The 4-Step Research Plan That Makes Product Discovery Actually Work
You have a customer problem to solve or a business metric to drive. You know you need product discovery to make informed decisions, but where do you start? User interviews? Surveys? Stakeholder conversations? A good research plan will help you organize your discovery and align team members around the purpose and what you hope to learn.
Why You Need a Research Plan
Startups and early-stage companies often don’t have dedicated research teams, but teams are still accountable for making informed product decisions. Product discovery—evaluating desirability, feasibility, viability, and usability—is critical. Getting started can sometimes feel daunting, but a structured approach, beginning with a research plan, makes it manageable and effective.
The Four Essential Components of a Research Plan
Objective: Start with a clear, single-statement objective that captures your working assumption, hypothesis, or exploration scope. Ask yourself: What specifically are you aiming to learn?
Research Questions: Develop 3-5 high-level questions that will help you validate your assumption, test your hypothesis, or understand your topic. These are not interview questions—they're the core questions that, when answered, will give you confidence you've achieved your objective.
Methodologies: Select specific activities that will answer your research questions most effectively (highest confidence) and efficiently (least effort). Pro tip: Choose 1 or 2 activities to start and then add additional activities if you haven’t confidently answered your research questions. A few examples of research activities are:
Execution Plan: For each chosen methodology, create a detailed execution plan.
How Your Research Plan Will Work for You
Stay Focused: Reference your research questions throughout the discovery process and document your findings against them. Once you've built sufficient confidence in your answers, you're ready to move forward—either with another round of research or into design or development. Discovery is inherently iterative; each round builds greater confidence in your understanding of the problem or potential solution.
Maintain Alignment: Your research plan isn't just a personal guide—it's an alignment tool. When things feel like they are drifting off course, use it to redirect focus and remind team members and stakeholders of your original objective and the reason you are doing each activity.
Share Insights Effectively: Sharing out answers to each research question with supporting data can help you keep stakeholders informed while avoiding lengthy presentations or reports. Bite-sized updates maintain momentum and engagement.
An Example
Here is an example of a semi-flushed out research plan for a fictitious product.
Objective
To understand friction points in the customer onboarding journey that prevent teams from completing core setup actions within the first 14 days of implementation.
Research Questions
What specific actions or steps cause the most abandonment during onboarding?
How do successful customers (completed setup <7 days) differ from delayed customers in their onboarding approach?
What support resources are most effective in helping teams complete setup? What is missing?
Methodologies
Onboarding Flow Analysis
Customer Survey
User Interviews
Support Ticket Analysis
Execution Plan
Note: These are rough and incomplete but will give you an idea of how to start and what to include. As noted above, you may only need 1-2 activities in order to answer your research questions and meet your objective. Prioritize the activities that are likely to give you the best and most complete insights.
Methodology #1: Onboarding Flow Analysis
Will help you answer research questions 1 and 2.
Data points: Step completion rates, time between steps, drop-off points
User segments: All new accounts from past 3 months
Timeframe: First 14 days post-signup
Key metrics: Step completion times, Common abandonment points, Impact of team size on completion rates
Methodology #2: Customer Survey
Will help you answer research questions 1 and 3.
Target: 200 responses from recently onboarded customers
Distribution: Email to all customers who started onboarding in last 60 days
Sample Question: Rate the clarity of each onboarding step (1-5 scale). How helpful or unhelpful were the following resources (1-5 scale)?
Methodology #3: User Interviews
Will help you answer research questions 1, 2 and 3.
Target: 12 interviews (6 successful, 6 delayed implementations)
Roles: Implementation leads, system admins, end users
Sample Questions: Walk me through your onboarding experience. What were the most challenging aspects of setup? etc.
Methodology #4: Support Ticket Analysis
May help you answer research questions 1 and 3.
Review tickets from first 14 days
Analyze according to: issue reason, reporter, resolution time, impact on onboarding completion
