Writing UX Research Reports and Presentations

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Note to the reader:

This part of the field guide comes from our 2019 version of the UX Research Field Guide. Updated content for this chapter is coming soon!

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Communicating your findings is arguably one of the most important (and difficult) skills to hone as a User Researcher. 

Yes, you’ve done the difficult work of moderating interviews, analyzing months of diary study entries, or scouring spreadsheets for significant trends—but all that work withers away when stakeholders never hear about it, understand it, or use it. 

Research reports and presentations are your opportunity to showcase the results and significance of your work for the rest of your team. 

Let’s talk about what reports and presentations entail, and how to get them right. 

In this chapter:

  • What a UX research report is (and is not)
  • Good research reports: templates and examples
  • How to write an effective research report
  • Tips for presenting a report
  • Templates and examples of presentations

What a research report is (and is not)

A research report is a document that summarizes all the details of a research study, including the research questions, methodology, notable insights, and recommended next steps. The main purpose of reporting in UX research is to communicate findings to stakeholders and provide accurate, objective insights that inform next steps. 

You’ve probably written some form of research report in other settings like school or more formal scientific environments, but the reports you’ll write as a UX researcher are a little different. Traditional reports, like the kinds academic researchers write, are typically long, text-based, highly detailed documents, which makes them less-than-ideal for communicating your findings with busy stakeholders. 

In the context of UX research, the report you share outside your research team  will likely be closer to a summary: a shorter, top-level document with a greater emphasis on next steps and business application than on methodology

A UX research report is

  • A summary of the data and findings of a study
  • Well-written with a standardized structure
  • Informative, often with links, charts, images, and other data sources
  • A data-backed basis for decision-making

A UX research report is not

  • A lengthy, dissertation-style paper 
  • An opinion-based essay
  • Something that should require deep UXR expertise to interpret
💡Pro Tip: User Interviews is the fastest way to recruit participants for any kind of research. Talk to sales or sign up for a free account today.

Written reports vs. live (or recorded) presentations

Synthesizing and sharing your findings is only one half of the communication equation. The recipients of that information also need to listen and remember.

Tailoring the format of your research summary can help your audience process and retain the information more effectively. Common formats include:

Written reports

Written reports work well for when you’re speaking to small groups, a geographically distributed team or technical stakeholders like engineers or other researchers. 

They’re also great for when you need to keep a comprehensive account of the study on record; some researchers always create them for the research repository

Written reports may take the form of:

  • PDFs
  • Emails
  • Pages in tools like Confluence or Notion
  • Slack updates

However, many researchers complain that stakeholders don’t read them or are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. 

Presentations

Presentations work well for when you’re speaking to large audiences, especially when  meeting synchronously (although recorded presentations can be effective too). 

Presentations may take the form of:

  • Slideshows
  • Pre-recorded videos
  • Decks 
  • Workshops (more on these below)

According to the State of User Research 2022 Report, most researchers (87%) still share their results synchronously, despite being fully remote. This is likely due to the more engaging nature of live presentations for non-technical stakeholders, designers, or visual thinkers. They force you to be precise and focus on only the most important information. 

when to use reports vs presentations; use reports when you're presenting to small groups, technical stakeholders, or you need a comprehensive record of the study on file; use presentations when you're presenting to large groups, non-technical stakeholders, or you only need to include the relevant information
When to use reports vs. presentations

Although each has its pros and cons, we recommend doing both! Creating both a detailed report and a presentation ensures that different types of audiences can access and appreciate your findings in the future. 

💡 Workshops, for when presentations aren’t quite engaging enough

When it comes to capturing (and keeping) stakeholders’ interest, workshops are a great option. 

Research workshops are group exercises designed to make the information more “sticky” or memorable for stakeholders. By sharing an overview of your key findings and then leading a workshop—for example, a group brainstorming session or card sorting activity based on the study’s findings—you can collect feedback from stakeholders and keep them engaged throughout the presentation. 

