Why research starts with a decision

Good research does not start with a method. It starts with a decision someone needs to make. If you cannot name the decision, you will collect interesting notes that change nothing.

Here are three examples of decisions a team might face:

• Should the booking flow ask people to create an account before or after choosing a class?
• Which of two onboarding ideas should we build first?
• Why do people who sign up for a trial never book a second class?

Each one points to a different kind of study. The first is a usability question: can people complete the flow, and where do they get stuck? The second is a prioritisation question that might need a quick concept test. The third is an open question about behaviour and motivation, which calls for interviews.

The research question is not the interview question

Beginners often confuse these. A research question is what the team wants to learn, for example "What stops trial members from returning?". You never ask a participant that directly, because people are poor at explaining their own behaviour in the abstract. Instead you ask about specific past events: "Tell me about the last time you booked a class. What happened after that?"

Throughout this course we will work on a booking app for a small fitness studio. The studio owner has noticed that most trial members never book a second class, and the team wants to know whether to invest in reminders, a new pricing page or a redesigned schedule screen.

Before you plan anything, write down three lines:

1. The decision: what will the team do differently depending on what we learn?
2. The deadline: when must the decision be made?
3. The audience: who needs to be convinced?

This takes five minutes and saves days. It also protects you later, when someone asks why you did not test their favourite feature. You can point at the decision and explain what the study was for. In the next lesson we will match questions like these to the right method.