Company Context
NotionFlow is a B2B SaaS collaboration platform used by 120,000 teams globally for project tracking, documentation, and lightweight workflow automation. The company is growing quickly in mid-market accounts, but leadership believes product teams are using research inconsistently: some decisions rely on anecdotal customer calls, while others wait too long for statistically robust evidence.
Problem
You are the PM for NotionFlow's core workspace experience. Over the last quarter, three high-priority questions have emerged:
- New users complete workspace setup at only 42%, and activation drops sharply after the first session.
- Existing customers request an AI-powered meeting summary feature, but the team is unclear whether this solves a broad user need or only a vocal segment's request.
- Enterprise admins report frustration with permission settings, yet usage logs alone do not explain where the workflow breaks.
The Head of Product asks you to define how you would decide which research method to use for each type of problem, and how you would avoid over-researching low-risk decisions or under-researching high-risk bets. You do not need to design the final features; focus on selecting the right research approach for the problem.
Deliverables
- Explain the decision framework you would use to choose among qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method research.
- Apply that framework to the three product questions above and recommend the best method or sequence of methods for each.
- Describe how you would prioritize speed, confidence, and cost when evidence is incomplete.
- Define what outputs from research would be sufficient to move to design, experimentation, or roadmap commitment.
- Identify the main risks of choosing the wrong method and how you would mitigate them.
Constraints
- You have one UX researcher shared across four product squads.
- The PM team can access product analytics and customer support data immediately, but setting up a new survey or usability study takes 1-2 weeks.
- Engineering wants a recommendation within 10 business days for the onboarding issue.
- Budget is limited; large-scale external market studies are out of scope.
