97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 86. Plan User Research with the Customer Question Board

Julia Cowing

In the age of businesses focusing on their customers, anchoring product road maps around the customer is critical. But often there are so many customer-reported problems that teams can become overwhelmed. A way to help teams plan and prioritize user research is through a framework called the Customer Question Board.

Here are five benefits of the Customer Question Board:

1. Focuses conversations on customer problems

2. Builds a prioritized, stakeholder-aligned research backlog

3. Sets up user insights to be more effective and impactful

4. Helps teams map customer questions to research methods

5. Encourages a user research mindset and culture

The Question Board is simply that: it’s a board where a team places all of its questions related to the customer and their experiences with your design.

Here’s how to use this framework:

1. Prepare: The first step is to make sure the members of your interdisciplinary team understand the objective of the exercise. Send out a calendar invite preparing them to think about customer questions they might have. For example, a question might be, “How easy is it for users to use the feature we’re building?”

2. Prompt: During the session, ask the team members to place their questions on sticky notes. Virtual whiteboards also work!

3. Discuss and cluster: Have one team member explain their question ...