Download the report for all our findings, including the gaps our Product respondents said researchers should prioritize, plus an actionable guide for PMs to learn research.
The space between product success and failure is narrow. Most organizations know the importance of user-centricity to long term success.
And one of the drivers of that user-centricity is strong collaboration between Product and Research. When user insights drive product decisions, the customer (and business) benefits. But like any partnership, there is room for improvement and iteration.
That’s why we’ve partnered with HEARD to undertake a one-of-a-kind study, interviewing 150 Product professionals to investigate their experiences collaborating with researchers. We tackled hits, misses, and wishes to paint a picture of Product x Research collaboration and chart a roadmap for improvements.
Read on to preview our learnings on the qualities that contribute to successful Product x Research collaboration, and stay tuned for our upcoming analysis on what researchers can do to start creating more influence with these critical stakeholders.
Use the link below to download the report for all our findings, including special access to our interactive dataset, plus an actionable guide on research best practices created specifically for PMs.
Product people want more proactive engagement and project management from Research, especially around prioritization.
Product people believe this lack of proactivity derives, in part, from a lack of awareness of the nature of development processes.
Product people are particularly frustrated when Research does not create actionable insights that factor in current constraints.
Product people think they can and should do more work to educate and fold Research into the development lifecycle.
From Nov. 21 to Dec. 4, we sought research participants through recruitment messages sent or shared across Slack communities, social media, newsletters, and on the User Interviews and HEARD websites.
Interviews were conducted using HEARD, a text-based AI-moderation platform. HEARD uses AI to conduct open-ended, qualitative interviews. The AI moderator guides participants through a set of discussion topics and creates personalized follow-up questions based on their responses in real-time.
Each participant completed a 12-15 minute interview touching on five discussion topics. In whole, we covered 15 different topics across three different interview tracks. A total of 150 Product professionals were included for analysis, with 15 eliminated for inclusion criteria.
Note: Due to the large breadth of data we received from our research sample, we broke down our analysis into two parts. Part one is focused on the state of Product x Research collaboration; Part two will provide actionable recommendations for improvement. Be sure to subscribe to the Fresh Views newsletter to be notified when part two is released.
Below are the prompts provided to research participants. The HEARD AI then determined when and how to ask follow-up questions. These analyses are based on the complete responses from participants for each interview question.
We began the interviews by assessing the current state of the Product x Research relationship. We also wanted to dig into what defined “successful” collaboration with researchers.
A majority of responses used positive words to describe their relationship with Research across three themes:
Product Manager:
"Clear, open communication fosters teamwork, allowing researchers to share ideas, provide feedback, and solve problems efficiently. This ensures a smoother research process and better-quality results."
Product Leader:
"I think the way that they make research and the way that they ask questions make us able to gather insightful things from our consumers which make us then influence our decision making process."
For Product people, successful collaboration with Research is all about the process: how they align on goals, negotiate insights needs and regularly check in and communicate with each other. Collaboration is more likely to succeed when Product and Research are aligned early on key hypotheses and the data needed to inform them.
In addition to building a process both sides can trust, Product leaders also shared that successful collaboration happens when Researchers integrate their work into the product development lifecycle. This means ensuring that insights don't languish in decks, but are used to drive decisions as teams build and iterate.
Product Lead:
"When collaboration thrives, the business sees faster innovation, stronger user loyalty, data-driven decisions, and a product that truly resonates with customers."
Product Lead:
"Successful means that the user is able to reach its goals and the releases provide customer value. Product and research should work together to understand the market and mental model of the user."
Product Manager:
"Successful collaboration between Product and Research is about shared ownership of outcomes, effective communication, and constant integration of research into the decision-making process. When the teams work seamlessly together, the result is not only a better product but also a more efficient, user-centered development process."
With a foundation for what Product x Research collaboration currently looks like for our respondents and what they thought made such partnerships successful, we turned to the unique value and impact such relationships can bring to a product experience.
Responses grouped around three types of wins: product, user, and team. Let’s look at each.
These responses usually mentioned improvements to the experience, both iterative (as in better usability or flows) and new (additional features or functionalities not previously considered). Product folks also referenced better, more confident decisions, product roadmap improvements, and more awareness of opportunity spaces for the product.
