4 tips to nail your UX research timelines
How long is this research really going to take?
Do you have stakeholders banging down your door, wondering when you’ll be able to tackle their urgent research requests or when you’ll be able to finish your current work? Can you look at your backlog of research items and accurately estimate how long it might take you to get through all of the items?
As UX Researchers, stakeholders across the business are dependent upon our findings. They might be curious to evaluate a new business area and need insights before diving in. Maybe they would like you to test out two prototypes before the engineers begin to develop one. Regardless of the research request, we may feel a great deal of pressure to produce research findings, and to produce them fast. Worse, we may be so eager to provide research insights that we estimate a quicker delivery date than what we can produce.
Why does this happen? We may not account for other projects we have going on simultaneously. Or maybe we tell ourselves we can tackle a methodology within a certain timeframe so stakeholders aren’t scared off.
Incorrectly estimating project timelines is frustrating for both us as researchers and for our stakeholders who are counting on our deadlines. To help reduce errors, I’ve found it’s incredibly helpful to sit down and really think through your timelines.
For a while, our team had timeline estimates that were generally too short. We found ourselves missing deadlines and feeling frustrated. To fix this, we followed these easy 4 steps.
1. List out all of your methodologies
Every single one. Dust off the ones you don’t use very often and add them to the list. Now is the time. Just jot them down in a google sheet. Got them all? Great, next step.
2. Break down the stages of research
When estimating how long each research method will take, break it down into all of the different aspects of a research project. Think about everything involved when you take on a new project. Do you need to set aside time for your team or stakeholders to review your research plan? Do you need to recruit participants? Start creating a chart and add these different stages as columns for all of your methodologies.
3. Estimate time for each stage
Now think about past projects you’ve done and begin estimating length of time for each stage of the research project. And don’t forget to be realistic! As researchers, we always have a million projects and priorities in the works, so build that into your timeline. In an ideal world, maybe you would be focused on one project and your timelines would be shorter, but I bet that’s not the case!
Add in the number of expected days for each stage. If you want, include a bit of wiggle room in each estimate. Then add up your minimum and maximum amount of time expected!
4. Don’t forget to account for increased complexity
Will you need to run a method in multiple countries? Is the survey going to be heavily skewed towards open-ended responses and require more time to analyze? Build out your estimations so you have a general idea, but note down that timelines can adjust by x number of days (up or down) based on certain aspects. That way, you can customize your estimates for certain research projects.
There you have it! Running through all of your methodologies and different stages of research should really help you develop better estimation guidelines. Feel free to be very transparent with stakeholders about your timelines. This will help them understand how long their research requests might take and will align them more with the process.