As Lucy Denton, Product Design Lead at Dovetail, says in an episode of our Awkward Silences podcast, workshops can also be an effective choice when you aren’t sure what next steps to take based on the insights: 

“I think some of us had some gut feels around which ideas made sense for us to investigate further. But we couldn't really articulate that…. So we decided to pause on the ideas and get a few of us in a room and run a product strategy workshop. And in that session, we looked at competitors in the market and thought about our current product and where we wanted to grow. And we didn't really come up with anything new in that workshop, but it was a useful exercise to sit down and all get on the same page and document that and play it back to the team so that we were all aligned.

And then it was easier to come back to the ideas and say, well, which of these ideas are going to help us grow in the ways that we want to grow. And we landed on three big ideas, and that has been our focus for 2021.”

Different types of research reports (and when to use them)

Research reports can take many forms, usually aligning with the type of study you conducted. Usability studies, for example, will require a usability report, while competitive analyses will result in a competitive analysis report, and so on.

Here are some of the most common types of research reports:

  • Usability reports are documents that outline the background and methodology for a usability test, as well as key findings about users’ behavior, expectations, and challenges. 
  • Analytics reports use qualitative and quantitative data to analyze past performance, summarize insights, and provide recommendations. 
  • Market research (competitive analysis) reports evaluate data related to customer perceptions of your brand and product, the competitive landscape, industry trends and overall outlook. 
  • Qualitative research reports are reports written for studies using qualitative methods, such as 1-1 interviews or diary studies
  • Quantitative research reports are written for studies with quantitative methodology, such as first click tests or A/B tests

You may also pair your report with other types of research deliverables, such as personas or customer journey maps, but these deliverables are meant to augment—not replace—the report. 

As UX Researcher Katrya Hott notes, the most impactful type of report depends on the maturity of your research organization: 

  • In newer research practices with less trust in research, you’ll want to provide stakeholders with fun, collaborative reports to increase engagement. 
  • In more mature research practices with higher trust in research, you can take more care in writing rigorous reports (for posterity) with insights at the forefront (for efficiency). 

In newer research practices with less trust in research, you’ll want to provide stakeholders with fun, collaborative reports to increase engagement. In more mature research practices with higher trust in research, you can take more care in writing rigorous reports (for posterity) with insights at the forefront (for efficiency). 
Report type matrix by UX Researcher Katrya Hott

Good research reports: templates and examples

“Good” is a bit of a loaded term, no matter the context—so before we provide examples of “good” research reports, let’s break down what that actually means. 

First of all, what makes a research report “good”?

While the format and content will vary, good research reports all share four fundamental qualities. They are:

  1. Attention-grabbing. 
  2. Actionable.
  3. Tailored to the audience.
  4. Easy to access and understand. 

Good reports are attention-grabbing.

Like the proverbial unwitnessed tree falling in the woods, the report that nobody reads never makes a sound. Want to make an impact as a researcher? Your reports need to capture stakeholders’ attention. 

Whether your report is shared synchronously or asynchronously, you can spark engagement by including:

  • Alternative formats like videos and audio clips
  • Direct quotes from participants (with or without identifying information, depending on the nature of your study)
  • Interactive content, such as workshops, live data visualizations, or high-fidelity prototypes with working components

If you master the art of engaging stakeholders, you might notice reports being shared and referenced more often, as well as a growing demand for research throughout your organization. Highly engaging reports almost evangelize themselves. 

Good reports are actionable.

Actionable reports should relate back to the initial research question: How do your findings influence the decisions you mapped out in your research plan? 

When stakeholders finish digesting your report, they should have a clear understanding of what actions they need to take based on the insights. As you’re writing, be specific about the insights you’ve discovered and the tangible implications they have on the company. 

