Your research findings deserve better than getting buried in a slide deck or the company wiki. What if there was a more efficient way to package up your findings that guaranteed greater visibility and engagement? It’s time to ditch the static research reports… it's time for the research microsite.
We’ve talked a lot recently about maximising the value and impact of existing research by building insight hubs using historical data. This process involves migrating previous research reports, materials and insights into a centralised place. You can check out our ‘Maximising existing research: 0-1’ blog series for tips and tricks on getting started with the migration process here.
But this isn’t the only benefit to the modern insights hub. The reality is that not every team has historical data, and some teams we work with prefer to start by organically building a database of new knowledge - as it’s discovered.
In this post we challenge the status quo for packaging up research findings. We argue that your hard work deserves better than to get buried in some slide deck, company drive folder, or wiki.
It’s time to rethink the research report.
You’ve put a lot of thought, time, and energy into synthesising your research findings. Now it’s time to release your insights into the world and witness your discoveries drive real impact.
Ensuring our research findings land in the consciousness of those who need them is a real challenge for pretty much every research team we’ve spoken to. The problem is that we’re still using 30 year old tools like slide decks and PDFs to showcase our findings and inspire action.
As researchers, we look for ways to improve digital experiences for end users. And yet ironically, we expect the ‘end users’ of our research (the execs, stakeholders, PMs, designers, and other researchers), to be inspired to take action by scrolling through a 40 page slide deck.
Just because something has been done a certain way for a very long time, doesn’t mean that it is the right way. In fact, quite the opposite.
Whilst some have advocated moving away from the research report entirely, at Dualo we believe there is a middle ground. As Katya Hott describes — even if you’ve involved stakeholders early and often and have a clean, tagged, and organised research repository, there is still a lot of value in sharing a summary of the whys, hows, and outcomes of your user research.
After all, an often overlooked but important part of the User Researcher’s role is internally marketing their work and practice - a big part of this is ensuring research findings achieve maximum reach and impact.
But what if there was a more efficient and impactful way of packaging up your research findings? Where stakeholders and teammates can quickly gain a high level understanding of your findings, and also dive deeper into the specific areas of interest to them?
Well this is already a reality for many teams today.
Their secret? The research microsite.
Today we take a look at how teams are using microsites to reduce the time needed to create research reports, all the whilst driving more engagement… but it could mean the end of the research report as we know it 🤷
Let’s start with the fundamentals. A UX research report is a summary of the methods used, research conducted, data collected, and insights discovered from user research.
It’s a broad term because this can be packaged up in many different ways. The most common include:
- Slide decks (Powerpoint, Google Slides)
- Wikis (Confluence or Notion)
- ‘Whitepaper style’ reports (Word or Google Docs); and
- Email and direct messages (Slack or Teams)
Today we’re introducing a new way of packaging up your research findings - the research microsite.
But what is a microsite?
A microsite is an individual web page (or a small cluster of pages) which are able to function as independent entities, or linked together as part of a larger system.
In Dualo, microsites are automatically generated as you package up your research. There’s several benefits to this…
- Microsites are dynamic, interactive digital experiences.
- Microsites use pre-built components that are designed for efficiency and consistency.
- Microsites can be searched and filtered by topic and theme, at an atomic level.
- Microsites can be shared securely, either independently or as a combined cluster of related content .
- Microsites have built-in analytics to truly quantify visibility and engagement.
Let’s break each of these down…
Conventional research reports (be that slide decks, docs, or wikis) are static and flat by design. What we mean by ‘flat’ is they are single layered.
Let’s say for example that you have 5 key findings at the end of a research project. Each finding is relevant to a different internal audience. A conventional research report format forces you to tell a very linear narrative, and means that reports can easily bloat to 40+ slides - the majority of which are only relevant to a small proportion of people.
