Standardize Research: A Guide to Level 2 of the Research Hub Maturity Map

At User Interviews, we use the Research Hub Maturity Map to guide teams through different approaches to panel management.

The Maturity Map includes four levels—Automate Research, Standardize Research, Curate Panel, and Enrich Panel—and these levels build on each other as your research practice matures. No matter where your team starts at implementation, the goal is almost always to move up in maturity to improve your efficiency and effectiveness over time.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know to achieve Level 2: Standardize Research, including:

What Level 2: Standardize Research entails
When and why your team might want to focus on Level 2
Tutorials and best practices for getting started

⚠️ Note: This is the second of a 4-part series. If you haven’t read Automate Research: A Guide to Level 1 of the Research Hub Maturity Map, you may want to start there.

What is Level 2 of Research Hub Maturity: Standardize Research?

At this level, research is consistent across team members with customized branding and templates. Teams are typically still recruiting participants on a project-to-project basis, instead of building and maintaining a panel, but their branding, communication, and overall processes are streamlined and professional.

With these added customizations and team-wide standardization, it becomes that much easier for anyone on your team to set up and run research projects with User Interviews. These features help research leaders ensure consistent professionalism and high standards across the team without having to maintain active oversight into every project.

Key User Interviews features used in Level 2:

Who uses Level 2: Standardize Research?

When teams expand their focus from the workflow features in Level 1 to the standardization features in Level 2, they’re typically concerned with providing a seamless experience for participants. This level allows research leaders more control and oversight over how research is conducted without micromanaging every project.

You can achieve this level of maturity on our Research Hub Workflow plan by investing a little bit of time to customize the experience for researchers and your participants. Along with using the recruiting workflow features and testing tool integrations, you’ll need to configure branding and communication settings for your team to maintain consistent, professional communication with participants no matter who’s doing research.

If you’re not sure which level is right for you, consider the panel maturity evaluation chart and questions in this article, or ask your UI Customer Success Manager to help you evaluate your needs.

What does the participant experience look like with Level 2: Standardize Research?

As you’ll see in the guided tour of the Hub participant experience below, the participant’s experience is elevated by the customization features used to standardize your research in Level 2. Your users will see a fully branded experience that is consistent with your style for professional, polished communication.

The sign-up experience may differ slightly for moderated and unmoderated projects, but the overall experience is polished and cohesive. Learn more about the participant’s experience in a Research Hub study.

How to launch your first project at Level 2: Standardize Research

⚠️Note: Some of these steps may involve collaboration with other teams. For example, customizing email themes involves some basic HTML and CSS, so you may need to loop in a teammate if you’re unfamiliar with code. Also, many teams need support from IT to authenticate their email domain. We recommend scanning through the steps and making note of actions you’ll need help with, and involving your helpers as soon as possible.

🚀 Get started with Research Hub Level 2: Standardize Research
1. Visit your Team Settings page and click on the Branding tab. From there, upload a logo and create a new email theme.
2. Switch to the Templates tab of your Team Settings page to set a default email template and customize the default confirmation page.
3. Next, go to the Advanced Options tab of your Team Settings page. From there, set up a custom email domain and create and apply a sender profile.
4. Finally, go to your project workspace to create a project template and streamline the project launching process for all team members.

1. Add a logo

To add a logo, visit the Team Settings page and click on the Branding tab. From there, you’ll be able to upload your company logo to be added to all participant-facing pages in your User Interviews recruiting workflow. Just click “upload your logo” and choose the image.

2. Create and set default email themes

Also found in the Branding tab of your Team Settings page is the ability to set email themes. To create an email theme, scroll to the “Email themes” section, click the “+ New theme” button, give your new template a name, edit the HTML and CSS, and hit save.

You can set the theme as your default during the creation process, by checking the box at the bottom of the HTML box, or after the fact by finding the theme in the Branding tab of your Team Settings page, clicking on the ellipsis icon next to your chosen theme and selecting “Mark as default.”

3. Create and set a default email template

To set a default email template, switch to the Templates tab of your Team Settings page. Scroll down to the “Email template sets” area, click the “+ Create template” button. Give your template set a name, select the study type and format that the set should apply to, and edit any of the individual emails in your set with custom copy. Then, just hit save!

You can set the template as default during the creation process by checking the “Set as default?” box in the email template builder. Once set, the default template set will pre-populate for all new project drafts created by any team member that corresponds to the project type.

4. Customize the default confirmation page

Head to the Templates tab of your Team Settings page, and click “edit” under the “Application confirmation page” section to customize your default confirmation page. Write a header and body copy, click preview to see how it will look with your uploaded logo, and then save to apply this page to all projects.

5. Set up a custom email domain

To set up a custom email domain, head to the Advanced Options tab of your Team Settings page. Select “add domain” and enter the domain you want to authenticate. Your domain will appear under “Authenticated domains” in a pending status. To retrieve the relevant DNS records you or your team will need to make and check on your domain status, select “Authenticate.” Please note that DNS record changes can take up to 48 hours to take effect.

6. Create and apply a sender profile

From the Advanced Options tab of your Team Settings page, scroll down to the sender profile section and click "Create a profile.” Type in the name you want to use, and select a verified email address. Your sender profile can now be applied to new and existing projects!

7. Launch a project and create project templates

Now, you can start launching projects. If there are specific project types that your team will use often, you can simplify setup by creating a project template. To do so, fill out the project details in your project builder, then head to the main projects homepage. From there, just click “mark as template” to save that project as a template for your team. To use a template, click the “templates” button at the top of your projects list and select which template you’d like to use.

Still have questions? We’re here to help.

If you still have questions, browse our other support articles or contact us to learn more.

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