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How putting minimal effort into tagging can extend the life of your UX research
Organizing your quotes through tags can help stakeholders see how users think
![A woman pointing at something and talking, while a long black microphone is positioned for her to speak into. A blurred woman is in the foreground holding the microphone, suggesting she’s the interviewer.](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*iquybpZ6EAXsQjMEOY5rEQ.jpeg)
I realized the power of tagging when a quote six months ago helped inform our design decisions. We had gone through the laborious process of tagging our user testing and interview notes back then, and I thought it was a waste of time. But an issue arose later on about one of the things we saw during our user tests. Because we had tagged everything, I was able to go back to the research quickly, pull relevant user quotes, and show our stakeholders how users thought about the issue.
Tagging can not only help you with categorizing your thoughts while taking notes. In addition, it can be a helpful way of organizing data for future use and building UX Research at your organization. But to understand what tagging can do, we have first to point out what tagging can’t do: provide statistical data.
Understanding tagging
The first thing you have to realize is that you can’t get a metric from tagging. Tools like Reframer may lead you to believe otherwise, with bar charts built from the most common tags and themes.