Do not start user interviews without a research plan

A lot of founders do user research by scheduling calls and hoping insight appears. Sometimes it does. Usually the calls produce interesting notes, polite opinions, and no clear product decision.

A research plan exists to prevent that. It turns discovery from conversation into learning.

Research should answer a decision

The first question is not "who should we interview?" It is "what decision are we trying to make?"

Are you deciding whether the problem is painful enough? Which workflow to build first? Why users abandon a current tool? Whether a concept is understandable? Each question leads to different participants, methods, and interview prompts.

Without that decision, research becomes content. With it, research becomes product strategy.

The plan keeps the team honest

A useful user research plan defines:

• Research goals and assumptions.
• Target participant segments and recruiting criteria.
• Methods: interviews, usability tests, surveys, diary studies, prototype tests.
• Interview guide or task script.
• Analysis approach and tagging structure.
• Timeline and owner.
• How findings will update the BRD, PRD, roadmap, or design direction.

This is especially important for founders because early research is easy to bias. You want the idea to be right, so you hear what confirms it. A written plan gives you a better chance of noticing what does not.

Do not ask users to design the product

Weak research asks, "Would you use this?" Strong research studies behavior: "Walk me through the last time this happened. What did you do? What was annoying? What did it cost? What did you try?"

Users are usually better at revealing pain than designing solutions. Your job is to listen for the repeated friction and translate it into product decisions.

We created a User Research Plan reference with planning structure, readiness checks, weak-vs-strong examples, and an AI prompt for drafting the first version.

Good research is not a pile of interviews. It is a decision system. Start there and the product gets sharper before a single screen is designed.