Product Manager:
"We used research to reprioritize our feature roadmap and prevented a potential low-use feature from being developed."
Product Lead:
"Recently, we planned on launching a new product which was the direct competition to the biggest brand in that space. [R]esearch helped us understand what the customers were satisfied with and what difference they wanted so that we could incorporate that in our work and get ahead of competition."
A second kind of win was related to improvements in Product’s user or customer “sense.” In practice, this might look like deeper knowledge of preferences and needs. Other user wins included increased customer satisfaction, usage/engagement, and revenue expansion.
Product Leader:
"Researchers discovered a process where users manually took data from a document, then placed in another document for analysis. We automated that process for them. It improved it significantly and saved our org 20k annual hours of labor."
Product Lead:
"Collaborating with research revealed a hidden user pain point, inspiring a simple design tweak that boosted engagement, satisfaction, and team pride."
Finally, some product “wins” implicated team dynamics, including better cohesion, alignment, and space for Product teams to get more involved in the research process (e.g., learning how user data can create a better decision). More broadly, successful Product x Research collaboration encourages more customer touchpoints, creating those habits.
Product Manager:
"Just this week the researcher I'm working with compiled a list of customers who we could pitch our upcoming beta to, reached out to the owners of each of those accounts, and set up time for us to talk to those account owners about pitching to their customers. Now I've got 12 relevant meetings on my calendar."
Product Manager:
"We were working on a 0->1 product and wanted to build a very expensive service for our users. Our researcher organized a collaborative process...to help us understand where that service will be useful to our users and would deliver the impact we were looking for. We decided to build the service for our customers to drive usage and revenue for the business."
Product Manager:
"When everybody was at the research table: business, designers, content team, developers. We set the goals together, and also reflected together on the findings to find new opportunities."
Lastly, we wanted to explore areas of frustration felt by Product professionals when collaborating with Research. These might be areas of growth for researchers.
More than half of responses mentioned issues related to communication and alignment as a source of frustration in Product x Research collaboration. Poor collaboration happens when:
Here’s how two senior product professionals described collaboration pain points:
Product Specialists:
"The most frustrating part of collaborating with my research team can be aligning on priorities and expectations. Another challenge is the balance between speed and thoroughness—research can take time, but there’s pressure to deliver quickly."
VP of Product:
"Poor leadership. Miscommunication and poor flow of information. Lack of unity around goals. Poor engagement among team members. Lack of collaborative infrastructure. Collaboration overload. Imbalanced distribution of work."
Another frustration revolved around time management and delays. Product folks reported frustrations with:
Product Leader:
"It's not motivating when you put in all the efforts only for your collaborators not to be done with their [work], it's actually tiring and drains my energy."
Product Lead:
"Not being involved earlier in the process. We usually only meet with them to get results or review sessions with them. I would love to contribute earlier in the process and try to dictate what learnings we need to drive our product."
Some responses also mentioned interpersonal conflicts as a frustration. Looping Research into the development process brings misunderstanding around expertise, data need, and the responsibilities for delivery. The dreaded E-word (“ego”) was used in some instances, especially in reference to the importance of balancing research rigor with launch or delivery deadlines.
Product Leader:
"There will always be differing opinions and various ways to perform the same research. The key is not to allow team members to get their egos too close to the product, or when things don't go their way, they see it as a personal affront. It is a constant battle to straddle the thin line of caring deeply about the product and the research but keeping the ego out of it."
Diagnosing the friction points in Product x Research collaboration is only the first step. This report clearly shows the value that can come from better relations between these teams. But what does each need to do? What skills and mindsets need developing? And how?
In the second part of our report, we’ll share recommendations based on our findings for how both teams can work more cooperatively, maximizing the expertise of each, and for the benefit of the end user.
Our thanks to all the Product folks who took the time to share their experiences. We’d also like to thank Kene Anoliefo and the HEARD team for fieldwork, analysis, and synthesis support. Thanks to Holly Holden for design, Nick Lioudis for copyedits, and Katryna Balboni for data visualizations.
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