Plan End-to-End User Research

Company Context

NotionFlow is a Series B B2B SaaS company that sells workflow and collaboration software to mid-market teams. It has 3.5M monthly active users across free and paid plans, and leadership wants to improve activation and retention for newly onboarded teams.

Problem

The product team believes new users struggle to understand which workflows the product is best suited for. Quantitative data shows that only 38% of newly created workspaces complete a key setup action within 14 days, and teams that fail to do so have 45% lower 90-day retention. The PM leading onboarding has been asked to define and run user research that will uncover unmet needs, clarify friction points, and inform what onboarding improvements should be prioritized next.

You are the PM. The interviewer wants to understand how you would plan and conduct user research end to end, including how you choose methods, synthesize findings, and turn insights into product decisions.

Deliverables

1. Define your end-to-end user research process, from problem framing through synthesis and decision-making.
2. Explain which research methods you would use most often in this case and how you would choose between qualitative and quantitative approaches.
3. Identify the user segments you would prioritize, the key questions you would answer, and how you would recruit participants.
4. Describe how you would translate research findings into product requirements, prioritization, and stakeholder alignment.
5. Specify how you would measure whether the research led to better product decisions.

Constraints

• You have 6 weeks to deliver actionable recommendations before the next quarterly planning cycle.
• Research support is limited to one shared UX researcher for 25% of their time.
• Engineering can only instrument lightweight event tracking changes during this period.
• Budget allows at most $12,000 for incentives, tooling, and external recruiting.