develop a research plan example

How to write a research plan: Step-by-step guide

Last updated

30 January 2024

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Today’s businesses and institutions rely on data and analytics to inform their product and service decisions. These metrics influence how organizations stay competitive and inspire innovation. However, gathering data and insights requires carefully constructed research, and every research project needs a roadmap. This is where a research plan comes into play.

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. Not including these key elements in your plan can be just as harmful as having no plan at all.

Read this step-by-step guide for writing a detailed research plan that can apply to any project, whether it’s scientific, educational, or business-related.

• 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.

Without a research plan, you and your team are flying blind, potentially wasting time and resources to pursue research without structured guidance.

The principal investigator, or PI, is responsible for facilitating the research oversight. They will create the research plan and inform team members and stakeholders of every detail relating to the project. The PI will also use the research plan to inform decision-making throughout the project.

• Why do you need a research plan?

Create a research plan before starting any official research to maximize every effort in pursuing and collecting the research data. Crucially, the plan will model the activities needed at each phase of the research project.

Like any roadmap, a research plan serves as a valuable tool providing direction for those involved in the project—both internally and externally. It will keep you and your immediate team organized and task-focused while also providing necessary definitions and timelines so you can execute your project initiatives with full understanding and transparency.

External stakeholders appreciate a working research plan because it’s a great communication tool, documenting progress and changing dynamics as they arise. Any participants of your planned research sessions will be informed about the purpose of your study, while the exercises will be based on the key messaging outlined in the official plan.

Here are some of the benefits of creating a research plan document for every project:

Project organization and structure

Well-informed participants

All stakeholders and teams align in support of the project

Clearly defined project definitions and purposes

Distractions are eliminated, prioritizing task focus

Timely management of individual task schedules and roles

Costly reworks are avoided

• What should a research plan include?

The different aspects of your research plan will depend on the nature of the project. However, most official research plan documents will include the core elements below. Each aims to define the problem statement, devising an official plan for seeking a solution.

Specific project goals and individual objectives

Ideal strategies or methods for reaching those goals

Required resources

Descriptions of the target audience, sample sizes, demographics, and scopes

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Project background

Research and testing support

Preliminary studies and progress reporting mechanisms

Cost estimates and change order processes

Depending on the research project’s size and scope, your research plan could be brief—perhaps only a few pages of documented plans. Alternatively, it could be a fully comprehensive report. Either way, it’s an essential first step in dictating your project’s facilitation in the most efficient and effective way.

• How to write a research plan for your project

When you start writing your research plan, aim to be detailed about each step, requirement, and idea. The more time you spend curating your research plan, the more precise your research execution efforts will be.

Account for every potential scenario, and be sure to address each and every aspect of the research.

Consider following this flow to develop a great research plan for your project:

Define your project’s purpose

Start by defining your project’s purpose. Identify what your project aims to accomplish and what you are researching. Remember to use clear language.

Thinking about the project’s purpose will help you set realistic goals and inform how you divide tasks and assign responsibilities. These individual tasks will be your stepping stones to reach your overarching goal.

Additionally, you’ll want to identify the specific problem, the usability metrics needed, and the intended solutions.

Know the following three things about your project’s purpose before you outline anything else:

What you’re doing

Why you’re doing it

What you expect from it

Identify individual objectives

With your overarching project objectives in place, you can identify any individual goals or steps needed to reach those objectives. Break them down into phases or steps. You can work backward from the project goal and identify every process required to facilitate it.

Be mindful to identify each unique task so that you can assign responsibilities to various team members. At this point in your research plan development, you’ll also want to assign priority to those smaller, more manageable steps and phases that require more immediate or dedicated attention.

Select research methods

Research methods might include any of the following:

User interviews: this is a qualitative research method where researchers engage with participants in one-on-one or group conversations. The aim is to gather insights into their experiences, preferences, and opinions to uncover patterns, trends, and data.

Field studies: this approach allows for a contextual understanding of behaviors, interactions, and processes in real-world settings. It involves the researcher immersing themselves in the field, conducting observations, interviews, or experiments to gather in-depth insights.

Card sorting: participants categorize information by sorting content cards into groups based on their perceived similarities. You might use this process to gain insights into participants’ mental models and preferences when navigating or organizing information on websites, apps, or other systems.

Focus groups: use organized discussions among select groups of participants to provide relevant views and experiences about a particular topic.

Diary studies: ask participants to record their experiences, thoughts, and activities in a diary over a specified period. This method provides a deeper understanding of user experiences, uncovers patterns, and identifies areas for improvement.

Five-second testing: participants are shown a design, such as a web page or interface, for just five seconds. They then answer questions about their initial impressions and recall, allowing you to evaluate the design’s effectiveness.

Surveys: get feedback from participant groups with structured surveys. You can use online forms, telephone interviews, or paper questionnaires to reveal trends, patterns, and correlations.

Tree testing: tree testing involves researching web assets through the lens of findability and navigability. Participants are given a textual representation of the site’s hierarchy (the “tree”) and asked to locate specific information or complete tasks by selecting paths.

Usability testing: ask participants to interact with a product, website, or application to evaluate its ease of use. This method enables you to uncover areas for improvement in digital key feature functionality by observing participants using the product.

Live website testing: research and collect analytics that outlines the design, usability, and performance efficiencies of a website in real time.

There are no limits to the number of research methods you could use within your project. Just make sure your research methods help you determine the following:

What do you plan to do with the research findings?

What decisions will this research inform? How can your stakeholders leverage the research data and results?

Recruit participants and allocate tasks

Next, identify the participants needed to complete the research and the resources required to complete the tasks. Different people will be proficient at different tasks, and having a task allocation plan will allow everything to run smoothly.

Prepare a thorough project summary

Every well-designed research plan will feature a project summary. This official summary will guide your research alongside its communications or messaging. You’ll use the summary while recruiting participants and during stakeholder meetings. It can also be useful when conducting field studies.

Ensure this summary includes all the elements of your research project. Separate the steps into an easily explainable piece of text that includes the following:

An introduction: the message you’ll deliver to participants about the interview, pre-planned questioning, and testing tasks.

Interview questions: prepare questions you intend to ask participants as part of your research study, guiding the sessions from start to finish.

An exit message: draft messaging your teams will use to conclude testing or survey sessions. These should include the next steps and express gratitude for the participant’s time.

Create a realistic timeline

While your project might already have a deadline or a results timeline in place, you’ll need to consider the time needed to execute it effectively.

Realistically outline the time needed to properly execute each supporting phase of research and implementation. And, as you evaluate the necessary schedules, be sure to include additional time for achieving each milestone in case any changes or unexpected delays arise.

For this part of your research plan, you might find it helpful to create visuals to ensure your research team and stakeholders fully understand the information.

Determine how to present your results

A research plan must also describe how you intend to present your results. Depending on the nature of your project and its goals, you might dedicate one team member (the PI) or assume responsibility for communicating the findings yourself.

In this part of the research plan, you’ll articulate how you’ll share the results. Detail any materials you’ll use, such as:

Presentations and slides

A project report booklet

A project findings pamphlet

Documents with key takeaways and statistics

Graphic visuals to support your findings

• Format your research plan

As you create your research plan, you can enjoy a little creative freedom. A plan can assume many forms, so format it how you see fit. Determine the best layout based on your specific project, intended communications, and the preferences of your teams and stakeholders.

Find format inspiration among the following layouts:

Written outlines

Narrative storytelling

Visual mapping

Graphic timelines

Remember, the research plan format you choose will be subject to change and adaptation as your research and findings unfold. However, your final format should ideally outline questions, problems, opportunities, and expectations.

• Research plan example

Imagine you’ve been tasked with finding out how to get more customers to order takeout from an online food delivery platform. The goal is to improve satisfaction and retain existing customers. You set out to discover why more people aren’t ordering and what it is they do want to order or experience. 

You identify the need for a research project that helps you understand what drives customer loyalty. But before you jump in and start calling past customers, you need to develop a research plan—the roadmap that provides focus, clarity, and realistic details to the project.

Here’s an example outline of a research plan you might put together:

Project title

Project members involved in the research plan

Purpose of the project (provide a summary of the research plan’s intent)

Objective 1 (provide a short description for each objective)

Objective 2

Objective 3

Proposed timeline

Audience (detail the group you want to research, such as customers or non-customers)

Budget (how much you think it might cost to do the research)

Risk factors/contingencies (any potential risk factors that may impact the project’s success)

Remember, your research plan doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel—it just needs to fit your project’s unique needs and aims.

Customizing a research plan template

Some companies offer research plan templates to help get you started. However, it may make more sense to develop your own customized plan template. Be sure to include the core elements of a great research plan with your template layout, including the following:

Introductions to participants and stakeholders

Background problems and needs statement

Significance, ethics, and purpose

Research methods, questions, and designs

Preliminary beliefs and expectations

Implications and intended outcomes

Realistic timelines for each phase

Conclusion and presentations

How many pages should a research plan be?

Generally, a research plan can vary in length between 500 to 1,500 words. This is roughly three pages of content. More substantial projects will be 2,000 to 3,500 words, taking up four to seven pages of planning documents.

What is the difference between a research plan and a research proposal?

A research plan is a roadmap to success for research teams. A research proposal, on the other hand, is a dissertation aimed at convincing or earning the support of others. Both are relevant in creating a guide to follow to complete a project goal.

What are the seven steps to developing a research plan?

While each research project is different, it’s best to follow these seven general steps to create your research plan:

Defining the problem

Identifying goals

Choosing research methods

Recruiting participants

Preparing the brief or summary

Establishing task timelines

Defining how you will present the findings

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• A Research Guide
• Research Paper Guide

How to Write a Research Plan

• Research plan definition
• Purpose of a research plan
• Research plan structure
• Step-by-step writing guide

Tips for creating a research plan

• Research plan examples

Research plan: definition and significance

What is the purpose of a research plan.

• Bridging gaps in the existing knowledge related to their subject.
• Reinforcing established research about their subject.
• Introducing insights that contribute to subject understanding.

Research plan structure & template

Introduction.

• What is the existing knowledge about the subject?
• What gaps remain unanswered?
• How will your research enrich understanding, practice, and policy?

Literature review

Expected results.

• Express how your research can challenge established theories in your field.
• Highlight how your work lays the groundwork for future research endeavors.
• Emphasize how your work can potentially address real-world problems.

5 Steps to crafting an effective research plan

Step 1: define the project purpose, step 2: select the research method, step 3: manage the task and timeline, step 4: write a summary, step 5: plan the result presentation.

• Brainstorm Collaboratively: Initiate a collective brainstorming session with peers or experts. Outline the essential questions that warrant exploration and answers within your research.
• Prioritize and Feasibility: Evaluate the list of questions and prioritize those that are achievable and important. Focus on questions that can realistically be addressed.
• Define Key Terminology: Define technical terms pertinent to your research, fostering a shared understanding. Ensure that terms like “church” or “unreached people group” are well-defined to prevent ambiguity.
• Organize your approach: Once well-acquainted with your institution’s regulations, organize each aspect of your research by these guidelines. Allocate appropriate word counts for different sections and components of your research paper.

Research plan example

• Writing a Research Paper
• Research Paper Title
• Research Paper Sources
• Research Paper Problem Statement
• Research Paper Thesis Statement
• Hypothesis for a Research Paper
• Research Question
• Research Paper Outline
• Research Paper Summary
• Research Paper Prospectus
• Research Paper Proposal
• Research Paper Format
• Research Paper Styles
• AMA Style Research Paper
• MLA Style Research Paper
• Chicago Style Research Paper
• APA Style Research Paper
• Research Paper Structure
• Research Paper Cover Page
• Research Paper Abstract
• Research Paper Introduction
• Research Paper Body Paragraph
• Research Paper Literature Review
• Research Paper Background
• Research Paper Methods Section
• Research Paper Results Section
• Research Paper Discussion Section
• Research Paper Conclusion
• Research Paper Appendix
• Research Paper Bibliography
• APA Reference Page
• Annotated Bibliography
• Bibliography vs Works Cited vs References Page
• Research Paper Types
• What is Qualitative Research

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FLEET LIBRARY | Research Guides

Rhode island school of design, create a research plan: research plan.

• Research Plan
• Literature Review
• Ulrich's Global Serials Directory
• Related Guides

A research plan is a framework that shows how you intend to approach your topic. The plan can take many forms: a written outline, a narrative, a visual/concept map or timeline. It's a document that will change and develop as you conduct your research. Components of a research plan

1. Research conceptualization - introduces your research question

2. Research methodology - describes your approach to the research question

3. Literature review, critical evaluation and synthesis - systematic approach to locating,

    reviewing and evaluating the work (text, exhibitions, critiques, etc) relating to your topic

4. Communication - geared toward an intended audience, shows evidence of your inquiry

Research conceptualization refers to the ability to identify specific research questions, problems or opportunities that are worthy of inquiry. Research conceptualization also includes the skills and discipline that go beyond the initial moment of conception, and which enable the researcher to formulate and develop an idea into something researchable ( Newbury 373).

Research methodology refers to the knowledge and skills required to select and apply appropriate methods to carry through the research project ( Newbury 374) .

Method describes a single mode of proceeding; methodology describes the overall process.

Method - a way of doing anything especially according to a defined and regular plan; a mode of procedure in any activity

Methodology - the study of the direction and implications of empirical research, or the sustainability of techniques employed in it; a method or body of methods used in a particular field of study or activity *Browse a list of research methodology books  or this guide on Art & Design Research

Literature Review, critical evaluation & synthesis

A literature review is a systematic approach to locating, reviewing, and evaluating the published work and work in progress of scholars, researchers, and practitioners on a given topic.

Critical evaluation and synthesis is the ability to handle (or process) existing sources. It includes knowledge of the sources of literature and contextual research field within which the person is working ( Newbury 373).

Literature reviews are done for many reasons and situations. Here's a short list:

Sources to consult while conducting a literature review:

Online catalogs of local, regional, national, and special libraries

meta-catalogs such as worldcat , Art Discovery Group , europeana , world digital library or RIBA

subject-specific online article databases (such as the Avery Index, JSTOR, Project Muse)

digital institutional repositories such as Digital Commons @RISD ; see Registry of Open Access Repositories

Open Access Resources recommended by RISD Research LIbrarians

works cited in scholarly books and articles

print bibliographies

the internet-locate major nonprofit, research institutes, museum, university, and government websites

search google scholar to locate grey literature & referenced citations

trade and scholarly publishers

fellow scholars and peers

Communication                              

Communication refers to the ability to

• structure a coherent line of inquiry
• communicate your findings to your intended audience
• make skilled use of visual material to express ideas for presentations, writing, and the creation of exhibitions ( Newbury 374)

Research plan framework: Newbury, Darren. "Research Training in the Creative Arts and Design." The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts . Ed. Michael Biggs and Henrik Karlsson. New York: Routledge, 2010. 368-87. Print.

About the author

Except where otherwise noted, this guide is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution license

source document

  Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts

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What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

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How to create a UX research plan (examples, tactics, and templates)

Conducting UX research without a plan is like moving to another country without knowing the language—confusing and exhausting.

To avoid wasting time and resources, it’s crucial to set achievable research goals and work on developing a research plan that’s clear, comprehensive, and aligned with your overarching business goals and research strategy.

A good UX research plan sets out the parameters for your research, and guides how you’ll gather insights to inform product development. In this chapter, we share a step-by-step guide to creating a research plan, including templates and tactics for you to try. You’ll also find expert tips from Paige Bennett, Senior User Research Manager at Affirm, and Sinéad Davis Cochrane, Research Manager at Workday.

What is a UX research plan?

A UX research plan—not to be confused with a UX research strategy —is a plan to guide individual user experience (UX) research projects.

It's a living document that includes a detailed explanation of tactics, methods, timeline, scope, and task owners. It should be co-created and shared with key stakeholders, so everyone is familiar with the project plan, and product teams can meet strategic goals.

While the UX research plan should be based on strategy, it’s not the same thing. A strategy is a high-level document that contains goals, budget, vision, and expectations. Meanwhile, a plan is a detailed document explaining how the team will achieve those strategic goals. In short, a strategy is a guide, but a plan is what drives action.

What are the benefits of using a UX research plan?

Conducting research without goals and parameters is aimless. A UX research plan is beneficial for your product, user, and business—by building a plan for conducting UX research, you can:

Streamline processes and add structure

Work toward specific, measurable goals, align and engage stakeholders, save time by avoiding rework.

The structure of a research plan allows you to set timelines, expectations, and task owners, so everyone on your team is aligned and empowered to make decisions. Since there’s no second guessing what to do next or which methods to use, you’ll find your process becomes simpler and more efficient. It’s also worth standardizing your process to turn your plan into a template that you can reuse for future projects.

When you set research goals based on strategy, you’ll find it easier to track your team’s progress and keep the project in scope, on time, and on budget. With a solid, strategy-based UX research plan you can also track metrics at different stages of the project and adjust future tactics to get better research findings.

