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How to synthesize research data
Making sense of feedback.
You’ve collected research feedback — now you need to make sense of it. You met with stakeholders to determine the research scope and goals, you designed a research plan, you ran research sessions, and you took great notes. Now you need to synthesize the data in order to uncover new insights, but you’re not sure where to start…
Step 1: Review your research goals and use them as a North Star to focus your analysis
What do you really want to learn from this research? When you plan your study, you should work with key stakeholders to determine the goals and focus of the research. Once you’ve interviewed users and collected rich data, it can be a bit overwhelming to wade through it all and make sense of it. Use your research goals to focus you. While it may be tempting to dive headfirst into the data and try to share it all, you need to remember to work smarter, not harder. Focus your analysis and efforts so they can be more impactful. People are more likely to engage with and act upon a clear, focused, and thorough analysis than a wandering, disjointed, and muddled one.
Step 2: Organize and review the data
Ideally you can enlist stakeholders to take notes during your research sessions, but if this isn’t possible you can listen to the session recordings. You’ll be surprised by how many phrases or details you missed while you were fully engaged in moderating the session.
Explore various ways to record and organize the research notes. Airtable provides some examples, and you can play around to see which format works best for you.
Once you’ve organized your data, reread your notes to get familiar with them. You’ll begin to notice basic patterns. It’s paramount to keep an open mind during synthesis. While you may have a hypothesis or desired outcome, you need to listen to…