For example, “users are unhappy” is not an actionable insight. Although this might be a true observation from your study, it’s not specific enough about the context or application of the insight. You could rephrase “users are unhappy” to be a more actionable insight in the following ways:

  • “Users are unhappy with the information architecture of our website; they’re struggling to find the support pages.” — From this insight, we can brainstorm logical next steps: Feature the support pages more prominently on the website, or do a tree testing exercise to figure out the best place to put them. 
  • “Users are unhappy with the onboarding experience, but it’s unclear which aspects of the onboarding experience are most frustrating for them.” — This insight doesn’t tell us much about what to do with our product or service, but it does provide a clear entryway into next steps for research: Conduct another study digging specifically into user perceptions of the onboarding experience. 

In other words, actionable reports provide:

  • Recommendations for product or business decisions
  • Concrete next steps for stakeholders
  • Suggestions for what kind of research needs to happen next
  • Compelling insights that illuminate unanswered questions

Although you should be objective and unbiased while conducting and analyzing research, know that it’s okay to offer your opinion after the research is done. As the researcher who led the project from start to finish, you’re in the best position to interpret the data and make recommendations for how it should be used. 

Good reports are tailored to the audience.

By tailoring your report to fit the communication style and the areas of interest for your audience, you increase the chances of them listening, remembering, and referencing your findings later on. 

When creating your report, ask yourself:

  • Who’s your core audience for the report? If it’s only executives, you’ll probably want to focus the report around strategy and business application. If you’re speaking to your immediate research team, you’ll probably want to include more of the minute details.
  • Do you have a mixed audience? If your report needs to speak to more than one type of stakeholder—or be included in repositories where future team members might access it—you might choose to present the report in different formats to target everyone’s communication style. 
  • What does their time and schedule look like? Busy stakeholders won’t always have time to sit down and read a full report. Present only the need-to-know info in the most time-effective format possible, while linking out to other decks, documents, and resources for them to reference if they’re curious. 
  • What kind of information do they care about? Not all of the insights you discover in a study will be relevant to every type of stakeholders. Executives are more likely to be interested in how and why the insights impact the bottom line, while product managers and designers will want to understand how the insights impact their day-to-day roles. 

Good reports are easy to access and understand.

Finally, good reports should be easy to access and understand.

If your reports are engaging, actionable, and effectively tailored to the audience, then they’re already in a good position to be easily understood. But in order to be easily accessible, they need to be housed somewhere stakeholders can (and will) access.

The common industry format (CIF) for a usability report provides universal guidelines for the research community, helping folks read reports more efficiently. If your audience is other researchers (who also read and write this type of report regularly), then the CIF format works great (and although it’s only intended for usability tests, you can draw from a similar rough outline when writing reports for other types of studies). 

However, this format tends to be quite lengthy, making it less-than-ideal for sharing with stakeholders. You’ll want to take a similar structure and condense or reorganize it in such a way that stakeholders can quickly, easily glean the information that’s relevant to them. 

In the next section, you’ll find some inspiration for doing so—using condensed versions of written reports, interactive research repositories using tools like Notion, or visual presentations. 

Templates and examples of engaging, actionable, tailored reports

Looking for inspiration for your next report? Here are some resources to reference:

How to write an effective research report

Now that you know what a research report is and what a good one looks like, how is a research report written?

The basic outline of a research report is:

  • Introduction
  • Research goals
  • Business value
  • Methodology
  • Key learnings
  • Recommendations
ux research report outline and checklist: tips and what should be included in the report's introduction, research goals, business value, methodology, key learnings, and recommendations sections
UX Research Report & Checklist — By User Interviews

Here are some tips for each section. 

Introduction

Beginnings matter. The introduction of your report is your opportunity to set the stage for your audience, to capture their attention and convince them that the information you’re about to share is valuable. 

What should the introduction of a report include?

  • A brief overview of the parameters of your study
  • The company goals and pain points you’ve been studying
  • The direct business application of the insights

Research goals

Next, you’ll need to outline your specific research goals and questions for the study. Luckily, you mapped this out ahead of time in your UX research plan, so you might be able to get away with a bit of copy-and-pasting in this section. 