“It’s important to make sure your stakeholders are on the same page with regards to scope, timeline, and goals before you start," explains Paige Bennett, Senior User Research Manager at Affirm. That's because, when stakeholders are aligned, they're much more likely to sign off on product changes that result from UX research.

A written plan is a collaborative way to involve stakeholders in your research and turn them into active participants rather than passive observers. As they get involved, they'll make useful contributions and get a better understanding of your goals.

A UX research plan helps you save time and money quite simply because it’s easier and less expensive to make design or prototype changes than it is to fix usability issues once the product is coded or fully launched. Additionally, having a plan gives your team direction, which means they won’t be conducting research and talking to users without motive, and you’ll be making better use of your resources. What’s more, when everyone is aligned on goals, they’re empowered to make informed decisions instead of waiting for their managers’ approval.

What should a UX research plan include?

In French cuisine, the concept of mise en place—putting in place—allows chefs to plan and set up their workspace with all the required ingredients before cooking. Think of your research plan like this—laying out the key steps you need to go through during research, to help you run a successful and more efficient study.

Here’s what you should include in a UX research plan:

• A brief reminder of the strategy and goals
• An outline of the research objectives
• The purpose of the plan and studies
• A short description of the target audience, sample size, scope, and demographics
• A detailed list of expectations including deliverables, timings, and type of results
• An overview of the test methods and a short explanation of why you chose them
• The test set up or guidelines to outline everything that needs to happen before the study: scenarios, screening questions, and duration of pilot tests
• Your test scripts, questions to ask, or samples to follow
• When and how you’ll present the results
• Cost estimations or requests to go over budget

Collect all UX research findings in one place

Use Maze to run quantitative and qualitative research, influence product design, and shape user-centered products.

How to create a UX research plan

Now we’ve talked through why you need a research plan, let’s get into the how. Here’s a short step-by-step guide on how to write a research plan that will drive results.

• Define the problem statement
• Get stakeholders’ buy-in
• Identify your objectives
• Choose the right research method
• Recruit participants
• Prepare the brief
• Establish the timeline
• Decide how you’ll present your findings

1. Define the problem statement

One of the most important purposes of a research plan is to identify what you’re trying to achieve with the research, and clarify the problem statement. For Paige Bennett , Senior User Research Manager at Affirm, this process begins by sitting together with stakeholders and looking at the problem space.

“We do an exercise called FOG, which stands for ‘Fact, Observation, Guess’, to identify large gaps in knowledge,” says Paige. “Evaluating what you know illuminates questions you still have, which then serves as the foundation of the UX research project.”

You can use different techniques to identify the problem statement, such as stakeholder interviews, team sessions, or analysis of customer feedback. The problem statement should explain what the project is about—helping to define the research scope with clear deliverables and objectives.

2. Identify your objectives

Research objectives need to align with the UX strategy and broader business goals, but you also need to define specific targets to achieve within the research itself—whether that’s understanding a specific problem, or measuring usability metrics . So, before you get into a room with your users and customers, “Think about the research objectives: what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what you expect from the UX research process ,” explains Sinéad Davis Cochrane , Research Manager at Workday.

Examples of research objectives might be:

• Learn at what times users interact with your product
• Understand why users return (or not) to your website/app
• Discover what competitor products your users are using
• Uncover any pain points or challenges users find when navigating with your product
• Gauge user interest in and prioritize potential new features

A valuable purpose of setting objectives is ensuring your project doesn't suffer from scope creep. This can happen when stakeholders see your research as an opportunity to ask any question. As a researcher , Sinéad believes your objectives can guide the type of research questions you ask and give your research more focus. Otherwise, anything and everything becomes a research question—which will confuse your findings and be overwhelming to manage.

Sinéad shares a list of questions you should ask yourself and the research team to help set objectives:

• What are you going to do with this information?
• What decisions is it going to inform?
• How are you going to leverage these insights?

Another useful exercise to help identify research objectives is by asking questions that help you get to the core of a problem. Ask these types of questions before starting the planning process:

• Who are the users you’re designing this for?
• What problems and needs do they have?
• What are the pain points of using the product?
• Why are they not using a product like yours?

3. Get stakeholders buy-in

It’s good practice to involve stakeholders at early stages of plan creation to get everyone on board. Sharing your UX research plan with relevant stakeholders means you can gather context, adjust based on comments, and gauge what’s truly important to them. When you present the research plan to key stakeholders, remember to align on the scope of research, and how and when you’ll get back to them with results.

Stakeholders usually have a unique vision of the product, and it’s crucial that you’re able to capture it early on—this doesn’t mean saying yes to everything, but listening to their ideas and having a conversation. Seeing the UX research plan as a living document makes it much easier to edit based on team comments. Plus, the more you listen to other ideas, the easier it will be to evangelize research and get stakeholders to see the value behind it.

I expect my stakeholders to be participants, and I outline how I expect that to happen. That includes observing interviews, participating in synthesis exercises, or co-presenting research recommendations.

Paige Bennett , Senior User Research Manager at Affirm

4. Choose the right research method

Choose between the different UX research methods to capture different insights from users.

To define the research methods you’ll use, circle back to your research objectives, what stage of the product development process you’re in, and the constraints, resources, and timeline of the project. It’s good research practice to use a mix of different methods to get a more complete perspective of users’ struggles.

For example, if you’re at the start of the design process, a generative research method such as user interviews or field studies will help you generate new insights about the target audience. Or, if you need to evaluate how a new design performs with users, you can run usability tests to get actionable feedback.

It’s also good practice to mix methods that drive quantitative and qualitative results so you can understand context, and catch the user sentiment behind a metric. For instance, if during a remote usability test, you hear a user go ‘Ugh! Where’s the sign up button?’ you’ll get a broader perspective than if you were just reviewing the number of clicks on the same test task.

Examples of UX research methods to consider include:

• Five-second testing
• User interviews
• Field studies
• Card sorting
• Tree testing
• Focus groups
• Usability testing
• Diary studies
• Live website testing

Check out our top UX research templates . Use them as a shortcut to get started on your research.

5. Determine how to recruit participants

Every research plan should include information about the participants you need for your study, and how you’ll recruit them. To identify your perfect candidate, revisit your goals and the questions that need answering, then build a target user persona including key demographics and use cases. Consider the resources you have available already, by asking yourself:

• Do you have a user base you can tap into to collect data?
• Do you need to hire external participants?
• What’s your budget to recruit users?
• How many users do you need to interact with?

When selecting participants, make sure they represent all your target personas. If different types of people will be using a certain product, you need to make sure that the people you research represent these personas. This means not just being inclusive in your recruitment, but considering secondary personas—the people who may not be your target user base, but interact with your product incidentally.

You should also consider recruiting research participants to test the product on different devices. Paige explains: “If prior research has shown that behavior differs greatly between those who use a product on their phone versus their tablet, I need to better understand those differences—so I’m going to make sure my participants include people who have used a product on both devices.”

During this step, make sure to include information about the required number of participants, how you’ll get them to participate, and how much time you need per user. The main ways to recruit testers are:

• Using an online participant recruitment tool like Maze’s panel
• Putting out physical or digital adverts in spaces that are relevant to your product and user
• Reaching out to existing users
• Using participants from previous research
• Recruiting directly from your website or app with a tool like In-Product Prompts

5.1. Determine how you’ll pay them

You should always reward your test participants for their time and insights. Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because if they have an incentive they’re more likely to give you complete and insightful answers. If you’re hosting the studies in person, you’ll also need to cover your participants' travel expenses and secure a research space. Running remote moderated or unmoderated research is often considered to be less expensive and faster to complete.

If you’re testing an international audience, remember to check your proposed payment system works worldwide—this might be an Amazon gift card or prepaid Visa cards.

6. Prepare the brief

The next component of a research plan is to create a brief or guide for your research sessions. The kind of brief you need will vary depending on your research method, but for moderated methods like user interviews, field studies, or focus groups, you’ll need a detailed guide and script. The brief is there to remind you which questions to ask and keep the sessions on track.

Your script should cover:

• Introduction: A short message you’ll say to participants before the session begins. This works as a starting point for conversations and helps set the tone for the meeting. If you’re testing without a moderator, you should also include an introductory message to explain what the research is about and the type of answers they should give (in terms of length and specificity).
• Interview questions: Include your list of questions you’ll ask participants during the sessions. These could be examples to help guide the interviews, specific pre-planned questions, or test tasks you’ll ask participants to perform during unmoderated sessions.
• Outro message: Outline what you'll say at the end of the session, including the next steps, asking participants if they are open to future research, and thanking them for their time. This can be a form you share at the end of asynchronous sessions.

It’s crucial you remember to ask participants for their consent. You should do this at the beginning of the test by asking if they’re okay with you recording the session. Use this space to lay out any compensation agreements as well. Then, ask again at the end of the session if they agree with you keeping the results and using the data for research purposes. If possible, explain exactly what you’ll do with their data. Double check and get your legal team’s sign-off on these forms.

7. Establish the timeline

Next in your plan, estimate how long the research project will take and when you should expect to review the findings. Even if not exact, determining an approximate timeline (e.g., two-three weeks) will enable you to manage stakeholders’ expectations of the process and results.

Many people believe UX research is a lengthy process, so they skip it. When you set up a timeline and get stakeholders aligned with it, you can debunk assumptions and put stakeholders’ minds at ease. Plus, if you’re using a product discovery tool like Maze, you can get answers to your tests within days.

8. Decide how you’ll present your findings

When it comes to sharing your findings with your team, presentation matters. You need to make a clear presentation and demonstrate how user insights will influence design and development. If you’ve conducted UX research in the past, share data that proves how implementing user insights has improved product adoption.

Examples of ways you can present your results include:

• A physical or digital PDF report with key statistics and takeaways
• An interactive online report of the individual research questions and their results
• A presentation explaining the results and your findings
• A digital whiteboard, like Miro, to display the results

In your plan, mention how you’ll share insights with the product team. For example, if you’re using Maze, you can start by emailing everyone the ready-to-share report and setting up a meeting with the team to identify how to bring those insights to life. This is key, because your research should be the guiding light for new products or updates, if you want to keep development user-centric. Taking care over how you present your findings will impact whether they’re taken seriously and implemented by other stakeholders.

Templates for UX research

Whether you’re creating the plan yourself or are delegating this responsibility to your team, here are six research templates to get started:

• UX research plan template : This editable Miro research project plan example helps you brainstorm user and business-facing problems, objectives, and questions
• UX research brief : You need a clear brief before you conduct UX research—Milanote shares a template that will help you simplify the writing process
• User testing synthesis : Trello put together a sample board to organize user testing notes—you can use this as a guide, but change the titles to fit your UX research purposes
• Usability testing templates : At Maze, we’ve created multiple templates for conducting specific UX research methods—this list will help you create different remote usability tests
• Information architecture (IA) tests template : The way you organize the information in your website or app can improve or damage the user experience—use this template to run IA tests easily
• Feedback survey templates : Ask users anything through a survey, and use these templates to get creative and simplify creation

Everything you need to know about UX research plans

We all know that a robust plan is essential for conducting successful UX research. But, in case you want a quick refresher on what we’ve covered:

• Using a UX research strategy as a starting point will make your plan more likely to succeed
• Determine your research objectives before anything else
• Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Come up with clear personas so you can recruit and test a group of individuals that’s representative of your real end users
• Involve stakeholders from the beginning to get buy-in
• Be vocal about timelines, budget, and expected research findings
• Use the insights to power your product decisions and wow your users; building the solution they genuinely want and need

UX research can happen at any stage of the development lifecycle. When you build products with and for users, you need to include them continuously at various stages of the process.

It’s helpful to explore the need for continuous discovery in your UX research plan and look for a tool like Maze that simplifies the process for you. We’ll cover more about the different research methods and UX research tools in the upcoming chapters—ready to go?

Elevate your UX research workflow

Discover how Maze can streamline and operationalize your research plans to drive real product innovation while saving on costs.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between a UX research plan and a UX research strategy?

The difference between a UX research plan and a UX research strategy is that they cover different levels of scope and detail. A UX research plan is a document that guides individual user experience (UX) research projects. UX research plans are shared documents that everyone on the product team can and should be familiar with. The UX research strategy, on the other hand, outlines the high-level goals, expectations, and demographics of the discovery.

What should you include in a user research plan?

Here’s what to include in a user research plan:

• Problem statement
• Research objectives
• Research methods
• Participants' demographics
• Recruitment plan
• User research brief
• Expected timeline
• How to present findings

How do you write a research plan for UX design?

Creating a research plan for user experience (UX) requires a clear problem statement and objectives, choosing the right research method, recruiting participants and briefing them, and establishing a timeline for your project. You'll also need to plan how you'll analyze and present your findings.

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• How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

Published on October 12, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 21, 2023.

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it’s important, and how you will conduct your research.

The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements:

Introduction

Literature review.

• Research design

Reference list

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organized and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

Table of contents

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research proposals.

Academics often have to write research proposals to get funding for their projects. As a student, you might have to write a research proposal as part of a grad school application , or prior to starting your thesis or dissertation .

In addition to helping you figure out what your research can look like, a proposal can also serve to demonstrate why your project is worth pursuing to a funder, educational institution, or supervisor.

Research proposal length

The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.

One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.

Download our research proposal template

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Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.

• Example research proposal #1: “A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management”
• Example research proposal #2: “Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use”

Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:

• The proposed title of your project
• Your supervisor’s name
• Your institution and department

The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.

Your introduction should:

• Introduce your topic
• Give necessary background and context
• Outline your  problem statement  and research questions

To guide your introduction , include information about:

• Who could have an interest in the topic (e.g., scientists, policymakers)
• How much is already known about the topic
• What is missing from this current knowledge
• What new insights your research will contribute
• Why you believe this research is worth doing

As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review  shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.

In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:

• Comparing and contrasting the main theories, methods, and debates
• Examining the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
• Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesize prior scholarship

Following the literature review, restate your main  objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

For example, your results might have implications for:

• Improving best practices
• Informing policymaking decisions
• Strengthening a theory or model
• Challenging popular or scientific beliefs
• Creating a basis for future research

Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .

Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.

Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.

Download our research schedule template

If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.

Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:

• Cost : exactly how much money do you need?
• Justification : why is this cost necessary to complete the research?
• Source : how did you calculate the amount?

To determine your budget, think about:

• Travel costs : do you need to go somewhere to collect your data? How will you get there, and how much time will you need? What will you do there (e.g., interviews, archival research)?
• Materials : do you need access to any tools or technologies?
• Help : do you need to hire any research assistants for the project? What will they do, and how much will you pay them?

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .

Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.

I will compare …

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.

A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.

A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.

All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

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How to Write a Research Plan

Your answers to these questions form your research strategy. Most likely, you’ve addressed some of these issues in your proposal. But you are further along now, and you can flesh out your answers. With your instructor’s help, you should make some basic decisions about what information to collect and what methods to use in analyzing it. You will probably develop this research strategy gradually and, if you are like the rest of us, you will make some changes, large and small, along the way. Still, it is useful to devise a general plan early, even though you will modify it as you progress. Develop a tentative research plan early in the project. Write it down and share it with your instructor. The more concrete and detailed the plan, the better the feedback you’ll get.

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This research plan does not need to be elaborate or time-consuming. Like your working bibliography, it is provisional, a work in progress. Still, it is helpful to write it down since it will clarify a number of issues for you and your professor.

Writing a Research Plan

To write out your research plan, begin by restating your main thesis question and any secondary ones. They may have changed a bit since your original proposal. If these questions bear on a particular theory or analytic perspective, state that briefly. In the social sciences, for example, two or three prominent theories might offer different predictions about your subject. If so, then you might want to explore these differences in your thesis and explain why some theories work better (or worse) in this particular case. Likewise, in the humanities, you might consider how different theories offer different insights and contrasting perspectives on the particular novel or film you are studying. If you intend to explore these differences, state your goal clearly in the research plan so you can discuss it later with your professor. Next, turn to the heart of this exercise, your proposed research strategy. Try to explain your basic approach, the materials you will use, and your method of analysis. You may not know all of these elements yet, but do the best you can. Briefly say how and why you think they will help answer your main questions.

Be concrete. What data will you collect? Which poems will you read? Which paintings will you compare? Which historical cases will you examine? If you plan to use case studies, say whether you have already selected them or settled on the criteria for choosing them. Have you decided which documents and secondary sources are most important? Do you have easy access to the data, documents, or other materials you need? Are they reliable sources—the best information you can get on the subject? Give the answers if you have them, or say plainly that you don’t know so your instructor can help. You should also discuss whether your research requires any special skills and, of course, whether you have them. You can—and should—tailor your work to fit your skills.

If you expect to challenge other approaches—an important element of some theses—which ones will you take on, and why? This last point can be put another way: Your project will be informed by some theoretical traditions and research perspectives and not others. Your research will be stronger if you clarify your own perspective and show how it usefully informs your work. Later, you may also enter the jousts and explain why your approach is superior to the alternatives, in this particular study and perhaps more generally. Your research plan should state these issues clearly so you can discuss them candidly and think them through.

