Doing research isn’t enough — you need to convince people to act on it

Unfortunately doing great user research isn’t enough. Your key stakeholders need to be aware of it, understand how to integrate it into the overall product strategy, and actually make concrete changes based on it. But product development takes time, so presenting your research once and calling it a day usually doesn’t cut it. Instead, to create optimal and sustained value, you need to continuously surface, reference, and highlight your research when appropriate. Enter the quarterly research recap.

Each quarter, about a month before Product begins quarterly roadmap planning, Research should develop a recap and hold a session to summarize the main research themes from the quarter and share core recommendations to integrate into quarterly planning.

Make it as easy as possible for Product to draw upon research

Creating effective deliverables is the first step —developing and sharing succinct and convincing summaries of the key insights and recommendations from the research study. Holding a group synthesis session and/or a research readout is a great way to drive awareness, understanding, and alignment around the research. However, going a step further and providing a synthesis of your research each quarter will make it significantly easier for Product to incorporate and act on your findings.

Make it timely

Each quarter, you likely complete a variety of research studies, surveys, and usage analyses. You analyze the data, identify key themes, and provide recommendations. Your stakeholders are likely appreciative and engaged, excited to act. Some recommendations may be incorporated right away, while others may require more discussion, deliberation, and decisioning.

Providing a quarterly research recap — a summary of the research that happened that quarter, emerging themes across them, and concrete recommendations — a few weeks before quarterly planning kicks off will ensure research is top of mind and maximally valuable. You put in the time and effort to do the research, don’t skimp on sharing and advocating for it.

Make it digestible

Product Managers have to balance a complex web of incoming data, competing asks, and resource constraints, particularly during quarterly planning. Do them a favor and make your research recap clear, concise, and compelling. This way they’ll be more likely to pay attention and actively incorporate your recommendations.

Focus is your friend. Don’t overwhelm them with 20+ asks — prioritize the most important ideas. Distill your findings into 3–5 high-level themes that can guide their thinking and shape the roadmap strategy. If nothing else, invite them to remember and integrate these core ideas. You can provide additional details, examples, and supporting links to the full research studies as well, but ensure your main recommendations can speak for themselves.

Make it actionable

Once you have Product Managers’ attention and understanding, make it easy for them to integrate your findings. Provide clear, relevant, and thoughtful recommendations to spur action. Focus on highlighting users’ needs, motivations, and challenges to clearly articulate the most pressing problems to solve.

Your recommendations shouldn’t be overly detailed or prescriptive (i.e. create a weekly newsletter to highlight product changes). Instead, keep them descriptive (i.e. determine ways to alert users to ongoing updates and keep our product top of mind) so stakeholders understand the problem and have sufficient leeway for productive and innovative solutioning.

Quarterly planning can be an arduous and stressful time. Leaders and Product Managers strive to articulate the company and products’ vision, objectives, and key results and translate these into more specific and measured chunks of work. Good planning will start with reviewing and synthesizing key themes and opportunities, and Researchers have an opportunity to provide invaluable guidance and support. By compiling research findings from the quarter into a timely, digestible, and actionable recap, you can influence the product focus and help shape the overall strategy.