Borrow these five UX research habits for your next course

1. Begin with a decision you need to make

“Learn about our audience” is broad enough to produce a mountain of notes and no clear next step. A more useful research question is: “What prevents a new manager from giving timely, specific feedback?” That question can inform a practice activity, a job aid, a workflow change or a decision not to create training.

Write the decision at the top of your interview plan. It keeps your questions focused and makes synthesis less likely to become an exercise in sorting sticky notes.

2. Ask about the last real example

People can describe what they think they usually do. A recent event gives you something more concrete to explore. Ask: “Tell me about the last time this happened. What did you do first? What information did you need? Where did you look?” Follow the sequence before suggesting an answer.

Avoid asking, “Would a short video help?” until you have understood the task. That question makes your proposed format the center of the conversation. A participant may agree politely without revealing whether a video would be useful in the moment of need.

3. Keep evidence separate from interpretation

Suppose a participant cannot find the current process document. The observation is what they did and said. Your interpretation might be that document naming is unclear. A design hypothesis could be that a task-based index would improve findability. Write those as three separate things.

This separation makes your reasoning inspectable. It also prevents an AI summary or a confident stakeholder opinion from quietly becoming a research finding. AI can suggest themes in approved, de-identified notes, but check those themes against the original evidence.

4. Include the moments outside the course

Map how someone discovers the learning, gets access, practices, returns to work and asks for help later. A beautifully designed module may sit behind confusing permissions. A learner may understand the content but lack the reference material they need during a live task.

FigJam is one possible workspace for a journey map. Paper works too. The value is the shared view of the experience and the questions it raises, not the sophistication of the diagram.

5. Test behavior before asking for preference

Show a small prototype and ask someone to perform a realistic task. Observe what happens before asking whether they like it. “I prefer the blue version” is a different kind of evidence from “I could not find the next step.”

Keep usability and learning checks distinct. Can someone operate the experience? Can they perform the intended skill afterward? A smooth interface does not establish learning, and a challenging practice activity is not automatically a usability failure.

End the research round with a decision log: evidence, interpretation, proposed change and next test. That gives the team a useful record of how research shaped the design.