If you plan to conduct tests, experiments, or surveys, discuss them, too. They are common research tools in many fields, from psychology and education to public health. Now is the time to spell out the details—the ones you have nailed down tight and the ones that are still rattling around, unresolved. It’s important to bring up the right questions here, even if you don’t have all the answers yet. Raising these questions directly is the best way to get the answers. What kinds of tests or experiments do you plan, and how will you measure the results? How will you recruit your test subjects, and how many will be included in your sample? What test instruments or observational techniques will you use? How reliable and valid are they? Your instructor can be a great source of feedback here.

Your research plan should say:

• What materials you will use
• What methods you will use to investigate them
• Whether your work follow a particular approach or theory

There are also ethical issues to consider. They crop up in any research involving humans or animals. You need to think carefully about them, underscore potential problems, and discuss them with your professor. You also need to clear this research in advance with the appropriate authorities at your school, such as the committee that reviews proposals for research on human subjects.

Not all these issues and questions will bear on your particular project. But some do, and you should wrestle with them as you begin research. Even if your answers are tentative, you will still gain from writing them down and sharing them with your instructor. That’s how you will get the most comprehensive advice, the most pointed recommendations. If some of these issues puzzle you, or if you have already encountered some obstacles, share them, too, so you can either resolve the problems or find ways to work around them.

Remember, your research plan is simply a working product, designed to guide your ongoing inquiry. It’s not a final paper for a grade; it’s a step toward your final paper. Your goal in sketching it out now is to understand these issues better and get feedback from faculty early in the project. It may be a pain to write it out, but it’s a minor sting compared to major surgery later.

Checklist for Conducting Research

• Familiarize yourself with major questions and debates about your topic.
• Is appropriate to your topic;
• Addresses the main questions you propose in your thesis;
• Relies on materials to which you have access;
• Can be accomplished within the time available;
• Uses skills you have or can acquire.
• Divide your topic into smaller projects and do research on each in turn.
• Write informally as you do research; do not postpone this prewriting until all your research is complete.

Back to How To Write A Research Paper .

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How to write a ux research plan that actually works: 7-step tutorial, saviour egbe, august 29, 2023.

A UX research plan is like a map that will help you navigate the complexity of running a research project. It will help you define your goals, choose the right methods, and collect the data you need to make informed design decisions.

But UX research plans don't have to be boring. In fact, they can be quite funny. For example, one UX researcher I know has a section in his plan called " The Things That Make Me Cry ." This is where he lists all the things that he's learned about his users that make him sad, such as the fact that they often have to deal with frustrating interfaces or unhelpful customer service.

But the primary use of a research plan of course is to make  sure that your research is effective. So, while it’s helpful to have a sense of humor, you also need to be serious about your research.

In this article, we'll consider:

• What a UX research plan is and why it's important
• How to create a UX research plan 
• An example of a well-structured UX research plan and
• A template for a UX research plan you can use to get started

So, whether you're a UX newbie or a seasoned pro, read on for everything you need to know about UX research plans!

What is a UX Research Plan?

A UX research plan is a document that outlines the goals, methods, and timeline for your research. It's a roadmap that will help you stay on track and ensure that your research is productive.

A good UX research plan should include the following:

• A clear statement of the research goals: What do you hope to learn from your research? What are the specific questions you're trying to answer?
• A description of the target audience: Who are the people you're designing for? What are their needs and pain points?
• A selection of research methods: There are many different research methods available, so it's important to choose the ones that are right for your goals and target audience.
• A timeline and budget: How long will your research take? How much money will it cost?
• A plan for data analysis and presentation: How will you analyze your data and communicate the findings to others?

Why is a UX Research Plan Important?

A UX research plan is important for several reasons. It helps you:

• Stay focused and avoids wasting time and resources.
• Ensures that your research is relevant to the needs of your users.
• Get buy-in from stakeholders & align on the goals for the project.
• Provides a framework for organizing and analyzing your data.
• Helps you communicate the findings of your research to others.

How to Create a UX Research Plan

Creating a UX research plan is an important step in ensuring that your product or service is user-friendly and meets the needs of your target audience. Here are the essential steps to create a research plan that drives meaningful insights and successful user experiences:

Step 1: Alignment & Requirements Gathering

Research rarely will happen in a vacuum. Usually you are working with a team—product, engineering, design, for example. 

When the need for a research study arises, the first thing you want to do is meet with your team to understand the questions they're trying to answer.

Depending on how formally set up your research practice is, you may even want to supplement this step with a Research Request document where stakeholders can explain the key questions they'd like to answer, why they're important, and any constraints (budgets, timelines) they're working with.

Step 2: Define Your Goals

Once you've gathered your data, the next step is to clearly define & write out your goals. What do you hope to learn from your research? What specific questions are you trying to answer?

Here are some things to consider when framing your goals:

• What are the business objectives for your product or service? Are you trying to grow active users? Or reduce churn? What should the final results of this research project help you do?
• Who are your target users? These are the people you’d like to learn more about.
• What do you want to learn about their behavior and preferences? This will help you determine your research questions. Ideally the answers to these questions should also tie to your business goals so there’s a clear line between what you’re trying to learn and what that learning will do for the company.

Once you’ve thought about and drafted the answers to these questions, make sure to follow the below steps before starting interviews:

i. Assess Internal Data and Identify Research Needs

Before you start collecting new data, take some time to assess any existing data you have. This could include analytics, customer feedback, or previous research findings. This will help you identify any gaps in your knowledge and determine what areas need to be explored further.

Sometimes you’ll find you already have the answer to your research question in-house—saving you weeks of research effort and thousands of dollars of investment!

If you’re trying to build a repository to help you do this more effectively, check out this definitive guide on research repositories .

ii. Link Research Goals to Business Objectives

It's also important to link your research goals to the business objectives of your organization. This will help you justify the time and resources that will be required for your research. By demonstrating how your research will help you achieve your business goals, you'll be more likely to get the support you need.

As a bonus, once your research is complete, you can go back and track its impact against these business goals. This will help you build a case for your own work and the research practice at your company.

As you proceed through Step 1, keep in mind that your research goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). This framework will help you ensure that your goals are well-defined and actionable.

Step 3: Identify Your Target Audience & Plan a Recruiting Strategy

Knowing your audience is essential for creating a UX research plan that delivers relevant and actionable insights. In this step, we'll talk about how to define your target audience and plan a recruiting strategy for this set of users.

The target audience you’re considering this research study may overlap with your standard target users, or you may want to speak with a subset of this group.

For instance, if you’re doing a research study on why users churn, speaking to a regular active user won’t help. You’ll need to define and recruit users who can actually answer your questions well—in this case it could be “users who have churned in the last 2 weeks”.

When defining the audience for this study, think about whether your target user falls in a specific category based on one of these characteristics:

• Demographics:   This includes basic characteristics, such as age, gender, location, and occupation.
• Behaviors and habits: Are you interested in users who have or have not conducted certain actions on your product? For research on how well your Slack integration works, you may want to speak to users who have already installed it, for example.  
• Needs and use cases: Sometimes one product can have multiple use cases. For example, a transcription product could be used by researchers, or journalists, or students trying to capture their class notes. Which use case or needs are relevant to your research study?  
• Payment type: In today’s world products may have free, freemium / trial, or paid users and each of these groups may behave differently. Think about whether you need one or all of these user types as part of your research.

Now that you know who you need to reach, you also need to think about how to reach them.

Recruiting, as we all know, is a major pain point for (most) researchers. There are some ways to speed it up though.

If you’re running research for a B2C product or an easy to find B2B cohort, you may want to turn to an external recruiting software like UserInterview.com or Respondent.io. There are also local agencies to help you find more local audiences in international markets. 

If you are trying to recruit via an external paid channel like this, make sure to budget it in your research plan. These channels are very quick to set up research calls with, but they do come with an added cost.

If you’re running research with a niche B2B audience or are defining your audience based on behaviour on your product (e.g., user who churned in the last 2 weeks), you may need to use internal recruiting methods. This means reaching out to your own users via email, intercom, or via your sales / support team.

If you are recruiting existing customers, make sure to budget in the time it takes to recruit these users. It may take a few days to weeks to gather the relevant user emails and schedule calls, although paid incentives for research help this move much faster.

If you are planning to recruit your own customers, use our Ultimate Guide to Recruiting Your Users for Interviews and Usability Tests . This article has templates for outreach, incentive payment options, and many tactical tips to help you streamline internal recruiting.

Remember, the accuracy and relevance of your research findings depend on the quality of your participants. Take the time to identify and engage users who genuinely reflect your intended audience. This will help you create a research plan that generates insights that drive impactful design decisions.

Step 4: Choose Your Research Methods

Choosing the right research methods is necessary for getting the most out of your UX research plan. Before kicking off your study, make sure to review the possible ways you can answer your research question as well as any constraints you face regarding time, money, or tooling.

If you’re not sure which methods exist, read through this article on UX Research Methods . This article provides an overview of the different methods, so you can choose the ones that are right for your project. It covers everything from usability testing to card sorting, and it includes practical advice on how to conduct each UX research method effectively.

When you’re actually selecting the right method out of the available options, here are the key questions you need to ask yourself: 

• Your research goals: What do you hope to learn from your research? The methods you choose should be aligned with your specific goals. For example, if you need to deeply understand user motivations, a user interview is much better fit than a survey.
• Quantitative vs. qualitative: Do you want to collect quantitative data (numbers and statistics) or qualitative insights (in-depth understanding)? Different methods are better suited for different types of data. If you need to know the percentage of users using Zoom vs GoogleMeet, a 5-person user interview won’t get you that data but a 100 person survey with a representative sample might.
• Resources and time: How much time and money do you have to spend on your research? Some methods are more time-consuming or expensive than others. For instance, an ethnographic study where you travel to see your users is obviously more expensive and time-consuming than a 30-minute remote user interview.

By considering these factors, you can choose a combination of research methods that will help you understand your users better.

Step 5: Define your timelines & budgets

Now that you know your target audience (and therefore recruiting method) and your research methods, you can define the timelines and budgets your stakeholders care about.

• Timelines: How long will it take to conduct your research? This will depend on the methods you choose, the number of participants you need to recruit, and the amount of data you need to collect. For example, user interviews can typically be conducted within a few weeks, but usability testing can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the number of participants and the complexity of the product or service being tested.
• Budgets: How much money will you need to conduct your research? This will depend on the methods you choose, the number of participants you need to recruit, and the cost of data collection and analysis. For example, user interviews can be conducted for a few hundred dollars, but usability testing can cost several thousand dollars, depending on the number of participants and the complexity of the product or service being tested.

Step 6: Identify your assumptions

Sometimes without realising it, our research study comes packaged with a set of assumptions about who users are and what they want.

Before kicking off your study, it’s important to identify these assumptions in writing and align on them with your team.

For instance, if you’re running research on how to improve a Slack integration, your in-built assumptions may be:

• Users already use this integration
• It’s worth improving this integration further

Once you’ve laid out these assumptions in advance of your research, you can check them against existing data and keep them in mind when you’re reviewing your research findings.

For example, if analytics data shows that no users use your Slack integration, it may call into question the research you’re running today or change the audience you speak to about it.

Instead of speaking to existing Slack integration users, your audience may need to be companies that have Slack but have not downloaded your Slack integration.

Your research questions may also shift from “Why do you use the Slack integration?” to “Why not? ”

In general, taking a moment to review research assumptions helps you be more aware of them throughout your research study.

Step 7: Define the research questions

This is a pivotal phase in the UX research process. It's when you define the questions that will guide your data collection efforts. These questions will be your compass, directing your research toward meaningful insights that drive product improvements.

Here are some tips for crafting and structuring your research questions:

• Make sure each question is aligned with your overall research objectives. This will ensure that your findings address the core goals of your project.
• Make your questions clear, concise, and specific. Ambiguity can lead to varied interpretations and muddy insights.
• Frame your questions from the user's perspective. Use language that aligns with your target audience to ensure your questions are relatable.
• Avoid leading questions. These are questions that nudge participants towards a particular response. Aim for neutrality to get real insights.
• Use a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions allow participants to provide detailed responses, while closed-ended questions offer predefined answer choices.
• Structure your questions logically, moving from broader inquiries to more specific ones. This will help participants to follow your thought process.
• Limit the number of questions. You want to get comprehensive insights but don't want to overwhelm participants with too many questions.
• Cover the core areas relevant to your project. This could include user pain points, needs, preferences, expectations, and perceptions.
• Pilot-test your questions with a small group of participants. Their feedback can help you to identify unclear or misleading questions.
• Make sure your questions are relevant to the research methods you will be using. For example, usability testing may focus on task-oriented questions, while interviews explore broader experiences.

Here are some examples of well-defined research questions:

1. Usability testing:

• How easily can users navigate the Looppanel account setup process?
• What challenges do users face when uploading their recorded calls to Looppanel?
• How intuitive is the process of setting up Calendar integration on Looppanel?

2. Interviews:

• Can you describe a recent experience you had with the Looppanel customer support?
• What motivated you to sign up for Looppanel for your user research needs instead of other platforms?
• In your view, how does the platform assist in taking your user interview notes effectively?

By carefully defining your research questions, you can ensure that your data collection efforts are focused and meaningful. This will help you to gather the insights you need to improve your product or service and deliver a better experience to your users.

Step 8: Align with your team

Now that you’ve thought through the basics, it's essential to get buy-in from your team and stakeholders on the final plan.

A lot may have happened between your first requirement-gathering meeting and when your plan is finalized. Take the final plan to stakeholders and make sure they are aligned:

• The research question you’re going to answer
• How your study ties to business goals
• Which users you’ll be engaging with
• Which method you’ll be using
• What your timelines look like
• What your budget looks like (if applicable)

This step is really important because if there’s a lack of alignment between you and your key stakeholder, you may end up with findings nobody is going to act on.

Example UX Research Plan

Here is an example UX research plan for improving the onboarding experience of a mobile app. Use this example as a guide to help you create your own plan!

Psst… we also have a template below that you can copy and use!

Project Title: Research study to improve onboarding experience on DuoLingo 

Business Goal: We want to increase the activation rate of new users on the app.

Project Goal(s) :

• Identify key drop-off points on the onboarding flow
• Identify why users are dropping off at these points

Target Users: People from the 15-40 age group in North America who have not used Duolingo before.

• MixPanel analytics data to identify existing drop-off points for users
• Usability testing with the think aloud protocol to understand why users are dropping off at those points

Timelines: The study will run for 4 weeks:

• Week 1: Analyzing existing analytics data & recruiting participants
• Week 2: Running usability tests
• Week 3: Analyzing results
• Week 4: Presenting findings

Budget (if applicable): Anticipated spend of $500 on recruiting.

Key Research Questions These are the research questions we’ll be gathering data on :

• At which point(s) in the onboarding process are users most likely to drop off?
• What are the common reasons users cite for discontinuing the onboarding process?
• How do users perceive the clarity of instructions during the initial setup stages?
• Are there any specific usability issues that lead users to abandon the onboarding flow?
• How do users' prior experiences with language learning apps impact their expectations of DuoLingo's onboarding?

UX Research plan template

We’ve also created a UX Research plan template you can use easily duplicate and use for your own work.

Click here to get Looppanel's UX Research Plan template.

This template contains sections for:

• Project Title
• Business Goals
• Project Goals
• Target Users
• Research Methods
• Timelines & Budgets
• Key Research Questions

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Resources & Guides

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15 Best UX Research Tools for User Researchers - 2024

August 1, 2023

How to Choose the Right UX Research Method

November 8, 2022

A Definitive Guide to the UX Research Repository [2024]

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FigJam Prepare for your next experiment with our research plan example

From user personas and stakeholder analyses to a research plan sample that can help form a strong foundation for your experimentation, FigJam’s has plenty of resources to help you meet your research objectives.

Research plan

Use this interactive template to collaborate with your team and create a top-notch strategic research plan that will uncover the answers you’re looking for.

Ready, set, plan!

Keep your team on track by agreeing on important aspects of your test and providing stakeholders with the why behind the what of your plan.

Identify important details: Define your research questions, goals, and methods from the onset to keep you focused throughout.

Set yourself up for success : Develop an outline that’ll keep you on track from start to finish.

Gather data: Create a plan that allows you to assemble and analyze the data you need to improve your users’ experience.

FigJam When the planning gets tough, the tough get planning

Work together to align your team’s ideas and goals for the ultimate research plan, complete with a clear objective, timeline, and other necessary components. Brainstorm and swap thoughts with ease, then use your insights to create a game plan that brings every research question to the real world.

Keep your eyes on the prize

With everyone on the same page—or plan—you can stay focused on a clear-cut outcome. Set your plan in motion, then use FigJam’s other templates to move forward into the next phase with ease.

User personas

Gain a better understanding of your target audience’s needs.

Stakeholder analysis

Identify and prioritize your stakeholders to ensure all participantsare satisfied.

Other templates from the community

Gather all the right tools to execute your plan and analyze your data.

What is a research plan?

