Product Research Rules

Chapter 8. Insights Are Best Shared

When was the last time you were inspired to read a report? The whole point of product research is to convey what your users’ experience is in the context of your business, not to only read about it. Reports are written to be read—except when they aren’t.

During one of the first design sprints C. Todd ran at Constant Contact, he and a colleague spent an entire week writing up a 53-page report that included all the market research, the design mock-ups, and the findings from the user interviews and prototype tests. Hardly more than five people read that report, and some key insights never saw the light of day. The good news in this particular story is that one finding stopped the company from spending money on a product that would not have been successful, but it wouldn’t have taken a 53-page report to accomplish the same outcome. Many written reports suffer the same fate: they’re formatted beautifully, yet virtually no one reads them.

In a long report, it’s easy for research findings to get buried behind the abstract. Such reports typically take a long time to prepare and therefore take a long time to read and digest. That is by design, because in an academic context you want the debate and challenge to ensure that the research is sound and credible and that it furthers the advancement of knowledge. In a business context, there has to be a short circuit so that the insights can be acted on rather quickly.

While text is good at conveying information, ...