simply dragging it to a “Trash” folder may or may not be enough. This is especially true if you have not anonymized the data, in which case you’ll want to be sure it’s been permanently deleted from both the cloud and any local environments.
It’s worth pointing out that this is a lot easier to do if you’ve followed the best practices above—organizing and labeling your data in ways that makes it easy to see what is what and how long ago it was collected.
Tools for Organizing and Storing Your User Research
Okay, we’ve convinced you that you need a plan for organizing and storing your data. But practically, what does that look like? There are many solutions to choose from. A lot will depend on the specific type of research you’re doing, how often you’re doing research, and how members of your team will be using the data. But let’s look at three general options:
Cloud Storage
Using a generic service such as Google Drive or Dropbox might be enough, especially if your team is already using these services as part of your tech stack. However, these tools require you to have a bit more organizational skill in order to create a system from scratch.
Advanced Organizational Apps
More advanced solutions such as Coda and Airtable take this cloud-based storage a step further. They provide customizable spreadsheets, documents, and databases that allow teams to collaborate, utilize, and store their data.
User Research Repositories
Finally, for an organization that is doing research on a regular basis, there are user research repositories such as Aurelius and Dovetail. These have been created with user research in mind. However, the cost of investing in these tools might not make sense if user research is an occasional part of your process, to be completed and then set aside until the next big project. But if you’re researching new features, running surveys, and conducting user interviews regularly, these tools might be worth the investment.
Get the Most from Your Ministry’s User Research
We all agree user research is important. But it’s not enough to just throw out a survey or conduct a couple of interviews. Instead, you need to plan ahead for how you’ll collect, organize, analyze, share, store, and dispose of that data. Otherwise, you’ll be missing opportunities to fully benefit from the research.