A research plan example is a document that introduces your main question and how you intend to uncover the answer. They often include details like the surrounding context, objectives, methods, budget, timeline, and more to help you learn more about and eventually solve a customer’s pain point or an ineffective interface.

What are the contents of a research plan?

Research plans generally contain information such as:

Background information with general insights into what you already know, why you’re conducting the study, and what the problem is

The objective of your research and what you’re trying to accomplish

Research questions , both primary and secondary, to guide your experiment

The participants and recruitment methods to bring together a relevant, unbiased sample group

Your budget and timeline to plan around any logistical constraints

Intended results , describing what you hope to or anticipate finding

Out of scope elements that will not factor into your experiment

How to write a research plan?

Begin by gathering your team, downloading a shareable FigJam sample research plan, and brainstorming to figure out the issues you’re trying to understand and solve. With that information, you can narrow down your team’s top suggestions to one concrete objective. Then, decide on a few select research questions that will help you achieve your research goal.

As with any good scientific process, you’ll want to thoroughly interrogate and refine your questions using insight from your entire group, until you’re confident in your main question and research method. Don’t be afraid to solicit feedback, leave comments or suggestions, and move questions around—the flexibility is part of what makes FigJam’s market research plan template so valuable to any experiment.

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10 Free Research Plan Templates for Teams and Professionals

February 13, 2024

Starting a new research project from scratch can feel overwhelming. Without the right tools and templates, you’re left with a blank page and no direction. With them, starting a new project or organizing an existing one feels like a breeze.

That’s why you need to build a library of the best research plan templates. And we’re here to help you do it.

Stick with us as we run through the benefits of using a research plan template and share some of our favorites—all designed to help make your research projects run like magic.

What is a Research Plan Template?

What makes a good research plan template, 1. clickup user research plan template, 2. clickup market research template, 3. clickup research whiteboard template, 4. clickup equity research report template, 5. clickup seo research & management template, 6. clickup research report template, 7. clickup data analysis findings template, 8. clickup personal swot analysis template, 9. clickup case study template, 10. clickup investigation report template, how to write a research plan.

A research plan template is a document that’s designed to help you build the best research management plan possible. Instead of starting from scratch with a blank screen, a research plan document gives you the building blocks to fill in—so you won’t miss anything important.

There are a lot of solid research plan documents out there—covering everything from UX research (user experience) to case study templates . These templates can be helpful for any team, whether you’re working on product development prototypes or research objectives for a marketing project. They’re especially helpful for product design , UX research, and project management teams.

Some of the most popular research plan templates include:

• UX research plan templates
• Usability testing research templates
• Data analysis findings templates
• Project proposal templates
• Case study templates
• Research process templates
• Market research templates
• Competitive analysis templates
• Request for proposal templates

Each is there to guide you towards collecting, reviewing, and reporting on your research in a more strategic and organized way. Think of the research plan as your helpful research buddy—there to make things easier, provide guidance, and help you ace your project execution .

We’re all looking for something different when it comes to project templates. You might favor simplicity and order, while another team might prefer a more creative approach with lots of color and prompts.

Even though your needs are unique, there are some elements that almost always make a research plan template stand out above all the rest.

The best research plan templates:

• Keep you and your product team organized
• Help you standardize the research process and research method you use 
• Keep you focused on the key project goals and deliverables
• Give you suggestions for metrics to record and analyze
• Help you keep your research questions in one place
• Help you stay on target with your project timeline
• Give you a defined place to store your thoughts and research findings

There’s no one perfect template for any individual or team. Consider what your purpose or goal is, what your project management workstreams look like, and which areas you need the most support or guidance in. This will help you choose which templates to feature and how you can use wiki software to build a collection of your go-to templates.

10 Research Plan Templates to Use in 2024

There are hundreds of research plan templates out there, but they’re not all alike. Some of them bring out the best of your project management skills , while others hinder them.

We’ve brought together the best of the best, to share with you the ultimate list of research plan templates to add to your workflow this year. Want to know what’s even better? You don’t need to get buy-in for an expensive pricing plan—these templates are all free!

One of the first things that comes to mind when you say “research plan template” is user research. For development and project teams, this is one step of the process where strategy and staying organized is essential.

The User Research Plan Template by ClickUp makes it easy for you to achieve that and more. There’s space to share your project overview and research goals, research objectives, hypotheses, and more—plus a bonus Interview Research Debrief doc.

This template acts as a central resource for all the stakeholders. Use it to bring your team together, reaffirm your goals and objectives, and stay on track as you execute your qualitative research project.

Bonus: UX design tools !

Planning your market research is a must-have if you want to get the best possible data. Give your team everything they need in one place and it helps your process run smoothly.

To help keep your team informed and ready to go, we developed the Market Research Template by ClickUp . It’s a Task template that brings you key information, all in one place.

Our Market Research Template features five custom fields—a research presentation link, market research type, report document link, data collection technique, and research stage. Add your clickable links, and use the dropdowns to assign the correct stage or type as you progress.

You can collect user research in so many ways. Questionnaires, user interviews, focus groups, user research sessions, or social media. Another super engaging way to do this is with a whiteboard.

Collaboration and user research feels interactive and fun with the Research Whiteboard Template by ClickUp . Encourage your team to share the insights they’ve collected in this highly visual template, with digital sticky notes instead of empty white boxes.

Use this ClickUp whiteboard template as a more engaging way to view your user research. You can also use this as a tool for internal research projects—invite your stakeholders by link and ask them to comment directly.

If you’re in the business of advising investors on what to do with their money, an equity report is a must-have. Instead of manually writing a new report every time, a research plan template can help you shortcut the process and get straight to the details.

Enter the Equity Research Report Template by ClickUp . It’s designed to help you share what you know in a more strategic way. Share an insight into the company overview, management team, performance, market valuation, and recommendations.

This research plan template has everything you need to present your findings to investors in an organized and effective way. Look like a pro to your investor clients and partners, and store all your data in a meaningful way to reflect on later.

Staying on top of your company’s SEO performance is no easy task. There are so many moving parts, tools, projects, goals, and team members that you need a way to stay organized and productive.

Luckily for you, the SEO Research & Management Template by ClickUp is here to help simplify the process—and make you look good to your boss. This Folder template gives you a dedicated place to work on your SEO goals, with SEO-related custom fields and plenty of custom task types to help your team communicate progress and see roadblocks in your research plan.

Use this template to see at a glance where your SEO projects are, so you can be more proactive about how your team is working. You can also dive in to details and understand time estimates, publish dates, and where your rankings are at.

Check out these AI SEO Tools !

There’s no need to start from scratch every time you’re asked to put a research report together—instead use a template to make all your research questions and study reports as impressive as the last one.

Shortcut your way to success with the Research Report Template by ClickUp . There are sections for your executive summary, introduction, research method and techniques, results & discussion, references, and appendices. Add a report author and contributors, so you can recognize everyone that contributed to the report.

Share your research methods, approach, and findings with stakeholders and clients with this impressive template. It’s a useful foundation to help your team get organized and find a better way to update stakeholders on progress.

The Data Analysis Findings Template by ClickUp helps you present your data to everyone in a more meaningful way. Instead of presenting numbers and graphs, this template can help you go deeper into the problem statement, scope, analysis and research method, findings, and conclusion.

Use this template to help you organize your thoughts and communicate the results of your study in a transparent and easy-to-read way. Explain the context and background information alongside your approach, so your stakeholders can fully understand what the data shows.

A personal SWOT analysis can help you understand your (or your team’s) strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This information can not only help you work better, but it means you can be more intentional about your impact on the wider company.

The Personal SWOT Analysis Template by ClickUp can help you remember to work on your SWOT analysis. Find your strengths, weaknesses or pain points, opportunities, and threats. This Task template features several custom fields designed to help you monitor your progress—including your objective, timeline, and completion rate.

This template can be a helpful reminder to focus on your personal SWOT analysis, so you can be more intentional and aware of how you contribute to your team and company’s goals and objectives. Use your personal SWOT to help you set professional goals for work and make a bigger impact.

Case studies give you a powerful insight into what your brands, clients, or competitors are doing. They’re an in-depth look into a specific area of the business, based on your personal research and findings.

Simplify the process of building your case studies with the Case Study Template by ClickUp . This template gives you a strong foundation for presenting clear, insightful case studies with your team, stakeholders, or clients. Introduce the company, your case study objective, solutions and statistics, and your insights.

Use this template to help you create case studies at scale. Present your data in a clear and concise way, with all the context your team or stakeholders need to extract the most value from the case study as possible.

Often our research helps us understand the market, our competitors, or what our own company is doing. Sometimes, it’s to help us understand incidents and challenges instead.

That’s where the Investigation Report Template by ClickUp comes in. This template is designed to help you report on accidents, complaints, incidents, and violations. Explain the case details including a summary and evidence, then move into cross-examination with space for interview questions and answers, and your conclusion.

This template is a must-have for teams and companies that want to demonstrate how they overcome challenges or handle incidents. It’s great for transparency and trust-building, and serves as a useful way to document a trail of evidence for when you need it.

Now that you have a template for your research plan, let’s dive into the details of how to write one. Follow these steps to create an effective research plan that will guide your research and help you achieve your goals.

Step 1: Identify Your Research Question

The first step in writing a research plan is to clearly define your research question or topic. This will serve as the foundation for all of your research and help guide your methods and analysis. Make sure your question is specific, relevant, and achievable within the scope of your project.

Step 2: Outline Your Objectives

Next, you should outline the specific objectives or goals of your research. These objectives should be aligned with your research question and provide a clear roadmap for your project. Be sure to make them measurable and achievable.

Step 3: Choose Your Research Methods

Based on your research question and objectives, you can now determine the appropriate methods for gathering data and conducting analysis. This may include surveys, experiments, interviews, or literature reviews. It’s important to choose methods that are suitable for your research topic and will provide reliable and accurate results.

Step 4: Create a Timeline

A research plan should include a detailed timeline for each stage of the project. This will help you stay on track and ensure that you have enough time to complete each task. Be realistic with your timeline and build in some buffer time for unexpected delays or challenges.

Step 5: Consider Ethical Implications

When conducting research, it’s important to consider any potential ethical implications. This may include obtaining consent from participants, ensuring privacy and confidentiality, or following ethical guidelines set by your institution or governing body.

Step 6: Anticipate Potential Outcomes

As with any research project, there are always potential outcomes that can arise. These could be both positive and negative, and it’s important to anticipate and plan for them. This will help you be prepared for any potential challenges or changes that may occur during your research.

Step 7: Revise and Refine Your Plan

Once you have completed the previous steps, it’s essential to review and revise your research plan as needed. It’s common for plans to change as the project progresses, so be open to making adjustments and tweaking your methods or timeline as needed.

Stay Organized with the Best Research Plan Templates

Nobody likes a disorganized project—especially a research project. Let your team breathe a sigh of relief and make your stakeholders smile when they realize you’ve got it all under control.

Use these free research plan templates to help you get organized, streamline your workflows, and keep everyone informed. Build a collection of templates that work for your projects, and make them a central part of the way you work as a team. Standardize, simplify, and get productive.

All of these research plan templates are available right now, for free, inside our template library . Get access to these user-friendly templates, 100MB of storage, 1,000+ integrations, and more with ClickUp—free now, and forever!

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Creating A User Research Plan (with Examples)

UX research helps to test hypothesis you have about users prior to design. Sadly, not every UX design project starts with user research, and that’s because it takes a lot of time to recruit participants, run UX research projects, and sumamrize findings.

Good research, nevertheless, ensures that your product team doesn’t build the wrong functionality that would cost you valuable resources and make you vulnerable to losing customers.

In this article, you’ll see how you can use UX research plan to get stakeholder’s buy-in and create research reports that’s full of valuable advice for product design. Let’s go.

At the end, when you have your research complete, launch the right tool for your design process. For that, try UXPin, an end-to-end design tool for interactive prototyping that brings design and product development together.

Designers can create a powerful prototypes, show them to product managers who can interact with the design instead of just looking at it. Then, they give the design to engineers who can get all the specs and some code to kickstart front-end design with.

Since with UXPin you work faster, you have ample time for UX research before UX design. Try it for free .

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What is a UX Research Plan?

A UX research plan helps to set expectations and document the essentials you need to communicate to stakeholders and clients. Your company needs a strong business case for every user research session, complete with research objectives, goals, methods, and logistical needs for the study.

UX Research Plan Elements

Every UX research plan should start with a solid outline. That’s where templates come in handy. They help you structure your UX research project in a way that team members and stakeholders see value in completing research process.

Master templates are the best way to create a successful and effective UX research plan. Using a template as a starting point makes planning and writing easier and helps you and your team stay focused on the who, what, why, and when of research. Read on for tips and examples for how you can build a user research plan that works.

UX Research Plan Background

The background section should offer your clients and stakeholders a few sentences on why you are creating a user research plan and what it will accomplish. It should orient readers to the needs and expectations behind the purpose of the study. It should also include a problem statement, which is the primary question you’re setting out to answer with your research findings. 

Example Background

The purpose of this study is to understand the major pain points users experience in using our website/app and how these contribute to issues such as cart abandonment, returned items, and low customer loyalty. 

We will be using usability testing to follow the user’s experience of our website/app and the obstacles they encounter leading up to the point of purchase. We will also be using generative research techniques to better understand the customer’s experience of our brand and the challenges and needs they face in making a purchase. 

UX Research Plan Objectives

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of your user research plan, you first want to focus on your research objectives. This step outlines the reasons you are conducting a UX research plan in the first place. Why are you carrying out this research? What are the end goals you have after completing all the work?

Seeking out answers to these questions should be a collaborative effort between you and your stakeholders. It’s also helpful to consider discussions and learnings from past clients and projects to create metrics for your UX research plan. 

Objectives and Success Metrics

Research objectives will be different for every project, but they should always be actionable and specific. 

Example Objectives

• Understand how users currently go about tracking orders on our website
• Understand what actions customers take when they consider buying a new [product we offer]
• Learn about competitor websites/apps customers are using to buy [product we offer]
• Evaluate pain points customers are experiencing in using our website/app

And here are some examples to help you determine the success of your UX research plan.

Example Success Metrics

• What information are we trying to collect about users?
• What scales/documents/statistics do we intend to create?
• What decisions will these materials help to make? 

UX Research Plan Methodology

This step should be a short and sweet description of the research methods you will use to answer the research objectives. It should include both secondary and primary methods. Generative methods, such as user interviews and open-ended questions, help uncover motivations or more general insights, while UX testing helps to evaluate the usability and experience of your product. 

Research Scope & Focus Areas

Clearly outlining the research scope and focus areas helps to facilitate efficient user research planning. The more you’re able to hone in on the specifics of what information you are wanting to collect, the less overwhelmed you will be in the process. It also helps avoid inundating your clients with unnecessary information. 

To keep research-focused, this section should include:

• 3-6 question topics (e.g. How do users spend their time on a website?)
• Design Focus Components, including interface qualities (e.g. Usability, Training, Efficiency, Satisfaction)
• Primary User Scenarios (e.g. Scenarios in which pain points are most problematic; scenarios you have the least information about, etc.)

Example Methodology

For this study, we’re conducting a 30-minute usability test to evaluate our user’s experience of our app/website. A secondary method will be to conduct one-on-one generative research interviews to better understand our customers and empathize with their needs. 

UX Research Plan Participant Profiles

Once you’ve defined objectives methodology and focus areas, it’s time to outline the participants you’ll need to get the required insights. Participant profiles help you determine who you want to recruit, or an approximation of your users, to optimize recruiting efforts. Here are a few examples of how to ensure you’ll get the best participants for your study. 

Define your target user by collaborating with internal stakeholders, marketing, sales, and customer support. With their help, you can create approximations about who your users are. This is a great starting point for finding the right participants for your study. 

Compare yourself to your competitors and create participant profiles based on their audiences. Recruiting people who use a competitor’s product can be an excellent way to glean insights into how to further improve your product. 

Outline a screening process. Participant profiles should include any relevant information concerning your target audience, including behaviors, needs, demographics, geography, etc. Including the right criteria will help you evaluate whether or not to include certain individuals in your user research plan. 

This Nielsen Norman article offers some great information about defining and recruiting the right participants for your study. 

UX Research Plan Timeline

This is optional, but many UX research plans include a timeline that offers clients and stakeholders a general overview of how long the research will take. It helps to set expectations for the final results as well as allowing you to create a schedule for research sessions, debriefing, follow-up, and deliverables. 

Timeline Example: 

Approximately 6-8 weeks for identifying objectives, creating participant profiles, recruitment, in-person meetings, qualitative research, and analysis. 

Try an End-to-End Design Solution

UX research plan templates are essential tools for executing a successful project. Having a master template helps you to remember what the process entails, communicate essential information to the right people, and stay on track throughout the user research plan.

UXPin, besides being a great prototyping tool, makes creating such research templates fast and easy. Especially since each project will be a little different and plans will need tweaking in terms of structure and content. Try UXPin for free .

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Developing a Five-Year Research Plan

Cathy binger and lizbeth finestack, doi: 10.1044/cred-pvd-path006.

