User research worksheets created for my talk on user research at the Bend Design Conference 2018.

1. User Research for Designers
BEND DESIGN CONFERENCE 2018
Prepared for: Bend Design Conference
Prepared by: Stacy Desmond, Saveda Web Strategies

2. User Research Plan
OVERVIEW
Bend Design 2018 Saveda Web Strategies

3. User Research Plan
OBJECTIVES
Why are conducting user research? What are you hoping to accomplish?
HYPOTHESIS
What question are you trying to answer? What issue(s) do you need to test?
RESOURCES
What are your resources? timeline? budget
Bend Design 2018 Saveda Web Strategies
PLAN
Take the time to define your direction and pinpoint why you are doing the
user research.

4. User Research Plan
INTERNAL RESEARCH
Talk to subject matter experts, business owners, support team, etc.
DATA
Dig into analytics (Google, Facebook, KISS metrics), demographics, look for initial patterns.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Who are the competitors? How are they doing? How do they differentiate? How well are they
executing?
Bend Design 2018 Saveda Web Strategies
GATHER INFO
Now it is time to do some internal research, crunch data, and get an idea of
the landscape so that you can have focused research efforts. Keep an eye
on potential biases or influences on user testing later.

5. User Research Plan
FIELD STUDIES
Look for motivations, preferences, or frustrations. Listen. Focused toward your hypothesis/question. Where
would be a good field study for you?
SURVEYS
These can be short and sweet or much more specific. How would you reach out to users and
potential users? What questions should be included?
USER INTERVIEWS
How will you define your user groups for interviews? What non-leading questions will you include?
Bend Design 2018 Saveda Web Strategies
EXPLORE
Time to reach out to users and potential users to observe their pain points,
preferences, and how they interact with your potential product.

6. User Research Plan
SAMPLE DOCUMENTS
User personas, user stories, activity flows, customer journeys
Bend Design 2018 Saveda Web Strategies
SYNTHESIZE
After all the research and data-gathering you can create documents that sums up
your work and be used by the team for the design, development, and other next
steps.

7. User Research Plan
ADDITIONAL WORK PRODUCT
This information then feeds into the creation of
designs, wireframes, and prototypes.
USER TESTING
Don’t forget to test! User research lets you know who you should be testing with, plus what issues and barriers
to test solutions for.
REITERATE
This is not a one-time process. Keep researching
for more information on users, shifts in their
motivations or pain points, and keep testing
solutions.
Bend Design 2018 Saveda Web Strategies
NEXT STEPS
Where else can this work and research go?