Define Good User Research

Company Context

NotionFlow is a Series B B2B SaaS company that sells workflow and collaboration software to mid-market teams. It has 3,500 paying companies, strong adoption among product and operations teams, and is preparing to expand into HR and finance use cases.

Problem

The company recently launched three workflow features in two quarters, but adoption is uneven: one feature reached 28% weekly usage among target accounts, while two others remain below 6%. Leadership believes the team is shipping based on internal opinions and customer anecdotes rather than disciplined user research. The CPO asks you: What does good user research look like, and how would you build a research approach that improves product decisions?

You are not being asked to run a generic research program. Your task is to define what “good” looks like in a practical product setting where research must influence roadmap choices, reduce wasted development, and help the team identify real user needs before building.

Deliverables

1. Define the characteristics of high-quality user research for a product team like NotionFlow.
2. Explain how you would choose which users to research, which methods to use, and when to use qualitative vs. quantitative inputs.
3. Describe how research findings should translate into product decisions such as problem selection, feature prioritization, and MVP scope.
4. Propose a lightweight research operating model for the next 2 quarters, including cadence, ownership, and outputs.
5. Identify the most important risks or failure modes in user research and how you would mitigate them.

Constraints

• Only 1 full-time researcher supports 6 product squads.
• PMs are expected to conduct some research themselves.
• The company needs a usable process within 6 weeks.
• Research cannot materially slow down the roadmap; teams still need to ship one major initiative next quarter.