The following is a transcript of the presentation videos, edited for clarity.

What Is a Research Plan, and Why Do You Need One?

Presented by Cathy Binger

First we’re going to talk about what a research plan is, why it’s important to write one, and why five years—why not one year, why not ten years. So we’ll do some of those basic things, then Liza is going to get down and dirty into the nitty-gritty of “now what” how do I go about writing that research plan.

First of all, what is a research plan? I’m sure some of you have taken a stab at these already. In case you haven’t, this is a real personalized map that relates your projects to goals. It’s exactly what it sounds like, it’s a plan of how you’re going to go about doing your research. It doesn’t necessarily just include research.

It’s something that you need to put a little time and effort into in the beginning. And then, if you don’t revisit it, it’s really a useless document. It’s something that you need to come back to repeatedly, at least annually, and you need to make it visible. So it’s not a document that sits around and once a year you pull it out and look at it.

It can and should be designed, especially initially, with the help of a mentor or colleague. And it does serve multiple purposes, with different lengths and different amounts of detail.

I forgot to say, too, getting started, the slides for this talk were started using as a jumping off point Ray Kent’s talk from last year. So some of the slides we’ve borrowed from him, so many thanks to him for that.

But why do we want to do a research plan? Well, to me the big thing is the vision. Dr. Barlow talked this morning about your line of research and really knowing where you want to go, and this is where that shows up with all the nuts and bolts in place.

What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to contribute? Most of you are at the stage in your career where maybe you have started out with that you want to change the world scenario and realized that whatever you wanted your first research project to be, really, is your entire career. You need to get that down to the point where it is manageable projects that you can do—this is where you map out what those projects are and set reasonable timelines for that.

You want to really demonstrate your independent thinking and your own creativity, whatever that is that you then establish as a PhD student, postdoc, and beyond—this is where you come back to, okay, here’s how I’m going to go about achieving all of that.

This next point, learning to realistically gauge how long it takes to achieve each goal, this for most of us is a phenomenally challenging thing to do. Most of us really overestimate what we can do in a certain amount of time, and we learn the hard way that you can’t, and that’s another reason why you keep coming back to these plans repeatedly and learning over time what’s really manageable, what’s really doable, so we can still reach our goals and be very strategic about how we do that.

When you’re not strategic, you just don’t meet the goals. Your time gets sucked into so many different things. We need to be really practical and strategic.

Everything we do is going to take longer than we think.

I think this last one is something that maybe we don’t talk about enough. Really being honest with ourselves about the role of research in our lives. Not all of you are at very high-level research universities. Some of you have chosen to go elsewhere, where research maybe isn’t going to be playing the same role as it is for other people. The research plan for someone at an R One research intensive university is going to look quite different from someone who is at a primary teaching university. We need to be open and practical about that.

Getting sidetracked. I love this picture, I just found this picture the other day. This feels like my life. You can get pulled in so many different directions once you are a professor. You will get asked to do a thousand different things. There are lots of great opportunities that are out there. Especially initially, it’s tempting to say yes to all of them. But if you’re going to be productive, you have to be very strategic. I’m going to be a little bit sexist against my own sex here for a minute, but my observation has been that women tend to fall into this a little bit more than men do in wanting to say yes and be people pleasers for everything that comes down the pike.

It is a professional skill to learn how to say no. And to do that in such a way that you are not burning bridges as you go down the path. That is a critical skill if you are going to be a successful researcher. I can’t tell you how many countless people I’ve seen who are very bright, very dedicated, have the skills that it takes in terms of doing the work—but then they are not successful because they’ve gotten sidetracked and they try to be too much of a good citizen, give too much service to the department, too much “sure I’ll take on that extra class” or whatever else comes down the line.

I just spoke with a professor recently who had something like five hours a week of office hours scheduled every single week for one class. Margaret is shaking her head like “are you kidding?” That’s crazy stuff. But he wanted to really support his students. His students loved him, but he was not going to get tenure. That’s the story.

So we have to be very thoughtful and strategic, and what can help you with this, and ASHA very firmly recognizes which is why we’re here—is that your mentors in your life should be there to help you learn these skills and learn what to say yes to, and learn what to say no to. I’ve learned to say things like, “Let me check with my mentor before I agree to that.” And it gives you a way out of that. The line that I use a lot is, “Let me check with my department head” or, I just said this to somebody last week, “I just promised my department head two weeks ago that I would only do X number of external workshops this year, so I’m going to have to turn this one down.” Those are really important skills to develop.

And having that research plan in place that you can go back to and say, know what, it’s not on my plan I can’t do it. If I do it—I have to go back to my research plan and figure out what I’m going to kick off in order to review this extra paper, in order to take on this extra task. The plan also helps me to know exactly what to say no to. And to be very direct and have a very strong visual.

I actually have my research plan up on a giant whiteboard in my office, so I can always go back to that and see where I am, and I can say, “Okay, what am I going to kick off of here? Nothing. Okay, I have to say no to whatever comes up.” Just be strategic. This is where I see most beginning professors really end up taking that wrong fork in the road—taking that right instead of that left, and ending up not being the successful researcher that they wanted to be.

What evidence supports research planning? This was something Ray Kent had found. That a recent analysis had found that postdoc scholars who developed a written plan with their postdoc advisers were much more productive than those who didn’t. And your performance during a postdoc—and I know many of you have either finished your postdoc or decided not to—so more simply, just during those first six years, the decisions you make really do establish the foundation for the rest of your professional life. It’s very important to get started and get off on the right foot.

I love this quote, I just found it the other day: “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

What we see with productivity is that postdoc scholars who developed written productivity expectations with their advisers were more productive than those who didn’t. You see 23% more papers submitted, 30% more first-author papers, and more grant proposals as well.

So why five years? I’m going to start with number 5. It’s long enough to build a program of research, but short enough to deal with changing circumstances. That’s really the long and the short of the matter. As well as these other things as well that I won’t take the time to go through point by point.

What Should a Five-Year Plan Include?

Presented by Lizbeth Finestack

So, thinking about a five-year research plan, I like to think about it like your major “To Do List.” It’s what you’re going to accomplish in five years. Start thinking: What is going to be on my to do list?

You can also think about it like: Okay, I have research. I’ve got to do research. Maybe think about this as one big bucket, or maybe one humongous silo. I have some farm themes going on. Cathy was just on a farm, so I thought I’d tie that in.

So here’s your big silo. You can call that your research silo.

But more realistically, you need to think about it like separate buckets, separate silos, where research is just one of those. Just like Cathy indicated, there’s going to be lots of other things coming up that you’re going to have to manage. They are going to have to be on your to do list, you need to figure out how to fit everything in.

What all those other buckets or silos are, are really going to depend on your job. And maybe the size of the silos, and the size of the buckets are going to vary depending on where you are, what the expectations are at your institution.

That’s important to keep in mind, and Cathy said this too, it’s not going to be the same for everyone. The five-year plan has to be your plan, your to do list.

Here are some buckets or some silos that I have on my list and the way that I break it up, this is just one example, take it or leave it.

The first three are all very closely related, right? Thinking about grants, thinking about research, thinking about publications. I’m going to define grants as actual writing, getting the grant, getting the money.

Research is what you’re going to do once you get that money. Steps you need to take before you are getting the money. Any sorts of projects, the lab work, that’s why I have the lab picture there. Of course, publications are part of the product—what’s coming out of the research—but it also cycles in because you need publications to support that you are a researcher to apply for funding and show you have this line of research that you’ve established and you’ll be able to continue. So, those first three are really closely related. And that’s where I’ll go next. And then have teaching and service you see here at the bottom.

So thinking about research, in that broad sense. As you’re writing your five-year plan you’re going to want to think of, “What’s my long-term goal?” There’s lots of ways to think of long-term goals. You could think, before I die, this is what I want to accomplish. For me I kind of have that. My long-term goal is that I’m going to find the most effective and efficient interventions for kids with language impairment. Huge broad goal. But within that I can start narrowing it down.

Where am I within that? Within the next five years or maybe the next ten years, what is it I want to accomplish towards that goal. Then start thinking about: In order to accomplish that goal, what are the steps I need to take? Starting to break it down a little bit. Then it’s also going to be really important to think: where are you going to start? Where are you now? What do you need to have happen? And is it reasonable to accomplish this goal within five years? Is it going to take longer? Maybe you could do it in a couple years? Start thinking about the timeline that’s going to work for you.

Then thinking about your goals—and everyone’s program is going to be different, like I said, there’s going to be a lot of individual needs, preferences. So it might be the case that you have this one long-term goal that you’re aiming for. Long-term goal in the sense of, maybe, what you want to study in your R01, perhaps something like that. But in order to get to that point, you’re going to have several short-term goals that need to be accomplished.

Or maybe it’s the case that you have two long-term goals. And with each of those you’re going to have multiple short-term goals that you’re working on. Maybe the scope of each of these long-term goals is a little bit less than in that first scenario.

Start thinking about my research, what I want to do, and how it might fit into these different circumstances.

Also thinking about your goals, this is a slide from Ray Kent from last year, was thinking about the different types of projects you might want to pursue, and thinking about ones that are definitely well on your way. They are safe bets. You have some funding. They are going to lead directly into your longer-term plan.

Those are going to be your front burner—things you can easily focus on. That said, don’t put everything there.

You can also have things on the back burner. Things that really excite you, might have huge benefits, big pay. But you don’t want to spend all of your time there because they could be pretty risky.

Start thinking about where you’re putting your time. Are you putting it all on this high-risk thing that if it doesn’t pan out you’re going to be in big trouble? Or balancing that somewhat with your front burner. Making that steady progress that will lead directly to help fund an R01 or whatever the mechanism that you’re looking for.

Then, thinking about your goals—if you have multiple long-term goals, or thinking about your short-term goals, you could think about your process. Is it something where you need to do study 1 then study 2, then study 3—each of those building on each other, that’s leading to that long-term goal. In many cases, that is the case, where you have to get information from the first study which is going to lead directly to the second study and so forth.

Or is it the case that you can be working on these three short-term goals simultaneously? Spreading your resources at the same time. Maybe it will take longer for any one study, but across a longer period of time you’ll get the information that you need to reach that long-term goal.

Lots and lots of different ways to go about it. The important thing is to think about what your needs are and what makes the most sense for you.

Here’s my own little personal example. Starting over here, I have my dissertation study. My dissertation study was this early efficacy study looking at one treatment approach using novel forms that really can’t generalize to anything too useful, but it was important.

Then I did a follow up study, where I was taking that same paradigm, looking to see where kids with typical development perform on the task. So I have these two studies, and they served as my preliminary studies for an R03. So I just finished an R03 where I was looking at different treatment approaching for kids with primary language impairment. At the same time, while conducting my R03, I’m also looking at some different approaches that might help with language development. Also conducting surveys to see what current practices are.

I have these three projects going on simultaneously, that are going to lead to a bigger pilot study that are going to feed directly into my R01. All of this will serve as preliminary data to go into an R01.

Start thinking about your projects, what you have. Maybe starting with your dissertation project or work that you’re doing as a postdoc as seeing how that can feed into your long-term goal. And really utilizing it, building on it, to your benefit.

That’s all fine and dandy. You can draw these great pictures. But you still have to break it down some more. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m just going to do this project.” There are other steps involved, and lots of the time these steps are going to be just as time consuming.

Starting to think about: well, if you have the funding. Saying, “I want to do this study, but I have no money to do it.” What are the steps in order to get the money to do it? Do you have a pilot study? What do you need?

Start thinking about the resources? Do you need to develop stimuli, protocols, procedures? Start working on that. All of these can be very time consuming, and if you don’t jump on that immediately, it’s going to delay when you can start that project.

Thinking about IRB. Relationships for recruitment, if you’re working with special populations especially? Do you have necessary personnel, grad students, people to help you with the project? Do you need to train them? What’s the timeline of the study?

Start thinking about all these pieces, and how they are going to fit in that timeline.

This is one way that might help you start thinking about the resources that you need. This is online—Ray Kent had it in his talk, and when I was doing my searches I came across it too and I have the website at the end. Just different ways to think about the resources you might need.

Let’s talk about mapping it out. You have your long-term goal. You have your short-term goals. You’re breaking it down thinking about all those little steps that you need to accomplish. We gotta put it on a calendar. When is it going to happen?

This is an example—you might have your five years. Each month plugging in what are you going to accomplish by that time. Maybe it’s when are grant applications due? It’s going to be important to put those on there to go what do I need to do to make that deadline. Maybe it’s putting when you’re going to get publications out. Things like that.

Honestly, looking at this drives me a little bit crazy, it seems a bit overwhelming. But it’s important to get to these details.

This is an example from, I did Lessons for Success a few years ago and they had their format for doing your plan. I wrote out all my projects, started thinking about all the different aspects. So if something like this works for you, by all means you could use that type of procedure.

Here’s a grid that Ray Kent showed last year. We’re breaking it down by semester. Thinking about each of your semesters, what manuscripts you’re going to be working on, what data collection, your grant applications. Starting to get into some of those other buckets: course preparation, conference submissions.

We also need to include teaching and service.

You probably can’t see this very well. This is similar to that last slide Ray Kent had used last year.

I have my five year plan: what studies I want to accomplish, start thinking about breaking it down.

Then at the beginning of each semester, I fill in a grid like this. Where at the top, I have each of my buckets. I have my grant bucket, my writing bucket which is going to include publications. I also include doing article reviews in my writing bucket, because that’s my writing time. My teaching bucket, my research bucket. Then at the end, my service bucket.

At the beginning of the semester, I think about the big things I want to accomplish. I list those at the top. Then at the beginning of each month, I say, okay what are the things I’m going to accomplish this month, write those in. Then at the beginning of each week, I start looking at whether I’m dedicating any time to the things I said I was going to do that month. I start listing those out saying, this is the amount of time I’m going to spend on that. Of course, I have to take data on what I actually do, so I plug in how much time I’m spending on each of the tasks. Then I graph it, because that’s rewarding to see how much time you’re spending on things, and I get a little side-tracked sometimes.

Think about a system that will help you keep on track, to make sure you’re meeting the goals that you want to meet in terms of your research. But also getting the other things done that you need to get done in terms of teaching and service.

Discussion and Questions

Compiled from comments made during the Pathways 2014 and 2015 conferences. (Video unavailable.)

Building Flexibility into Your Five-Year Plan Comments by Ray Kent, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The five-year plan is not a contract. It’s a map or a compass. A general set of directions to help you plan ahead. It’s not even a contract with yourself, because it will inevitably be revised in some ways.

Sometimes cool things land in your lap. Very often it turns out that through serendipity or whatever else, you find opportunities that are very enticing. Some of those can be path to an entirely new line of research. Some of them can be a huge distraction and a waste of time. It’s a really cool part of science that new things come along. If we put on blinders and say, “I’m committed to my research plan,” and we don’t look to the left or the right, we’re really robbing ourselves of much of the richness of the scientific life. Science is full of surprises, and sometimes those surprises are going to appear as research projects. The problem is you don’t want to redirect all your time and resources to those until you’re really sure they are going to pay off. I personally believe, some of those high risk but really appealing projects are things you can nurse along. You can devote some time and build some collaborations – far enough to determine how realistic and viable they are. That’s important because those things can be the core of your next research program.

It’s very easy to get overcommitted. We all know people who always say “yes”—and we know those people, and they are often disappointing because they can’t get things done. It’s important to have new directions, but limit them. Don’t say, “I’m going to have 12 new directions this year.” Maybe one or two. Weigh them carefully. Talk about them with other people to get a judgment about how difficult it might be to implement them. It enriches science: not only our knowledge, but the way we acquire new knowledge. A psychologist, George Miller—this is the guy with the magic number 7 +- 2—when we interviewed him years ago at Boystown, he said, “My conviction is that everybody should be able to learn a new area of study within three months.” That’s what he thought for a scientist was a goal.

The idea is that you can learn new things. And that’s very important because when you think of it in terms of a 30-year career, how likely is it that the project that you’re undertaking at age 28 is the same project you’ll be working on at age 68? Not very likely. You’re going to be reinventing yourself as a scientist. And reinventing yourself is one of the most important things you can do, because otherwise you’re going to be dead wood. Some projects aren’t worth carrying beyond five or ten years. They have an expiration date.

Building Risk into Your Five-Year Plan Comments by Ray Kent, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Your doctoral study should generally be low-risk research. As you move into a postdoctoral fellowship, think about having two studies—one low-risk, one high-risk with a potential for high impact. At this time you can begin to play the risk factor a little bit differently.

When you are tenure-track you can have a mix of significance with low-risk and high-risk studies. And when you are tenured, then you can go for high risk, clinical trials, and collaborations. Because you have established your independence, so you do not need to worry about losing your visibility. You can be recognized as a legitimate member of the team.

As you plan your career, you should take risk into account. Just as you manage your money taking risk into account, we should manage our careers taking risk into account. I have met people who did not really think about that, and they embarked on some very risky procedures and wasted a lot of time and resources with very little to show for it. For example, don’t put everything into an untested technology basket. You want to be using state of the art technology, but you want to be sure it is going to give you what you need.

