Define the main objective of the project and your research objectives. What decisions need to be made? What answers do you need in order to make your next decision? It helps to also have a collection of hypotheses at the ready.
Example research plan:
<aside> đź’ˇ Main Objective: Learn how the store rebrand is effecting day-to-day operations.
Research Objectives: How has foot traffic changed since the rebrand? What sorts of issues are customers coming into the store with now? How difficult is it to resolve these issues?
**Hypotheses: “**We believe the stores could be seeing less foot traffic since the rebrand because customers don’t recognize the new name.” “We believe customers could be coming to the stores looking for help with their claims because they’d rather get help from someone in-person, instead of over the phone.”
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Before jumping right into the research, take a second to check the Insights Library for anything that might help you answer your research objectives! A quick literature review could save you loads of time in the research process. It also doesn’t hurt to send a message in the design-research Slack channel. There’s a good chance someone else has looked into this objective before, and getting their insight could move you even quicker through the process.
After you’ve developed your objectives and hypotheses, the next step is to determine the best method(s) to find answers to your research objectives. If you determine that ethnographic research will provide you the best opportunity to learn what you need to learn, you have a few methods to choose from.