# User research plan

A one-page plan you write before you talk to anyone. Forces you to decide what you actually need to learn before you start scheduling calls.

Fill in each section below. Delete the guidance text once you've written your own answer.

## Goal

Guidance: The decision this research needs to inform. Not a topic -- a decision.



## Method

Guidance: Moderated interview, unmoderated test, survey, or contextual inquiry -- and why that method fits this goal.



## Participant criteria

Guidance: Specific enough that two different people would recruit the same group. Include exclusions, not just inclusions.



## Questions

Guidance: The 5-8 things you will actually ask. Open, not leading. Ordered from broad to specific.



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## Worked example

This is a filled-in example, not a template to copy -- it shows what "good" looks like for each field above.

**Goal:** Decide whether to redesign the expense-submission flow as a single form or a multi-step wizard, before committing engineering time to either.

**Method:** 5 moderated 30-minute interviews with screen-share, each ending in a 10-minute unmoderated task on the current flow. Interviews surface the "why"; the task surfaces where people actually get stuck.

**Participant criteria:** Employees who have submitted at least 3 expense claims in the last 6 months, across at least 2 departments (not all Finance). Exclude anyone who helped build the current tool.

**Questions:**
1. Walk me through the last time you submitted an expense claim, start to finish.
2. What made you stop or double-check anything along the way?
3. Where do you keep receipts before you submit -- and why there?
4. If you could change one thing about this process, what would it be?
5. [task] Submit this sample receipt using the current tool while thinking aloud.

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Free UX toolkit from UX Academy (myuxacademy.com/resources/ux-toolkit/).