Other Formats and Uses of Your Research Plan Audience Comments

• If you do your job right with your job talk, there’s a lot of cross-pollination between your job talk and your research plan. Ideally your job talk tells your colleagues that this is the long-term plan that you have. And they shouldn’t be surprised when you submit a more detailed research plan. They should say, “okay this is very consistent with the job talk.” In my view, the job talk should be a crystal summary of the major aspects of that research program. Of course, much of the talk will be about a specific project or two—but it should always be embedded within the larger program. That helps the audience keep sight of the fact that you are looking at the program. You can say that this is one project that I’ve done, and I plan to do more of these, and this is how they are conceptually related. That’s a good example of why the research plan has multiple purposes – it can be a research statement, it can be the core of your job talk, it can be the nature of your elevator message, and it can be a version of your research plan for a K award application or R01 application or anything else of that nature.
• I think what’s useful is to actually draft your NIH biosketch. The new biosketch has a section called “contributions to science.” It’s really helpful to think about all your projects. It’s hard to start with a blank sheet of paper. But to have it in the format of a biosketch can be really helpful.

Avoiding Overcommitment Audience Comments

• One of the things that is amazing about planning is that if you put an estimate on the level of effort for each part of your plan, you’ll quickly find that you are living three or four lives. Some 300% of your time is spent. It’s helpful for those of us who might share my lack of ability to see constraints or limitations to reel it back and say, “I have a lot on my plate.” Which allows you to say no—which is not something we all do very well when it comes to those nice colleagues and those people you want to impress nationally and connect with. But it allows you to look at what’s planned and go, “I don’t know where I’d find the time to do that.” Which will hopefully help you stay on track.
• I keep a to do list, but I also keep a “to not do” list. One of the things I will keep on my plan is the maximum number of papers I will review in a year. If I hit that number in March, that’s it. I say no to every other paper that comes down the pike. That’s something to work out with your mentor as far as what’s realistic and what’s okay for you. Every time I get a request, I think, “That’s my reading and writing time, so what am I willing to give up. If it means I won’t be able to write on my own paper this week, am I willing to do this?”

Staying on Schedule with Reading, Writing, and Reviewing Audience Comments

• You have to do what works for you. Some people do wait for big blocks of time for writing—which are hard to come by. But the most important thing is to block off your time. Put it on your schedule, or it is the first thing that will get pushed aside.
• Another thing I’ve done with some of my colleagues is writing retreats. So maybe once a year, twice a year, we’ll get together. Usually we’ll go to a hotel or somewhere, and we’re just writing. It’s a great way to get a jumpstart on a project. Like, I need to sit down and start this manuscript, and you can keep going once you’ve got that momentum.
• My input would be that you really have to write all the time, every day. It’s a skill. I’ve found that if I take time off, my writing deteriorates. It’s something you need to keep up with.
• I would look at it like a savings account that you put money into on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. The flip side of writing is reading. I would read constantly, widely, and not just in the discipline. That will give you not only a breadth in terms of your understanding of your field and the world around you, but it will also give you an incentive to make your own contributions. I think we don’t talk enough about the comprehensive side to this, and being receptive to the reading. I have a book, or something, by my bedside every night. And I read that until I fall asleep every night. And it’s done me in good stead over the years.
• Reviewing articles can help advance your career, but it is something you need to weigh carefully as a draw on your time. You get a lot from it. You get to see what’s out there. You get to see what’s coming down the pipe before publication. To me that’s a huge benefit. You get to learn from other people’s writing, and that’s part of your reading you get to do. But it is time consuming. And it depends on the kinds of papers you get. Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you’re not.
• If someone else is reviewing your grants and your articles, at some point you owe it back. You should at least be in break-even mode. Now, pre-tenure or postdoc your mentor should be doing that or senior faculty in the department. But there are so many articles to review. I review so many articles, but I am also at the tail end of my career. The bottom line is, if you don’t put on your schedule that if you don’t put time on your schedule for reading, reviewing articles forces you to look at and think about the literature, so you can be accomplishing what you owe back to the field—and at the same time, staying one step ahead knowledge wise. It forces you to do what you should be doing all along, which is keeping up with the literature.

Further Reading: Web Resources

Golash-Boza, T. (2014). In Response to Popular Demand, More on the 5-Year Plan. The Professor Is In . Available at http://theprofessorisin.com/2014/05/09/in-response-to-popular-demand-more-on-the-5-year-plan

Kelsky, K. (2010). The Five-Year Plan for Tenure-Track Professors. Get a life, PhD . Available at http://getalifephd.blogspot.com/2010/07/five-year-plan-for-tenure-track.html

National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT). (2012). Planning Worksheets . Planning your Research Program (Available from the Science Education Resource Center at Carelton College Website at http://serc.carleton.edu/).

Pfirman, S., Bell, R., Culligan, P., Balsam, P. & Laird, J. (2008) . Maximizing Productivity and Recognition , Part 3: Developing a Research Plan. Science Careers. Available at http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2008_10_10/caredit.a0800148

Cathy Binger University of New Mexico

Lizbeth Finestack University of Minnesota

Based on a presentation and slides originally developed by Ray Kent, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Presented at Pathways (2015). Hosted by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Research Mentoring Network.

Pathways is sponsored by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through a U24 grant awarded to ASHA.

Copyrighted Material. Reproduced by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in the Clinical Research Education Library with permission from the author or presenter.

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Top 10 Research Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

Mohammed Sameer

"Research is creating new knowledge."- Neil Armstrong

When we dwell on what we enjoy most about our work — what excites us, what inspires us, what sparks the next big "a-ha" moment — we seldom consider processes or documentation.

But when we reflect on what frustrates us about our work—"next steps" that get delayed, projects that feel unfocused, minor details that obstruct our plans—we frequently blame processes and documentation.

To figure a way out of the dilemma, consider using a research plan to structure your work. 

Even if you don't use a research plan on a regular basis or are unaware of what it means, it can help your next project run more smoothly.

This blog shows you how to write a research plan in a jiffy (with templates) that can save you hours of work, on balance. 

A research plan template is a concise reference point for your project's timeline, goals, key players, and objectives.

Research plan templates provide an overview of the initiative and serve as a project kick-off document. Its beauty lies in its ability to keep your team on track, to ensure that overarching goals are well-defined and agreed upon, and to ensure that the research meets those goals.

Let's explore our top 10 research plan templates .

Template 1: Business Research Plan PPT Template

Framing a successful business research plan involves dealing with many headaches. A well-structured PPT Template is the answer in all cases. SlideTeam presents a business research plan design that explains project context and objectives, a plan of action, and a timeline to track progress. Download now.

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Template 2: Business Marketing Research Plan PPT Framework

Here’s a six-step business marketing research plan that every company needs. It helps you:

• Know your Business
• Identify your Target Market
• Analyze Competitors
• Outline Strategy
• Set a Budget

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Get this template

Template 3: Timeframe for Business Research Plan

Construct a relevant timeframe for your business research plan using this illustrative template. It has multiple stages, including Industry Profiling, Market Assessment, Customer Persona, and Market Entry Strategies. Each stage is allotted a time frame (in weeks) to ensure your research plan is progressing. Get it now.

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Template 4: Marketing Research Plan PPT Design

Using our template, perform an in-depth examination of how your product or service will perform in a specified area. It facilitates an analysis of the market and an assessment of the demand for your product or service. With the help of the template, you can even get to evaluate competitors. Get it now.

Template 5: Customer Research Plan PPT Template

Building a customer research plan from scratch will seem like a mountain to climb. With this PPT Template, you can avoid this struggle. It has five detailed steps that encompass the core of a customer research plan:

• Identify the Problem
• Develop the Research Plan
• Conduct Research
• Analyze and Report Findings
• Take Action in terms of Budget, Personnel, etc.

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Template 6: Developing the Research Plan Timeline PPT Template

Developing the research plan timeline is a methodical process that necessitates keen attention and effort. Our template makes it easy. From developing the research plan, collecting information, presenting findings, and analyzing information, our template covers every conceivable scenario. Get it now.

Template 7: Our Market Research Plan PPT Template

Present your organization’s month-wise activities concerning the market research plan. It is designed to foster simplicity and highlights how your market research activities are performing against set targets. You can assign colors to individual activities, which eliminates the risk of duplicacy. Grab it now.

Template 8: Business Marketing Research Plan PPT Template

Business marketing research plans can be troublesome to prepare. With our predesigned PPT Template, you can breathe easy knowing everything concerning your research plan is in place. It helps you build a robust infrastructure of your research plan and reevaluate every critical piece to ensure ideal results. Get it now.

Template 9: Shopper Journey Need Desire Research Plan

This predesigned PowerPoint Presentation helps you prepare an inclusive flowchart encompassing the shoppers’ journey giving special attention to their needs and desires. It also emphasizes the importance of loyalty and experience throughout the journey of these shoppers. This template offers you insights you need to build your research plan. Download it now.

Template 10: Market Research Business Plan Diagram

This four-phase market research business plan is a must-have for every enterprise. This is a four-stage process: Exploration, Design and Development, Planning, and Implementation. Each phase has a space for writing a brief where you can highlight points for your audience. The goal of this template is to allow you to conduct market research and make it easier to comprehend the viability of your plans. Download now.

Summing It Up

Your user research plan is a blueprint for your research project. It's the most straightforward way to set expectations, solicit feedback, and generate enthusiasm and support for your research.

A solid research plan can go a long way toward ensuring a solid research project, whether it actively guides your interviews or provides an active structure for organizing your thoughts.

FAQs on Research Plan Templates

What is a research plan.

A research plan is a framework that outlines your approach to your topic. A written outline, a narrative, a visual/concept map, or a timeline are all examples of plans. It is a living document that evolves as you conduct your research.

Components of a research plan:

• Research conceptualization - presents your research question.
• Research methodology - describes how you intend to approach the research question.
• Literature review, critical evaluation, and synthesis - a methodical approach to locating, reviewing, and evaluating relevant work (texts, exhibitions, critiques, etc.)
• Communication - directed at a specific audience, demonstrating evidence of your investigation

How do you write a research plan?

Steps to writing a research plan:

• Define the project's goal
• Determine individual objectives
• Choose a research method
• Organize participants and assign tasks
• Create a project synopsis
• Make a realistic timetable
• Determine how you will present your findings

What are the 5 elements of research?

The systematic investigation of discovering new knowledge or contributing to generalized knowledge is known as research. It adheres to a specific structure that is specified in the research design. For research to be successful, elements that aid in problem-solving must be included. Here are some examples of good research design elements that produce excellent results:

• Statement of purpose
• Methods of data collection
• Techniques for analyzing research data
• Methodologies of research
• Research difficulties
• Prerequisites for conducting research
• The appropriate time for the research study
• Analysis measurement

What is the difference between a research proposal and a research report?

A research proposal is a medium by which a researcher introduces the research problem and communicates the need for research. It is imperative in the application process. It provides a snapshot of the questions that the researcher hopes to answer using the research. It specifies the researcher's methodology during the research process.

On the other hand, a research report is the culmination of the research effort. It's an excellent way to explain the research and its findings to a group of people. It is the result of a study conducted during the research process.

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5StarEssays. (2020). Writing a research proposal—Outline, format and examples. In Complete guide to writing a research paper . Retrieved from https://www.5staressays.com/blog/writing-research-proposal

Walliman, N. (2011). Research methods: The basics . Routledge—Taylor and Francis Group.

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Thiel, D. V. (2014). Research methods for engineers . University Printing House, University of Cambridge.

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Lues, L., & Lategan, L. O. K. (2006). RE: Search ABC (1st ed.). Sun Press.

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Developing the Overall Research Plan

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The market research process consists of six discrete stages or steps:

• Step 1 - Articulate the research problem and objectives
• Step 2 - Develop the overall research plan
• Step 3 – Collect the data or information
• Step 4 – Analyze the data or information
• Step 5 – Present or disseminate the findings
• Step 6 – Use the findings to make the decision

This article focuses on Step 2. Developing a research plan is a complex undertaking because it involves so many different decisions.

Designing a market research plan begins with determining the most efficacious way to  collect the information . Innovative technology has enabled research tools to move to digital environments. Still, the fundamentals haven't changed: A market researcher must determine what data sources to use, the type of research approaches to take, how to  limit distortions of the data , what research instruments to employ, how a  sampling plan should be configured, how to protect participants' privacy, and what methods will be used to  contact research participants . Another critical concern is how much it will cost to implement the research plan.

Primary vs. Secondary Data

Before the market researcher can determine what research instruments to use, a decision must be made about the data sources. A market researcher can choose to collect primary data, secondary data, or both types of information. Primary data is gathered for the first time for a particular project or a specific purpose. Secondary data exists prior to the initialization of a new research project, having been collected for another purpose.

The fresh gathering of data, using primary research constitutes the main distinction between primary data and secondary data is that freshly gathered data is associated with primary research. A common form of primary research data is syndicated research, in which a group of researchers who are interested in the same research problem commission an independent market research provider to conduct a study and share the results with the purchasing participants.

While primary data seems the preferable course, a common and prudent practice is for a market researcher to explore possible secondary sources of data to determine if they will suffice to answer research questions.  Primary data collection can be expensive. Secondary data is generally of low cost or even available for free, and it is immediately available without having to wait for a research study to be completed.

Of course, a fundamental disadvantage of secondary data is that it will generally not have been configured precisely to fulfill a research agenda. As such, secondary data may be incomplete, inaccurate, dated, or unreliable. In such cases, a market researcher will necessarily need to commit to some type of primary data collection process.

Pilot Testing

Typically, primary data collection begins with some type of pilot testing, even if it is as simple as interviewing people in groups or individually to get the feel for  how people perceive some topic or question . Then a formal research instrument is developed, pilot-tested again for problems, and then used in the field to conduct the desired research, all according to the research plan. There are four main types of research data instruments available to market researchers:

Questionnaires or Surveys

For gathering primary research data , surveys are the most commonly used of the instruments. Although  the survey instrument is flexible and relatively inexpensive, it requires careful attention during development. All surveys should be pilot tested, at least to some degree, before they are released and administered to a target sample. The forms that the questions take should be carefully considered to ensure they perform as expected and that they fit well into the survey document as a whole. Developing survey questions is both an art and a science. Fortunately, many guidelines to survey construction, administration, and scoring are available.

Psychological Tools

Three commonly used psychological tools used to collect primary data are laddering questions techniques , in-depth interviews , and Rorschach-like tests.

• Laddering questions continue to probe deeper into the perspectives and opinions of respondents. The technique is iterative so that each subsequent question is generated according to the response to the previous question. Laddering is a technique that has been widely used in creative problem-solving methods and workshops. In-depth interviewing consists of probing ever deeper into the customer experience.
• The technique of in-depth interviewing was developed by Ernest Dichter. He differentiated between  qualitative research and quantitative research, referring to the former as head shrinking and the latter as nose counting . (Needless to say, Dichter was a proponent of qualitative research .)
• An interview technique similar to that used in Rorschach testing has been developed for market research by Gerald Zaltman of Olson Zaltman Associates. The instrument is known as the Zaltman Metaphoric Elicitation Technique (ZMET) and uses metaphoric images to access the associations that consumers have with certain product types. Typically, a participant in a ZMET-based study will collect images from a wide array of pictures that have no verbal content in order to  express the associated feelings and thoughts they have with regard to a product type.

Mechanical Devices

Mechanical devices are sometimes used to measure the physiological responses of research participants to product attributes or advertisements. Generally, what is measured is interest or emotions in response to what is seen, heard, felt, or smelled. Mechanical devices used in primary research data collection include Galvanometers, eye cameras, eye gaze recorders, audiometers, and tachistoscopes that show an image or ad for a brief flash.

Qualitative Measures

Qualitative measures are becoming more common in primary research as advanced in technology support different approaches, such as online surveys enabled by SurveyMonkey. Consumers are being turned loose with sophisticated technology on which they can record their impressions of product or aspects of their consumer experience.

Some market research provider agencies even go into the homes of consumers to film their interactions with products. These videos are trimmed down to a highlight reel that is used to analyze consumer behavior. One of the primary reasons for preferring qualitative measures to surveys or interviewing is that  the expressed beliefs and intentions of consumers often fail to match their actual behavior in the realm of brand engagement or purchase decisions.

Kotler, P. (2003). Marketing Management (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., Prentice Hall.

Lehmann, D. R. Gupta, S., and Seckel, J. (1997). Market Research. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

• Introduction to Data Collection in Market Research
• Market Research 101: Develop the Research Plan
• Market Research 101: Data Analysis
• What Is Market Research?
• Qualitative or Quantitative? How to Choose a Method for Your Survey
• How Secondary Market Research Works
• How to Conduct Market Research Surveys
• Motivation Research and How It Is Used
• How to Analyze Interview Data and Survey Responses
• Deductive and Inductive Market Research
• 8 Ways Even Small Nonprofits Can Do Market Research
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Quantitative Research
• Important Technical Skills With Examples
• Important Marketing Skills That Employers Value
• 9 Best Drone Business Ideas to Start Right Away
• Sample Human Resources Manager Job Description

Qualitative Research Plan

Every drop counts . Because research requires the input of resources—money or kind—it should have a justified return. You may be fine with throwing away a few dollars, but what about thousands of dollars? And what if you could shorten five months of hard labor into half? Think of all the other things you could have done with your time and money. When you have a research plan , you can save yourself the avoidable hassle of losing your mind to stress at 3 AM.

