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Research & design

Turning user insights into a product roadmap

How ProductOps leaders bring the voice of the customer into the product development process

Yolaine Mercier

Farid Sabitov

John Scrugham

Insights about user problems and needs come from many places and the amount of data can be overwhelming. Many times, product decisions are made with gut instinct and aren’t driven from facts in the field. If your product is user-centric, it will help drive user value and ensure product-market fit.

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When we speak about insights and ResearchOps, there are two main layers of how we store the research insights as a part of the

research database⁠

and support the overall process as a part of insights management.

When we have a proper research database, we can start connecting it with other product data points on the goals, initiatives, and learnings so that we can refer to a specific user interview or customer feedback related to a specific market or product capability and user segment.

Having a robust research database and a well-designed insights management process in place is crucial for ensuring that research insights are properly stored, organized, and easily accessible to the people who need them. This will help to support evidence-based decision-making, increase collaboration across teams, and ultimately lead to better product outcomes.

Research database

There are multiple ways to structure your Research Database, and one of them is Atomic Research, a favorite method among ResearchOps and DesignOps teams at companies like

France.tv⁠

and Superhuman. Operators are taking research and surfacing it to product leaders so that they can make informed product decisions.

Here’s how it works: you connect experiments with facts, which translate into insights, and result in product opportunities. This forms the foundation of your

Research repository template⁠

. You can then reference these opportunities any time you are

Prioritizing features for the product roadmap⁠

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Experiments “We did this…”

Context in which we were able to observe user behavior.

Types: qualitative or quantitative (user test, path analysis, survey, performance analysis).

Facts “…and we found out this…”

Experiments are attached to user observations.

Insights “…which makes us think this…”

Observable facts are linked to user insights. It is the qualification of one or more user observations.

It must be usable. A team must be able to use it to make the best decisions and feed the roadmap (it opens the field of solutions.

Product opportunities “…so we’ll do that.”

Recommendations for where to take the product.

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Source:

Miro⁠

Get the template

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Research repository template Drive your product roadmap with data.⁠

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