Learning objectives :

• Define user research with clear objectives to ask the right questions before launching a product or service
• Crafting interview questions that elicit truly useful answers without skewing the results
• Summarize and present user insights to a business audience to inform better decisions
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Course :

Session 1: Defining the Scope of Your User Research
Many user research projects fail before they even begin: they lack a clear scope. What hypotheses do you want to validate or invalidate? What don’t you know yet about your users? This session provides participants with a method for defining the scope before interviewing anyone.

Example of a tool : Design Thinking to frame the user research phase (define research objectives as open-ended, non-leading questions / identify what you don’t yet know about your users and are seeking to understand / formulate the hypotheses you want to validate or invalidate before going into the field / distinguish between the research questions you ask yourselves as a team and the questions you will actually ask users).

Case Study Example : Starting with a specific project or product, formulate 3 or 4 research questions that will frame the investigation, and identify the implicit assumptions the team makes about its users without ever having tested them.

Session 2: Crafting the Right Questions to Ask
The quality of user research depends almost entirely on the quality of the questions asked. One word too many, a closed-ended question, or a leading question—and the answer is worthless. This session focuses directly on developing this skill: learning to write questions that truly get users to open up.

Example of a tool : The guide to crafting effective interview questions (how a single detail in the phrasing of a question can radically change the quality of an answer / questions to avoid: closed-ended questions, leading questions, double questions / questions to prioritize: open-ended questions, context-based questions, follow-up questions / and most importantly: how to distinguish between the questions we ask ourselves as a business and the questions we will actually ask our users).

Case Study : Draft a set of interview questions based on your research objectives, submit them to a peer to identify phrasing that might skew the responses, and rephrase them to improve their neutrality and depth.

Session 3: Synthesizing and Presenting Your Findings
Understanding your users is one thing. Convincing decision-makers—who think in terms of ROI, metrics, and business trade-offs—to take those insights into account is quite another. This session teaches participants how to translate user insights into actionable recommendations for a business audience.

Example of a tool : The summary guide for a business audience (select the most impactful insights from the raw data / reframe user observations into concrete, actionable business implications / go beyond raw verbatim to provide a clear recommendation on what to do and why).

Case Study : Summarize the results of real or simulated user research, reframe them as actionable recommendations for a decision-maker, and present them persuasively to a business audience while anticipating common objections such as "But is this statistically representative?"