In contrast, microsites are interactive by design. This means that it’s possible to ‘open’ and interact with elements like you would on a website - allowing you to ‘hide’ the granular details specific to select audiences using expandable and openable content areas. This reduces the cognitive load, and improves the overall experience of consuming research.
Regardless of whether you’re using a slide deck, doc, or wiki - doing your work justice by creating a professional looking research report can take hours.
In fact, on average it takes 20 hours to package up findings at the end of a research project. We’ve all been there - whether you’re a trained designer or using a template, messing around with colours, fonts, and layouts is a real challenge. The irony is that every hour spent ‘designing’ a research report, is an hour not researching or designing new experiences.
In contrast, research microsites can be quickly and consistently spun-up using pre-built components. This follows a similar principle to the design system for the designer, or the CMS for the marketer…
And the best part is, everything you build into a research microsite meets best practice design principles such as consistency, scale and layout automatically.
That means it takes just minutes to showcase your research findings at the end of a project - but you don’t just have to take our word for it…
Digital product teams, and specifically researchers, produce 100s (if not 1000s) of valuable insights for their organisation, but these often become buried within traditional research reports.
As researchers we’ve all been asked that dreaded question…
“Can you send me any research and insights we have on X, Y and Z?”.
It often means tools down, and hours of searching through old research reports to respond with an answer.
So much so that on average, teams waste 59 minutes a day searching for insights hidden within different apps. And researchers end up losing a further 20% of their time duplicating previous research as a result of not being able to easily find previous research.
Microsites are designed to combat this problem because they’re able to function as independent entities, as well as be searched through and filtered as part of a larger knowledge management system. This means that it takes just seconds to find existing research by a particular theme or topic - and doesn’t require trawling through hundreds of old research folders and reports.
Sharing a slide deck, doc, or wiki page often means sharing a one-size-fits-all link (or even in some instances, a physical file).
Research microsites allow you to securely generate multiple unique links to share with different individuals and groups. This means that you can revoke access at any time, set expiration dates, create passwords, and even specify how much of your repository you want to enable the recipient to explore - by audience segment.
Sharing a unique link enables you to allow researchers and stakeholders to traverse between different microsites. Not only does this functionality help to present the ‘bigger picture’, it also allows the system to recognise and suggest related research.
And the best part is, because microsites are encrypted, this is all possible without the recipient even needing to sign up or create an account. This is ideal for agency-model researchers wanting to securely share research findings with customers outside of their team or organisation.
Ever wondered whether that research report you sent to your stakeholder actually got opened? When sharing generic links, it’s often difficult to track who’s actually engaged with your research findings.
Similarly to website analytics, microsites allow you to track metrics such as open rates, views and click-throughs - meaning you can start to truly quantify the overall impact of your research.
Whilst there are clearly benefits to building an insights hub using existing data, hopefully this article has shed some light on the immediate value that can be generated from simply switching to using microsites to package up and share your research findings.
Microsites allow you to more efficiently and engagingly showcase your research findings and wow your teammates and stakeholders - all whilst building an insights hub with no extra effort. This means you can start streamlining your process and maximising the long-term value of your research simultaneously.
But perhaps most importantly, microsites are connected, and part of a larger system. At Dualo we believe that no research should sit in complete isolation - as the old saying goes… the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and context is key. We’ll talk more about this in an upcoming post.
So next time you come to package up your research findings - why not consider building a microsite that truly does your work the justice it deserves? They’re effortless to build, secure, shareable, and searchable for the future.
So is this really the end of the research report as we know it? Maybe it’s time to try it for yourself!
Happy researching folks!
Maximising existing research: 0-1
31 Creative UX Research Presentations and Reports
Perfecting the art of the UX Research report
A comprehensive guide to design systems
What Is a Content Management System (CMS)?
The atomic unit of a research insight
Left Behind: 300+ UXRs on What Makes for an Adequate Research Project Timeline
I’m a design, UX & strategy lead with a passion for storytelling. Proud member of Dualo’s founding product trio. Always seeking new inspiration.
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