Template — 25 minutes

Let AI draft the plan. You judge it.

Give AI the right prompt and it drafts a research plan. It follows the UK government's approach to gov.uk research: small groups, clear questions, short rounds. Print or copy it.

The approach

How government design teams plan.

The GOV.UK Service Manual is written for civil servants with no design background, which makes it unusually clear on the fundamentals. Its guidance on planning research: pick a small number of real people (four to eight is usually enough), decide what you actually need to find out before you talk to anyone, and run research in short rounds rather than one big study. That structure is what the prompt below follows.

Step 1 — copy this

The prompt.

Replace the bracketed part with the product or service you're looking at, and paste the whole thing into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — any of them work at this level, and all have a free tier.

I'm learning UX research. I want to plan one round of research for [describe the product or service -- e.g. "a food delivery app" or "my company's internal expenses tool"].

Following the approach GOV.UK's Service Manual uses for planning user research (a small number of real people, four to eight is usually enough, clear questions decided before talking to anyone, short rounds rather than one big study), draft a one-page research plan with:

1. Three specific research questions -- not "is it good?", but things I could actually learn from a real conversation.
2. Who I should talk to, and how many -- be specific about the kind of person, not just "users".
3. Whether a short interview or a short survey fits better, and why.

Don't invent findings or assume what people will say -- this is a plan for research I haven't done yet, not a summary of research that already happened.

Step 2 — before you trust it

Read its draft like a researcher, not a customer.

This is the actual skill — not the prompt, the judgement after. Ask yourself:

Are the three questions things a real person could actually answer in conversation, or is one secretly leading ("do you love how easy this is?") dressed up as neutral?

Is the group of people it suggested realistic and specific, or just "5 users" with no thought for who they actually are?

Did it only think of the happy-path user? Who would struggle with this that it didn't think to include -- someone older, someone new to it, someone using it for a reason it wasn't built for?

Could you actually reach the people it describes, or did it write a plan for a research team with a recruiter, not a beginner with a phone and a notebook?

Step 3 — your version

Write the plan you'd actually trust.

Fix whatever the AI draft got wrong or missed, in your own words, in the four sections below.

1. What am I looking at?

One product or service -- something from work, something you use personally. Doesn't need to be UX-related; anything with real users works.

2. Three research questions

What do you actually need to find out before you talk to anyone? Write three specific questions, not "is it good?"

3. Who would you talk to, and how many?

GOV.UK's own guidance suggests four to eight people is usually enough for one round of research. Who fits that -- and where would you actually find them?

4. What method fits?

A short conversation (interview) or a short survey. Pick whichever suits the questions above -- you don't need both.

Credit

Where this comes from.

This template is our own, but it's structured directly on the GOV.UK Service Manual’s published guidance for planning user research — contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Read the source guidance at gov.uk/service-manual/user-research.

Want to talk through what you have so far?

No pitch, no obligation — just a quick look at what you have made and an honest answer on what's next.

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