You have to teeter-totter between capturing key information (without transcribing word-for-word) and paying close attention to the session (without resorting to sloppy notes that slow down analysis instead of speeding it up).
Luckily, note-taking techniques and templates run abound—so if you’re looking to refine your note-taking approach, you’ve come to the right place.
In this article, we’ll help you achieve faster, easier, simpler note-taking for UX research with:
Research note-taking templates and examples
An overview of different note-taking methods
Tips on how to improve your note-taking skills
📝 17 UX research note-taking templates
Note-taking sounds simple enough, but it can be tough to keep up during research sessions—especially if you’re the sole moderator of the session. Using a ready-made template, or adapting an example to fit your needs, makes things so much easier.
We scoured the internet to put together this collection of note-taking templates, worksheets, and examples for you to use.
✍️ Great UX researchers are effective notetakers
I won’t spend too much time talking about the importance of effective note-taking. Most of us learned the value of taking notes in grade school (or the consequences of not taking notes, e.g. my butchered chemistry exams). That value certainly carries over into the world of professional research.
“Note-taking templates and frameworks can… significantly expedite your analysis and synthesis. When you're determining upfront what you're taking notes on and how you're taking those notes. Are you taking them according to heuristic and by participant and then cutting it by segment? Are you taking notes on direct quotes or data to triangulate and how are you marking? Those will really, really help too.”
But effective note-taking doesn’t happen by accident. It’s as intentional and goal-driven as every other stage of the research process.
📓 Different note-taking methods, techniques, and frameworks
According to Nielsen Norman Group, there are two primary techniques for taking effective notes:
Chronological logs are notes and observations that you take down in the order they occurred. For example, if you’re taking notes for a 1-1 user interview, the moderator might share their script with you and you can follow along, noting down the participant’s answers to each question as they go.
Topical notes are observations that are organized by topic or theme, similar to affinity mapping. You could define key themes you want to look for ahead of time and have note-takers leave observations in different categories, or you could assign different colored sticky-notes for different participants, in the case of multi-person studies.
Within topical notes, you can use frameworks to organize themes like:
AEIOU: Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users
POEMS: People, Objects, Environments, Messages, and Services
The approach you use—and the extent of the notes you take using that method—should differ depending on the study method.
Just the highlights when taking notes on things like the usability of small features or prototypes, success/failure scores, or effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context. In this case, you may only need 1-2 pages of notes.
Full transcripts when taking notes for things like ethnographic research, primary research for a futuristic vision, or in-depth conversations with participants. In this case, your notes could be 15-20 pages or more.
Give observers guidelines for note-taking, too to prevent skewed or inaccurate data and ensure that you get the best insights from the folks joining your sessions.
Double-check that you’re actually recording. But remember, recording isn’t the same as taking notes either. Notes allow you to get more value out of your session recordings, more quickly.
Jot down the interview questions, too. This way, you have the context to understand what the participant was responding to, and you don’t have to revisit your recording to understand the notes.
Make note of timestamps for moments worth revisiting. Sometimes, you won’t be able to take notes fast enough to capture key moments. In these situations, simply note down the timestamp so you can revisit the recording later.
Only record facts. Leave your opinions out of it. For example, instead of writing “the participant is confused by the information architecture of the navigation system,” you’d write “the participant opens the navigation system, sighs, and frowns.” If you must include your own thoughts, put them in brackets so you can distinguish them from the participant’s actual words and behaviors.
Grammar doesn’t matter, so long as you can understand your notes later. If you need to use shorthand or other abbreviations to keep up, use them. Just make sure you only veer from proper grammar and spelling when you’re sure you’ll remember what you meant later on.
Write down everything (even if you think it’s unimportant). It’s not always clear during the session what will be important later and what won’t. Even if you don’t think something is relevant to what you’re studying, write it down—it could point to a key insight during your analysis.
Name and archive notetaking files so you can easily find them later. “Notes_1_final_(3).docx” is going to be hard to track down later on. Use a consistent nomenclature for note-taking files, including the name of the research project, the date, and the participant or session number.
Take debriefing notes post-session. Take 15-minutes after every session to jot down your main takeaways and impressions. This will help you recall details and themes from the session during analysis later on.
Sometimes great note-takers just need the right tools. Explore the 2022 UX Research Tools Map to discover the best UXR tools for note-taking, brainstorming, participant management, testing, and more.
🏆 Want more templates? We've got more to explore, including:
Marketer, writer, poet. Lizzy likes hiking, people-watching, thrift shopping, learning and sharing ideas. Her happiest memory is sitting on the shore of Lake Champlain in the summer of 2020, eating a clementine.
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