Rapid and collaborative synthesis
To identify user research findings, you need to take lots of information and distill it into meaningful patterns and themes. It’s one of those skills that some people are naturally good at, but they struggle to teach to others.
Your research findings should tell you something you didn’t know before, so you can form insights that help you to take action. These findings should be simple, clearly pointing to any underlying problems.
In most of my work, I’m working in a multidisciplinary team. This means that everyone has a slightly different skillset to bring to the table and we work collaboratively. Doing user research synthesis should be no less collaborative than the rest of the work. If user research is a team sport, everyone needs to be a part of deciphering its meaning.
A screenshot from a Miro board from some recent client work, where the team worked together to synthesise findings from stakeholder interviews.
Here's how you can master the art of user research synthesis as a rapid and collaborative exercise:
1. Take simple notes
During interviews or observations, take concise notes in a shared space with your team. If it's an interview, designate one person (usually a user researcher) to ask questions and another to take notes.
2. Reflect after each session
Immediately after every user research session, take 15 minutes to recall the most important aspects of the session and capture key findings. The researcher, note-taker, and any observers should be part of this exercise. Spend the first 5 minutes doing this from memory and then review your notes to ensure nothing is missing and include any useful quotes.
3. Do synthesis collaboratively
After every 3-6 user research sessions, gather your team to synthesise the key points from each interview.
Follow these steps:
Set up a shared space (either physical or digital) for everyone to work from.
Individually, take 10 minutes to review interview summaries and add notes to the shared space about what stands out, what's interesting, and what presents significant pain points or opportunities.
Regroup as a team and take turns discussing your findings.
Group and consolidate similar findings as they are shared to create clusters.
Organise the clusters into themes. This isn't about categorising (such as, ‘Making a decision’), it’s about finding common or similar observations (such as, ‘Parents struggle to decide what to cook’).
Create summarised finding statements for each cluster, ensuring they are reasonably specific. (Something like, ‘Parents want simplicity’ is too generic and obvious, whereas ‘Parents struggle to follow a recipe when there’s too much information’ is much more useful.)
4. Iterate your findings
As you do more research, synthesise the new findings and fold them into your previous synthesis every 3-6 user research sessions. As you go, evolve existing themes and form new ones.
5. Know when to stop
Stop the synthesis when you find yourselves uncovering the same findings without learning anything new.
By following this process, you'll quickly arrive at a set of findings that the entire team has helped shape. One team member should write these up, incorporating feedback to ensure they're clear, simple, and impactful. Next, explore what these findings mean in terms of opportunities and form insights to inform how you take action.
This Miro template is how I run rapid and collaborative synthesis: miro.com/miroverse/collaborative-synthesis-template/. You can use this to try it out with your team.
Remember, these are tools and methods. The real skill is in having the eye to spot the patterns and the underlying problem. Trust your instincts, and make user research synthesis a collaborative exercise that empowers your team to act on valuable insights.