What should the research goals section of a report include?

  • The key decisions on which you based your research. 
  • The research questions you’d asked as the catalyst for your study.
  • Your hypotheses and expectations prior to conducting the research. 

Business value

Great UX researchers are always mindful of the business implications of their work—and they make sure stakeholders understand those implications too. In this section, delineate how your research impacts top-line business metrics and overall growth goals. 

What should the business value section of a report include?

  • The company, product, and/or team goals related to your work.
  • Any other outcomes this research contributes to, including decisions it will affect. 

Methodology

Although you’ve carefully evaluated and chosen your research methodology during the planning process, your stakeholders likely don’t need to hear all the thinking that went into that decision. Explain your approach in clear language, tailored so that non-researcher stakeholders can understand. 

What should the methodology section of a report include?

  • The research methods you used to answer your research questions.
  • A brief explanation of why you chose those methods. 

Key learnings

The learnings section is the “meat” of your report—the insights and observations that make your research worthwhile. Present your findings as clearly, concisely, and with as much context as possible to help stakeholders make sense of the data.

What should the key learnings section of a report include?

  • Recurring themes or trends that you noticed during your analysis.
  • Relevant quotes, audio clips, or other artifacts that illustrate compelling insights, pain points, common experiences, or aha moments. 
  • Links to more resources, including full session recordings, transcripts, notes, or other data. 

Recommendations

Finally, the recommendations section makes up the “actionable” part of your report. Based on the insights you observed, share potential solutions or answers to the questions your research was meant to investigate. 

What should the recommendations section of a report include?

  • Clear, specific solutions and next steps to solve pain points or answer pending decisions. 
  • Any specific recommendations brought up by users during interviews or in surveys
  • Suggestions for future research studies, if applicable. 

💡 Pro tip: In some cases, you might choose to create an example or a rough outline of a project roadmap to make it as easy as possible for stakeholders to implement your solutions. If you can guide stakeholders through the process of brainstorming and launching a new, high-value initiative based on your research, you’ll leave them with no question of the value of UX research for the organization. 

How to present a research report (without putting stakeholders to sleep)

When you finish creating your report, you don’t just tuck it away in a Google Drive folder and never mention it again—you have to let stakeholders know, firstly, that it exists, and secondly, why it’s valuable.

Here’s how to present research findings. 

1. Understand your stakeholders.

At this point, you’ll have already conducted stakeholder interviews during the planning process to learn more about their needs and goals. Based on those interviews, you should have a good understanding of what they’ll expect from your presentation, including:

  • Which types of findings are most relevant to them
  • How the findings could (or should) affect their day to day lives
  • How they prefer to receive and process information 

Marketers and product managers, for example, will have different needs and expectations regarding the research you’ve done. Do your best to tailor your presentation to each different group of stakeholders—but also provide people with multiple formats and ways to interact with your report just in case. 

2. Define your goals.

At the beginning of your presentation, remind yourself and your audience why you did this research. What were your learning goals? How will you use the information? Which decisions will it inform?

Goals are, of course, something you’ve been continuously referencing throughout your study. Their value is probably clear by now: By tying your research to top-level goals and objectives, you leave stakeholders no room to doubt the importance of your work. 

💡 Pro tip: For more on mapping goals to insights, check out “A Framework for Decision Driven Research” by our VP of User Research (and Class Member of the 2022 UX Research Yearbook!), Roberta Dombrowski. 

3. Explain your methods. 

You’ve carefully chosen your methods to support your learning goals. Here’s your chance to show stakeholders how (and why) you approached the study this way. 

Explain (as concisely as possible):

  • The methods you used for recruitment
  • How you conducted sessions
  • Your approach to analysis 
  • Why you chose the methods you used

💡 Pro tip: Try to avoid using too much jargon. If you’re sharing with non-researchers, they don’t need a deep-dive into the most technical components of your study—just a healthy overview!

