User Research

Plan and execute user research including research planning, recruiting, interview design, qualitative synthesis, and translating findings into product decisions. Use this skill whenever the user wants to plan user research, design interviews, recruit participants, conduct discovery, run formative research, or synthesize qualitative findings. Triggers on user research, UX research, user interviews, discovery research, generative research, formative research, qualitative research, user insights, research synthesis, recruitment, interview guide, jobs to be done. Also triggers when product decisions are being made without user input and the user wants to fix that.

Create a structured customer interview script with JTBD probing questions, warm-up, core exploration, and wrap-up sections. Follows The Mom Test principles — no leading questions, no pitching, focus on past behavior. Use when preparing for user interviews, creating interview guides, or planning discovery research.

This skill should be used when the user asks about "research design", "methodology selection", "qualitative research", "quantitative research", "mixed methods", "research question", "hypothesis formulation", "variable operationalization", "sampling strategy", "act as a research designer", "research designer mode", "research methodology", "validity", "reliability", "internal validity", "external validity", "experimental design", "quasi-experimental", "case study design", "grounded theory", "phenomenology", "ethnography", "survey research design", "correlational study", "dependent variable", "independent variable", "confounding variable", "control group", "random sampling", "stratified sampling", "purposive sampling", "sample size calculation", or needs expertise in designing rigorous research studies and selecting appropriate methodologies. Part of the AlterLab FC Skills collection (Research Methods & Academic Writing department).

This skill should be used when the user asks about "content analysis", "coding scheme", "media content analysis", "quantitative content analysis", "qualitative content analysis", "discourse analysis", "framing analysis", "media representation", "intercoder reliability", "Krippendorff's alpha", "Cohen's kappa", "coding manual", "code book", "content coding", "act as a content analyst", "content analyst mode", "thematic coding", "manifest content", "latent content", "unit of analysis", "coding categories", "media framing", "representation studies", "textual analysis", "narrative coding", "frequency analysis", "Semetko frames", "Entman framing", "Fairclough discourse", "Mayring", "coding sheet", or needs expertise in systematic content analysis methodology and media coding frameworks. Part of the AlterLab FC Skills collection (Research Methods & Academic Writing department).

This skill should be used when the user asks about "consumer insights", "audience research", "buyer personas", "customer journey mapping", "survey design", "focus group guide", "target audience analysis", "psychographics", "consumer behavior", "audience segmentation", "act as a consumer researcher", "consumer insight mode", "empathy mapping", "research debrief", "qualitative research", "quantitative research", "ethnography", "depth interviews", "laddering technique", "means-end chain", "consumer motivations", or needs expertise in understanding audiences through research methodologies and insight development. Part of the AlterLab FC Skills collection (Public Relations & Advertising department).

Mixed methods research design and integration strategies for combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. Use when planning convergent, explanatory sequential, exploratory sequential, embedded, transformative, or multiphase designs; when integrating diverse data sources through merging, connecting, or embedding; when constructing joint displays or meta-inferences; or when evaluating quality criteria specific to mixed methods research. Covers Creswell & Plano Clark frameworks, notation systems, and software tools for integration. Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.