Before the board or your academic mentors give your study a signal, you have to show them that you know what you’re doing. A research plan is your research roadmap. And like any map, you use the plan to steer you and your team in the right direction. In essence, it is a document that reminds the researcher of the important details about the study.

Plan vs. Proposal

A research plan is different from a research proposal . Although both talks about the study, the proposal is meant to sway opinion to favoring the conduct of the study. You also use proposals when you want to acquire study grants from higher institutions. A plan is for your perusal. As a researcher, you tend to become immersed in your study. By following all the promising trails, you may get lost in the process. Having a plan at arms reach lets you keep yourself on track. When you include a project timeline in your document, you can also track your progress along the way.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative

The rift goes way beyond numbers or the lack of thereof. The difference between the two isn’t because one is better than the other. In fact, a lot of research fields can benefit from the input of both methods. The choice between the two lies in what kind of question you want to answer. Qualitative research is appropriate for pioneer studies or those that require a deeper understanding of opinion, experiences, and encounters. Some things cannot be reduced to ones and zeroes. There are different methods for performing qualitative research. You can use interviews, focus groups, surveys , or observations. The versatility and cost-effectiveness of these methods make them a popular resort to researchers.

However, we cannot reduce quantitative research as a cold way to see the world. Quantitative research places measurements on things like opinion, behavior, and other variables. This method is more analytical and structured than qualitative research. Because most of the subjectivity is removed in data collection and analysis, the findings that are true for a small group can be used to generalize a bigger population. Most research in hard sciences is quantitative because the replicability of the results generally makes for credible results, especially when the only witnesses of the described event are the scientists in that lab. This research also makes use of surveys and questionnaires, provided that the observations can be represented in numerical data afterward.

Plan Framework

In general, the plans adhere to the same format, although you can see derivations in the names of the headers or the arrangement of the sections. The document is like a proposal, except that the details are made for the researchers themselves. Research plans can be a precursor to research proposals. Hence they tend to have similarities in the document structure.

Research Question:  This is the cold brew of your research study that kickstarts the entire research endeavor. This is the challenge or the issue that you want to address with your study. When you have a poorly-defined research question, you might as well forget about getting that research grant . The question is a lead on what the study will cover and the gaps in related literature.

Hypotheses:  These are your well-educated predictions on the results of the study in answer to your research questions. Your entire research design is grounded in testing these hypotheses. That is why your guesses must be backed by established and credible information. It is also these hypotheses that will be supported or refuted by succeeding studies.

Objectives: Objectives will influence the research design because what you want to accomplish will direct the methods you’ll use. When well-defined, they will steer you straight in the right direction. This means that they should be appropriate for your study. In devising your objectives , you should remember to make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.

Research Design:  Because a research plan is like a rough sketch of your study, it includes your actual plan on how you will perform your investigation, as well as your list of materials and equipment. The details don’t have to be refined and specific, but they should convey the general idea. You can create a research flowchart of your methods to visualize the process better. Aside from being a map of the research, it is also an inventory check to see if you have the things you need for the study.

Examples of Qualitative Research Plans

People learn by example. Check out the following qualitative research plans that would help you with your content. You can download these PDF files as your guide.

1. Research Plan Sample

Size: 22 KB

2. Research Plan Guide

Size: 264 KB

3. Research Plan Abstract

Size: 73 KB

4. Research Plan Outline

Size: 106 Kb

5. Research Plan Example

Size: 116 KB

6. Funded Research Example

Size: 89 KB

7. Data Analysis Plan

Size: 941 KB

Preparing a Research Plan

Your research plan is for your use. It is meant to guide you throughout the entire research conduct . However, when you’ve set your standards too high and your plan is too idealistic, your performance and results might disappoint you. How do you make a plan that will work for you?

1. Research Your Research

When you want to answer a problem, you first have to be knowledgeable about it. Especially when you are applying for a research grant, your benefactors should have the impression that you know what you’re doing. You have to scour sources for related literature. Maybe the study has already been done, or there is a similar problem that has already been solved. By being diligent in your literature review, you can get a grasp of the issue’s relevance to society. Because you are learning more about the subject, you can identify methods and approaches that you can apply. By now, your study is taking shape.

2. Draw a Complete Map

This is a large section of your research plan. It describes what you want to come out of this study and your expectations. You will also write about your course of action to realize those goals. There is a domino relationship shared by your research questions, objectives, and methodology . The former two determine your methods. And the three will have a significant bearing on your results. You can use established methods provided that you justify why you use them. You can be as specific as possible. But because the plan is preliminary, you can expect changes along the way.

3. Be Practical and Realistic

As a researcher, you would want to make a significant contribution to the world. However, being too ambitious without the capacity to back it up will have negative consequences for your study. Therefore, when you plan a study, you have to look at your available resources. If you plan on procuring materials for the study, will they arrive on time? Is your expected schedule for deliverables realistic? Is your expectation for the study reasonable? You can add a timetable and a breakdown of foreseen expenses in your plan. That way, you can stick to your schedule and your budget.

4. Track Your Progress

Your research plan should be with you throughout the study period as a reference. You can view it to review your next steps or spot the ones you missed. Will the activities still fit the determined period? The chances that you will run out of time on an activity. Don’t create a rigid time frame. The future is unpredictable, so you should include a time allowance for each activity. You can also use Gantt charts to monitor your progress. The charts will let you see how much you have accomplished and how much work is left.

In any research endeavor, it pays to be prepared. We can’t predict the future, but when we have a plan on how to live with this uncertainty, we can mitigate losses. As a researcher, you can integrate research plans in the conduct of your studies. The document can influence the success of your investigation.

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How to Create a Genealogy Research Plan: A 5-Step Example

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A research plan helps you record the who, what, when, where and why of your family history quest. Think of it as a road map, or in modern terms, a GPS that provides a navigational system to your past. Just as you wouldn’t attempt to change the oil in your car without instructions or try to prepare a baked Alaska without a recipe, you shouldn’t even think about going on your ancestral journey without a solid plan.

In this article, I’ll take you through a simple, five-point strategy to create a research plan by showing you how I used this method to trace the birth, marriage and death records of my paternal great-grandfather, Mihaly Fenscak. You can use it as a model to chart your own course for genealogical success.

1. Establish genealogy research objective.

Write down as specifically as possible what you want to accomplish. Perhaps you want to identify the name of the overseas town or village where your great-grandfather was born, or when he immigrated to the United States.

Your objective should include both long-term research goals and the short-term steps that will help you reach your overall objective (note any steps you can think of now, but you’ll add more as you develop your plan). For example, a long-term goal might be to determine when your great-grandfather left home and the date he arrived in the United States. A short-term goal might be to l ocate him in a US federal census that asks for the year of immigration — the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 censuses.

Like most family historians, you probably have more than one genealogy problem you’re trying to solve. For now, though, choose one or two to focus on. My objective was to find the birth, marriage and death dates for my great-grandfather.

2. List known ancestor facts.

Assuming you’ve completed a pedigree chart and family group sheet using genealogy software or  one of our free forms , your next step is to list known facts about the person you’re researching.

You can use the  free, downloadable biographical outline form here  to record your known facts. Examine any genealogical records you’ve gathered and write down what they tell you. Include names of the person and his family members; any spelling variations of the first and last names you’ve found in records; dates of birth, death and marriage; dates of migrations; and places where his life events took place.

For example, you may know your great-grandfather had three sisters and two brothers, and you may even have their first names from a family Bible or other book. Perhaps you have a marriage date or location, or a record that refers to a particular county seat or region in the old country. Think of these facts as your data points that you’ll plug into your genealogy GPS.

One caveat: Be careful not to blindly accept as truth family tales about where your ancestors went and why. You can treat these as clues and investigate their validity by tracking down records to document what happened.

I looked in home and family sources and wrote some notes I made during my search. I was able to determine the following from a family narrative naming Mihaly Fenscak and his wife, Illa. Other clues included:

• Ancestral village listed as Posa, Slovakia.
• Also mentioned time spent in Liverpool, England, and Freeland, Pa.
• Mihaly was a widower with two children, Anna and John, when he married Illa.
• His children with Illa were: Mary, born in Liverpool; Anna, born in Freeland; Elizabeth and Mihaly (Mike) Fenchak, both born in Slovakia.
• Mihaly died first and Illa remarried a man named Zelenak-no date listed but story notes that she died before World War I because her daughter who was already in America returned to Slovakia to care for her mother and was unable to return to America because of the war.

From this narrative I was able to pinpoint some information to research:

• Surnames and variations: Fenscak/Fencak/Fenchak/Finch; Alzo; Bavolar; Ceyba; Ragan; Zelenak.
• First names and variations (Hungarian/Slovak/English): Mihaly /Michael/Mike; Illa/Ilona/Helen; Erzebet/Elizabeth; Jan/Janos/Jan; Mary; Anna.

3. Form a working hypothesis.

Based on the known facts you recorded in the previous step, make some educated guesses about the possible answers to your research question or problem. For example, say you know your great-grandfather’s date of birth, and that he was born in Germany, but his sister who was five years younger was born in America. That lets you estimate a date range — between the two birth dates — for their family’s immigration to the United States. If you’ve found their father in the 1900 census and then again in the 1920 census, but not in 1910, you could speculate that he moved. Or perhaps he was a “bird of passage” who came to the United States for a short time, worked to earn enough money to return home and buy land, and then came back to America later.

Here’s the hypothesis I came up with, outlining Mihlay Fenscak’s life:

Mihaly Fenscak was born in Posa, Slovakia, married there and had two children. His first wife died and then he married Illa. Their first child was born in Liverpool, England, and then they arrived in America. While in Freeland, Pa., their daughter Anna was born, and then they eventually returned to Slovakia where their final two children, Elizabeth and Michael were born. Mihaly and Illa both died in Slovakia. Their three daughters eventually settled in America, and their son in Argentina. Mihaly’s children from first wife: John settled in America; Anna stayed in Slovakia and married.

4. Identify sources with related records.

Now it’s time for some searching: Become familiar with the types of records most likely to prove (or disprove) your hypothesis. Include both primary sources (those created at or near the time of an event, usually by a direct observer) and secondary sources (those created either much later than the event, or by someone who was reading or interpreting a primary source). Primary sources are generally preferable to secondary sources because they’re more likely to be accurate.

Note that the same source might be a primary source of some information, and a secondary source of other information. For example, a death certificate is a primary source of the cause of death, but a secondary source of the deceased’s date of birth (reported years after the birth by someone probably lacking first-hand knowledge).

TIP:  For more information on evaluating primary and secondary sources, see the  Board for Certification of Genealogists’ Guidelines for Evaluating Genealogical Resources .

Among the records that would provide your great-grandfather’s US arrival date are passenger lists, naturalization records and maybe Alien Registration files (created from 1940 to 1944, when the US government required non-citizens to register as aliens). Do some research to find out what records are available for the time period you’re researching, where they’re located (such as your public library or the  National Archives ) and in what format (microfilm, digitized online, indexed in a book, etc.).

Once I established my hypothesis, I listed records and other sources I felt would be useful based on what I learned in step 2:

• Family narrative (original source)
• 1910, 1920 and 1930 US Census records for Elizabeth Fenchak Alzo, Mary Fenchak Ceyba, Anna Fenchak Bavolar and John Fenchak
• Death certificates for Elizabeth Fenchak Alzo and her sisters Anna, Mary and her brother, John
• Ellis Island database for Port of New York passenger lists
• Other passenger lists for other ports as needed
• Port of departure lists (emigration) for Hamburg and Bremen, Germany (as available)
• Cemetery tombstones in Duquesne, Pa.
• Marriage records for Elizabeth and siblings in the United States
• Naturalization papers/declaration of intent for Elizabeth, Anna, Mary, John
• Search Social Security Death Index for all children of Mihaly Fenchak who settled in America. Write for SS-5 Applications.
• Family History Library (FHL) microfilm of births, marriages and deaths in Posa, Slovakia, and 1869 Hungarian census returns for Zemplen County, Hungary

5. Define steps for accessing and using resources.

Next, determine how you’ll access those records. Can you find them on a subscription website such as  Footnote  or  Ancestry.com  ? (And is free access to the site available at your local public library or Family History Center)? In researching your great-grandfather’s immigration, for example, you’ll find that Footnote (which you can use at many Family History Centers ) has digitized naturalization records for many areas of the United States, and  Ancestry.com  has nearly all extant passenger lists for US ports and borders. The free websites  CastleGarden.org  and  EllisIsland.org  have information on passengers arriving at the port of New York.

If you can’t find the records online, you may need to order microfilm through a Family History Center, submit an interlibrary loan request or order the records from a repository, such as the National Archives.

Once you know how to access the records, determine the order in which you’ll seek them. For example, you might decide it’s easiest to first check the passenger lists and naturalization indexes in Ancestry.com’s online immigration databases, then visit your library for printed resources such as  Germans to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at US Ports 1850-1897  by Ira A. Glazier and P. William Filby (Scarecrow Press), and go to your Family History Center to rent microfilmed naturalization records that you’re unable to find online.

TIP:  To help you research record sources, type the record you want to find out about into the  FamilySearch Research Wiki  search box. In your search results, click a matching article title for how-to information on the topic.

To avoid repeating the same fruitless searches on the same websites again and again, keep a written record of all the sources you search, the date you search them, and what you find (or don’t find). You may be able to do this in your genealogy software, or  use the free, downloadable Research Journal . When one resource points to another type of record you should check, note that in your research journal, too.

Once I had a list of records and other sources for information on Mihaly, I came up with research strategies for each one:

• Check online US Census records (1910, 1920, 1930) for children of Mihaly and Illa Fenchak.
• Confirm naturalizations and confirm place of birth (1920, 1930 census); locate certificates and declarations of intent either in Pennsylvania or at the federal level using Freedom of Information Act request form.
• Search the online Ellis Island database, the Castle Garden database and the Ancestry.com US Immigration Collection for Anna, Mary, John and Elizabeth; also for Mihaly and Illa Fenchak.
• Search Social Security Death Index for all children of Mihaly Fenchak who settled in America; If so, request SS-5 Applications from the Social Security Administration.
• Check cemeteries in Duquesne, Pa., for tombstones and write for death records for Anna Bavolar, Mary Ceyba and John Fenchak.
• Contact or visit appropriate courthouses in Allegheny County, Pa., for marriage records.
• Find birth records for Anna (Pennsylvania), Mary (Liverpool, England) and Elizabeth, Michael and John (Slovakia).
• Search the FHL catalog for records available for Posa, Slovakia to view online or at a Family History Center. Relevant records include church records for Posa (microfilm film numbers: 1793237, 1793238 and 1793239) and the 1869 Hungarian Census for Zemplen county film number 722769. Search films for all listings of the name “Fenscak.”

It may seem overwhelming at first, but don’t let making research plans intimidate you. A little practice and it will become easier and easier to make plans and identify hypotheses. Remember, a solid research plan is key to making ancestral breakthroughs and knocking down those brick walls standing between you and your ancestors.

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A version of this article appeared in the January 2011 issue of Family Tree Magazine.

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Planning research with generative ai.

April 5, 2024 2024-04-05

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AI chatbots (like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot) can support UX researchers of all experience levels in planning their research.

In This Article:

What is a research plan, using ai chatbots to write a research plan.

Good research always starts with a plan.

A research plan is a document that outlines the research objectives and how the research will be executed.

Research plans should include:

• The research goals or questions that the research is hoping to achieve or answer
• The method to be used and a description of how it will be carried out
• The tasks or questions that will be given to study participants
• The profile of the target participants
• The screener questionnaire used to recruit participants

Creating a research plan can be time-consuming. Even with a good template, a researcher must generate research questions, select the appropriate method(s), decide how to run sessions, and often create study collateral (like screeners and tasks) from scratch. The good news is that AI can help with many, if not all, of these tasks!

It can be tempting to just ask an AI tool to give you a research plan for a project. Don’t do that.

❌ Bad Prompt : Generate a research plan for a usability test of a food-delivery app.

This kind of request results in a generic, template-like response, partly because AI lacks the context to propose a complete research plan and partly because of how the model has been trained.

To construct a useful research plan, deconstruct the plan into parts and have the AI chatbot tackle each part individually. You can assemble responses in a final research plan.

Don’t expect the AI to ask you the right questions in order to get a comprehensive outcome. View the AI tool as a UX assistant , not as a UX mentor. You need to feed into the AI all the steps and details you want it to consider.

Follow the steps below for the best results.

Step 1: Provide Context

Imagine asking an experienced colleague for recommendations on what research study to run without giving them any context on what project you’re working on and what you’re trying to achieve. They would probably say, "It depends on what you’re trying to learn.” Conversing with AI presents no exception.