4. Choose the right presentation format. 

The format you choose will have a big impact on whether or not your stakeholders understand the information and how much of it they remember.

In most cases, your stakeholders won’t have the time or expertise to digest sheets of raw data. Although it’s great to provide and archive the raw data to show your work, your stakeholders will often only need and want a summary of key insights, translated into a format that they’ll find relevant, actionable, and easy to understand. 

As for the ‘best’ format, it’s the one your stakeholders will actually use. 

5. Tell a story (instead of throwing raw data at your stakeholders)!

No matter which format you use—a slide deck, a diagram, a theatrically-performed monologue—it’s great to use storytelling arcs and elements to keep your audience engaged. 

Storytelling is communication that moves people. That’s why we cry while watching The Florida Project on the flight back from a work conference, or laugh when we remember the name of that whimsical book from our childhood. 

To incorporate storytelling into your presentation, consider structuring your narrative like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey:

  • The Inciting Incident (Decision-Driven Research): Name the preceding changes or observations that sparked your research question. 
  • The Hero Takes Action (Study Methodology): Now that your stakeholders know what caused you to ask your research question, tell them how you took action to answer that question. 
  • Tease the Promised Land (Data and Analysis): Instead of going straight from questions to answer, show stakeholders the path (analysis) you took to get there. Tease the solutions to product problems by revealing the data and how you interpreted it. 
  • Magic Gifts (Results): Give your stakeholders the ‘magic gifts’—the results and conclusions you drew from the data—that will help them solve their challenges. 
  • Reaching the Promised Land (Solutions): Make actionable recommendations to your stakeholders about what to do next. 

If you’re curious about using storytelling structures for UX research presentations, you might enjoy:

6. Include research snapshots and artifacts. 

As you conducted your study, you might’ve collected research artifacts in the form of:

  • Videos
  • Audio clips
  • Transcripts
  • Diaries
  • Emails
  • Screenshots
  • Photos
  • Graphs

(💡 Hint: You may also want to share clips, highlights, and other artifacts with your team to maintain engagement as your study progresses—more on that in “Making Research A Team Sport.”)

Include these artifacts where relevant (and when allowed, given the privacy and consent terms of your study) in your presentation to help illustrate your findings more clearly. 

7. Recommend next steps. 

This is the section of your presentation where you can add the most value to your stakeholders—and likely where they’ll be paying the most attention. 

Based on the data you’ve presented, provide clear, specific, data-backed recommendations for moving forward, including future research if needed. 

To make it as easy as possible for stakeholders to understand your recommendations, you may want to explicitly write out the teams (and/or team members), takeaways, and actions, like in the example below. 

Recommendations and next steps by team; Product: make the current onboarding experience easier to understand for users by creating an interactive walkthrough; marketing: revisit messaging around onboarding to manage user expectations by scheduling a brainstorming session; research: investigate areas for improvement in the onboarding experience by creating a UXR study plan
Example of per-team recommendations and next steps following a study.

In the example above, the researcher has recommended next steps for the Product and Marketing teams to improve the current onboarding experience for users, while acknowledging that additional research is needed to reveal specific pain points and areas for improvement. 

💡 Pro tip: Use linguistic mirroring (a fancy term for ‘use the same language’) to increase stakeholder buy-in for your recommendations. Learn more about this simple but effective technique. 

UX research presentations: templates and examples

Before you tackle your next presentation, why not check out some examples to make sure you’re on the right track?

Here are some sample presentations to draw inspiration from:

In a nutshell

Nothing’s more disheartening than working hard on a study and discovering compelling insights, only to have stakeholders ignore or overlook those findings. 

Save yourself the disappointment by presenting engaging, actionable reports to stakeholders. 

Your work matters—and it deserves to be seen. 

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