Recommendations
Turning your findings into actionable next-steps
The most important part about conducting user research is applying the information you've learned to the product development process. This involves clearly communicating your findings and recommending a path forward based on these learnings.
Findings & Recommendations
Your findings are the conclusions drawn from the many observations collected through your research. They represent your team's closest understanding of the truth in regards to the key research questions. In exploratory research, findings are typically thematic and pattern-based. They centre around the behaviours and goals of your end users.
Recommendations directly respond to your key findings and outline proposed solutions or interventions. In exploratory research, recommendations intend to define design requirements that support identified behaviours and goals.
Delivering Recommendations
"User research won’t generate any profit unless a team understands its research findings, accepts them, and acts upon them." - Nick Babich, Adobe Blog
Delivering recommendations to a product team can be intimidating. However, remember that as a researcher, you are uniquely situated to propose next steps. After all, you have invested most of your time having meaningful conversations with users and diving deep into the data. Moreover, if you have been involving your team in research and synthesis activities throughout this process, you've likely discussed possible next steps and areas of opportunity. Your goal at this point is to communicate how you got to your recommendations and why they are important to the product.
Tell a Great Story
It's important to take your team on the journey that led you to your final recommendations. This demonstrates rigour in your process and shows your stakeholders that the proposed recommendations derive from real data rather than your own opinions. After you've outlined your methods and process, focus on telling a convincing story with your results. Present findings objectively and show supporting evidence in the form of video clips, quotes, journey maps, etc. The more immersive, the better!
Now that you've captured the attention of your audience, it's time to answer the question, what does all this mean for our product? The manner in which you articulate your recommendations is vital and can impact the likelihood of implementation. Effective recommendations are:
Make Recommendations
Specific: Use clear and concise language, avoiding vague language.
Realistic: Considering the context of the project, ensure your recommendations are feasible
Actionable: A recommendation without a plan of action is just an idea. You must provide clear guidance or examples of how these can be implemented. Use relevant examples to drive the point home.
Prioritized: Identify the interventions that are most crucial and highlight the potential impacts of not addressing them. Prioritize the recommendations that will deliver the most value for your users.
Flexible: Your recommendations are suggested approaches, not commands. Remember, there are many possible ways to address a finding and this is the perfect opportunity leverage the expertise of your product team.
Discuss next steps
After you've delivered your findings and recommendations, facilitate a conversation with the product team and stakeholders aimed at creating action items. It's important to align on which recommendations will move forward and who will own these.
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