Start your conversation with enough context , especially if the AI tool does not already have this information stored about you or your current project. ( ChatGPT 4 allows users to store context for each new conversation.)

The contextual information you share should include who you work for, the scope of your project, and what you’re looking to achieve. Remember that some AI tools may use your conversations to train their models, so share only information you would be comfortable with being in the open domain.

 Prompt Template: I work for [type or organization] . My company provides [what kind of product, service, or experience] . I need to run a user-research study to learn [something about users or a problem] .

Step 2: Generate Research Questions

After providing the AI tool with context, ask it to suggest specific research questions for the study. Here’s an example from a recent study on research repositories that I conducted for NN/g.

Prompt Example: I will run a research study and report on how UX practitioners across different organizations set up and use research repositories. Please generate 10 research questions that would be suitable for this sort of study.

It’s a good idea to ask generative AI tools for more options or ideas than you think you’ll need, because some will not be a good fit.

Microsoft Copilot responded to the prompt above with the 10 research questions below.

10 Research questions generated by Microsoft Copilot

Who are the primary users of the research repository within different organizations? What motivates users to engage with the research repository? How do different teams (design, product, sales, marketing) access and benefit from the research repository? What challenges do practitioners face when contributing to or retrieving information from the repository? What types of research artifacts (reports, raw data, templates) are most commonly stored in the repository? How do organizations structure their research repositories? What tools and templates are commonly used to facilitate research repository management? How do practitioners ensure the quality and accuracy of information in the repository? What impact does the research repository have on decision-making and project outcomes? What strategies can organizations implement to encourage widespread adoption and active participation in the research repository?

To broaden your pool of research questions, ask for further research questions or provide the same prompt in a new session. Repeat this process as many times as you need to generate a list that feels exhaustive of what you’d like to learn.

Some of the research questions Copilot generated for me were appropriate, and others were not. As a result, I had AI generate more research questions to choose from.

Unfortunately, most AI chatbots don’t offer an easy way to dismiss suggestions or combine specific responses and work from only these (a behavior called apple-picking ).

Pulling in generated research questions into an offline document (like a FigJam or Google Doc) allows you to easily group items, remove duplicates, or reword suggested research questions.

Begin a new chat session with your selected and refined set of research questions, so that the unwanted research questions are removed from the chat history.

Step 3: Request Methods

After sharing the context and your chosen research questions, ask the AI tool to identify suitable research methods.

Example Prompt : What study would you suggest to answer these research questions? Please be specific; cite which research questions would be answered by which research method if you suggest multiple methods.

Generative-AI advice is not always good advice. Often, these tools will suggest various methods and suggest you triangulate data from multiple sources. This approach is not always needed. Also, not all methods will be practical or the best fit for your study. Additionally, AI may suggest interviews and focus groups even for research questions better suited to a behavioral research method .

Ask AI chatbots to tell you which research methods would be suited to which research question and why. We also recommend doing some further reading on your own about any methods that are unfamiliar to you.

In response to the prompt above (and given my chosen research questions), ChatGPT recommended a survey, interviews with select UX practitioners, and case studies. These were all my chosen methods, so AI had done well here!

Step 4: Request Inclusion Criteria

AI can create inclusion criteria — a necessary component of your research plan. Do this step only after generating research questions and methods since these will inform who should participate in the research study.

Inclusion criteria (or recruitment criteria) are specific characteristics of the target population that need to be represented in your sample.

Start with inclusion criteria before asking the AI to help you write a screening questionnaire ; AI can only craft an appropriate screener after it “knows” who you’re looking to recruit.

Example Prompt: So that I recruit the right people for my interviews, help me create some inclusion criteria. What characteristics or behaviors should I recruit for?

Step 5: Request Help with Screeners, Interview Questions, and Tasks

Finally, ask the AI to put together:

• Interview questions or an interview guide (if conducting interviews)
• Tasks for a usability test
• Diary-study prompts (if relevant)
• Recruitment confirmation emails or other communication messages.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad examples of the above on the web. Conversational AI has been trained on all this data. Therefore, don’t be surprised if it produces poor study collateral on its first attempt! This is a major risk area for new researchers.

One way to mitigate this danger is to give the AI tool advice when crafting any of these outputs . Think of AI as a new research assistant who can learn extremely quickly.

Common mistakes that AI tools make include:

• Using words that appear in the interface in task instructions (priming)
• Creating task instructions that ask users to imagine they are someone that they are not
• Not including a goal or a call to action in the task instruction
• Not including distractor options in screening questionnaires
• Using overenthusiastic marketing language in recruitment materials

It’s not surprising that AI makes these mistakes since UX practitioners also make them!

To improve outputs, feed the AI essential tips, such as:

• When crafting tasks: Do not use the name of words or link labels in the task instruction. Find a natural-language equivalent to explain what the participant should do . (You can ask AI to “read” a website or an image.)
• When crafting recruitment materials: Use neutral and concise language in the recruitment email. Avoid using overly enthusiastic marketing language.
• When crafting a screener: Include multiple-choice questions and answer options that might disguise what the study is about and who I am looking to recruit.

Additionally, when possible, feed the AI with good examples of screener questionnaires, tasks, or interview questions, so it can follow their format or style.

Even with this advice, AI can still make mistakes. If you’re doubting its answers, check primary sources or speak with an experienced researcher for old-fashioned human guidance.

If you have ChatGPT’s Plus Plan, you can use our GPT for planning your research.

With the proper context, examples, and advice, AI tools, like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, can craft helpful research questions, tasks, interview questions, and other study collateral far more quickly than you could if you started from scratch.

Research leads and ResearchOps personnel can support junior researchers and PWDRs (People Who Do Research) by providing examples and advice that can be fed to AI agents. Experienced researchers can benefit from using AI to speed up their research-planning process and obtain further inspiration.

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The 6 Stages of an Effective Product Development Process

What exactly should the product development process include? We’ll walk you through the six key stages and how to implement them.

Read more posts by this author.

Product development is one of those terms that seems straightforward, but ends up getting used in a lot of different ways. 

• Is it just the actual build of your product? 
• Is it the entire product development life cycle? 
• Is it the same as product management? 
• Does it come into play before or after product strategy? 

In short: Product development goes beyond the straightforward “building it” phase of your product. However, it’s not so broad as to encompass everything related to your product (i.e. product or marketing strategy). 

That said, understanding the actual product development process is crucial for making sure you can develop and launch your product efficiently and scale effectively. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through: 

• What exactly is product development? 
• How it compares to product management 
• The product development stages 
• Product development process examples  

What is product development?

Product development includes the product’s entire journey — everything from ideation to strategy and planning, building and launching, and more. In short: Product development is the process by which you plan, build, and launch your product into the world. 

Generally, when people talk about product development, they’re referring to the actual software development phases. Keep in mind that there are a lot of tangential steps that lead up to and follow from the actual build. Those can be part of the product development process, too. 

Product development vs. product management 

A key distinction to make right away: Product development is not the same as product management, although these two terms are often used interchangeably. They cover two overlapping, but distinct aspects of your product. 

Product development and product management also often involve different teams. As the name suggests, product managers oversee the product management process. The product development process is usually most closely managed by development or engineering teams. 

Think of them as concentric circles, where product development sits inside of the larger functions and goals of product strategy and product management. 

To clarify: 

Product management entails all of the product lifecycle stages and encompasses all aspects of managing that product. This includes product strategy and roadmap creation , development and launch, marketing and sales, user retention, and so on. 

Product strategy and product roadmapping involve big-picture planning for your product’s lifecycle. They tend to focus on what you’re planning to do and create with your product and why. 

Product development is narrower in scope and usually focuses on the how . That is, how are we going to develop the features and components needed to meet our goals and achieve our product vision? 

The six stages of the product development process

Although the product development process is narrower in scope, that’s not to say it’s as simple as picking some features and then building them. 

Product development has six primary development stages: 

• Research 
• Ideation 
• Validation 
• Development and launch

Let’s break down what goes into each of those. 

1. Research 

An effective product development process begins with market research. 

Hopefully, this isn’t the first time you’ve done some research for your product. Market research can be helpful in developing both big-picture ideas as well as solutions for specific features or product components. 

Before you embark on the actual development, it’s important to understand exactly who you’re building for, what the problem is, and how your target audience wants to solve that problem. 

Market research for the product development phase can look like: 

• Surveying your target market to understand exactly what they need or want from your product
• Doing market analysis to understand how competitors are solving the problem, or what gaps exist in the target market
• Asking existing customers or potential customers to rank potential features or solutions 
• Understanding your target audience. Who are they? What do they want? What are their big goals or tasks they want to accomplish? Who are your biggest potential customers and what solutions are they currently using? 
• Testing your value proposition to understand if it resonates with your target audience. You want to validate that you’re solving the right problems in the best ways. 

2. Ideation 

Ideation is an important phase of the product development process both before you build your minimum viable product (MVP) and after you launch. After all, hopefully you’ll continue to iterate and grow your product beyond V1. To do so, you’ll need to have a clear process in place for idea generation and creating new product features. 

During the strategy phase, you’ve already created a vision for what your product could become and the problems it could solve for your target market. Now, you need to boil down that vision into concrete product ideas and features that can solve those problems, based on your research. 

The ideation phase can include tasks like: 

• Defining a unique value proposition (UVP): Based on your research and your product vision, what’s the unique value that your solution will provide compared to other solutions available? This can be high-level — as in, your entire product concept and strategy — or it can be narrower, focused on a single problem or function within your product. 
• Wireframing design: How do you want your product to look and feel? How can design support your functionality and solutions? Creating some design wireframes or mockups at this stage can help you with concept development and communicating essential features. 
• Feasibility analysis: A feasibility analysis helps make sure your current and prioritized product ideas are‌ possible with your given resources, time, and budget. You may have a grand vision for your product, but what are you able to actually accomplish? Do you need to reduce the scope or bring on a larger team to make it possible? 

 3. Validation

The next stage in the product development process is validation. It’s a crucial development stage, but one that can be easily overlooked. 

After all, you’ve already done your research, now you know what you need to do — you should just do it, right? 

Almost. Before you jump into the actual development — which can be costly and time-consuming, especially if you’re building with traditional code as opposed to faster, more lightweight no-code tools — you want to validate the product ideas you landed on with your target audience.

Validation can be a humbling step, but ultimately, it’s the old measure twice, cut once principle. As Maria Posa, Bubble Developer, says, 

“Your idea (which can feel like your baby) is wrong, at least to some extent. Be open to feedback and criticism because that’s how you learn and improve your idea. Not only that, but make sure your users know that you’re open to feedback and criticism, so they feel comfortable delivering it to you.” 

So, how do you validate your ideas? 

• Ask customers for implicit or explicit validation. You can ask your users directly, “Is [x] a good solution to [y] problem? Why?” But sometimes it’s more helpful to let them go first to make sure they aren’t just going along with whatever you present. Try asking, “I assume it’d make things easier if you had [alternate solution to your actual idea], right?” Let them tell you no and explain why. Both can validate your ideas or give you a stronger direction to head in. 
• Build a prototype or MVP. A prototype or MVP can be a valuable tool in the development process for customer feedback and testing. Creating something with basic but limited functionality lets you do moderated testing to see how users would interact with the design and functionality. Want to move faster? Read our guide to ditching MVPs and launching your V1 with Bubble. 
• Concept testing. Validate your overall feature or product concepts through user surveys and early feedback from beta testing or mockups. This can give you valuable insights into your bigger ideas, and how you’re planning on executing them. 

Sometimes your assumptions aren’t going to be accurate. Validate before the core build, let your target audience guide your discovery process, and be willing to pivot as needed. 

4. Planning

The planning stage is another one that’s easy to skip over when you’re trying to move fast. You’ve settled on and validated your ideas, but skipping straight to building them can muddy the waters later. 

Instead, first map out a product development roadmap . Having a development roadmap in place can make the development and launch process so much smoother, and can save time and money in the long run.  

You may already have a product roadmap , but a product development roadmap is different. It goes into more granular detail about the actual work to be done, who owns it, what the timeline is, and so on. Your product development roadmap helps streamline communication and collaboration and organize complicated processes to support your product’s success. 

Here’s what you might want to include in your development roadmap: 

• Product goals and metrics: What is the end goal for your product, or for this phase of development? How will you measure success? 
• Product features: What specific features or functionality will be built in this phase of the development process? 
• Tech specifications: What are the technical requirements and needs for your product at this time? 
• Release plan: What critical tasks, testing, and development needs to happen prior to launch? 
• Timeline: When will major releases and key features be launched? What is the timeline for work that needs to be completed to meet those goals? 
• Budget and resources: What are your current resources and budget limitations, and how do they fit within your plans? 
• Potential risks: What challenges and known risks need to be accounted for, and how are you planning to manage them? 

5. Development and launch

Finally, it’s time to get your product built and out in the world! 

You’ll notice that we didn’t really include prototyping or building and launching an MVP as one of the phases of development. That’s because here at Bubble, we find that MVPs are outdated for modern technology and modern startup needs. 

You need to move faster, more efficiently, and meet customer needs quickly in order to stake your claim in the market. Jumping straight to launching your V1 with no-code tools like Bubble speeds up development, gets you to a real launch faster, and avoids wasting time on work that’s just going to be thrown out. 

With Bubble, ‌you can cut development timelines down from months or years to just weeks. This is true even if you have a super small team, or are doing the development work yourself. Plus: Bubble lets you use no-code to scale your product as you build and iterate, easily growing with you long past the first launch. 

Here’s some key things to keep in mind at this stage: 

• Launch before you're ready. You may never really feel ready, but to grow and iterate on your product, you need to launch it for real users. The faster you can launch and get real people using your product, the faster you can learn, grow, and continue the development process. 
• Make it imperfect. It’s so easy to get bogged down in trying to make your initial version of a new product or feature perfect before sending it out to customers. While there’s something to be said for quality, doing something imperfectly is usually better than never doing it at all. Launch it imperfectly and get ready to learn and iterate. 
• No-code makes development and launching so much faster. You can move quickly, building and launching your product in a matter of weeks or months to real users, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional development. Need more support? Turn to a Certified Bubble agency or developer to help you build your product exactly the way you envision it. 

6. Analysis 

Spoiler alert: The product development process never really ends. 

It’s more of a continuous loop that allows you to learn from what you’ve launched. Then you can incorporate your learnings and iterate for the next development phase. 

At this phase of development, you have a real product out in the world. Now you want to set up ongoing feedback loops of learning and analyzing, then iterating and developing, then launching again, and then back to the learning phase. 

Ongoing user testing and analysis is a key part of iterating and scaling your product. 

When you build on Bubble, you can see how users interact with your real product from day 1, making it so much easier to gather user feedback. Not only can you integrate user feedback tools directly into your product with Bubble plugins and APIs, but you can iterate directly from V1 of your product for faster development and innovation. 

To keep the product development process in motion, consider: 

• How you’ll integrate user testing into your workflow. User tests like A/B testing, “fake door” tests, heatmap testing, session recordings, card sorting, and more help you continue to learn what users love (and don’t) with your product and iterate to improve product-market fit . 
• What type of user testing you need at the current stage. Different types of testing result in different data and serve different goals. Understand what you need to test and when, and then find the right test to fit that purpose. 
• Create feedback loops to integrate user feedback into future development. Testing and learning doesn’t do much good if you don’t have a process to integrate it into future iterations and development. Find ways to put the customer feedback you’ve gathered to good work. 

Product development process examples

Traditionally, this product development process took months or even years. Building prototypes or MVPs alone is often a months-long project. 

But with newer technology, software companies are moving faster than ever. 

Just take Much as an example. Much founder Carmen Perez built her budgeting and debt coaching app single-handedly in just a few months using Bubble’s no-code tools. After estimating that it would take a small development team a full year to build the first version of her app, she discovered Bubble as an alternate solution. 

With no-code, she learned, built, and launched the beta version of Much in just two months, allowing her to get user feedback immediately. With Bubble, she could continue iterating and developing new features just as quickly, which has allowed her to scale fast and “supercharge” product development. 

Blubinder has a similar story. After raising funding for her app, Liesl Leach realized that it was going to take hundreds of thousands of dollars — and more than six months — for a development team to build even the first version of her product. 

She turned to Bubble for a faster, more cost-effective solution. With a single Bubble-Certified Developer on her team, Blubinder was live in just a few weeks, with plenty of time and runway ahead of them. Now, they’ve been able to scale and grow dramatically in the span of time where they still would have been developing if they had gone the traditional route.  

Start executing your product development plan for free

Today’s founders want and need to move fast. 

Speed up your product development process, not by skipping steps, but by working with a faster development tool. 

Bubble’s full-stack, no-code development tools allow you to speed up the development process from ideation to planning, building, launching, iterating and more. At every stage of the process, Bubble is here to make your product life cycle more streamlined and effortless. 

When you’re ready to execute your product development plan, move fast, and scale quickly, start with Bubble. 

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