Choose the Right Research Method | Dataford Interview Questions

Your question is Choose the Right Research Method. Take a moment with it on the right.

Talk me through your thinking if you like. When you're confident, submit your answer and I'll grade it like a real screen (7/10 or better passes).

Company Context

TaskFlow is a B2B SaaS work-management platform used by 25,000 small and mid-sized teams. The company sells per-seat subscriptions and competes on ease of use, but activation for new accounts has stalled at 42% and customer feedback suggests confusion during onboarding.

Problem

The PM for onboarding needs to decide how to learn what is going wrong before committing engineering resources to a redesign. The team can run one primary research effort in the next 3 weeks and must choose among a broad survey, 1:1 user interviews, or moderated usability testing of the current onboarding flow.

Recent data shows that 58% of invited users never complete the first project setup, and support tickets about onboarding have increased 18% quarter over quarter. Leadership wants a recommendation on which method to use first, when to combine methods, and how to justify the trade-offs in speed, confidence, cost, and actionability.

Deliverables

Define the decision framework you would use to choose between surveys, interviews, and usability testing.
Explain which method you would use first for TaskFlow's onboarding problem and why.
Describe what questions each method is best suited to answer, including examples.
Propose a lightweight research plan for the next 3 weeks, including sample, outputs, and decision criteria.
Identify key trade-offs and risks if the wrong method is chosen.

Constraints

Research budget is limited to $20,000.
Only one PM, one designer, and one researcher are available part-time.
Engineering cannot build new prototypes in this window.
Leadership expects a recommendation tied to a measurable product decision, not just general insights.

Your question is Choose the Right Research Method. Take a moment with it on the right.

Talk me through your thinking if you like. When you're confident, submit your answer and I'll grade it like a real screen (7/10 or better passes).

Problem

Company Context

Problem

Deliverables

Define the decision framework you would use to choose between surveys, interviews, and usability testing.
Explain which method you would use first for TaskFlow's onboarding problem and why.
Describe what questions each method is best suited to answer, including examples.
Propose a lightweight research plan for the next 3 weeks, including sample, outputs, and decision criteria.
Identify key trade-offs and risks if the wrong method is chosen.

Constraints

Research budget is limited to $20,000.
Only one PM, one designer, and one researcher are available part-time.
Engineering cannot build new prototypes in this window.
Leadership expects a recommendation tied to a measurable product decision, not just general insights.