Product x Research Collaboration Report | User Interviews
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The Product x Research Collaboration Report

New - Part 2!
Interviews with 150 Product professionals reveal the highs and lows of collaborating with researchers, and the steps needed to improve it.
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Part 1

Introduction

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.

Download the full report

Summary

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Proactive > Reactive

Product people want more proactive engagement and project management from Research, especially around prioritization.

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Awareness is key

Product people believe this lack of proactivity derives, in part, from a lack of awareness of the nature of development processes.

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Actionable insights are critical

Product people are particularly frustrated when Research does not create actionable insights that factor in current constraints.

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Still room for (education) improvement

Product people think they can and should do more work to educate and fold Research into the development lifecycle.

Method

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. 

Findings

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. 

How is the Product x Research relationship characterized by PMs?

A majority of responses used  positive words to describe their relationship with Research across three themes:

  1. Regard: Mutual respect and even a sense of friendship.
  2. Collaborative: A relationship defined by clear roles and adaptability.
  3. Professional: Interdependence, cordiality, and a consultative working relationship.
​​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."

Defining "successful" collaboration between Product and Research

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."
📕 Read: Three Facets of High-Impact User Research

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.

When collaboration is successful, the wins abound

Responses grouped around three types of wins: product, user, and team. Let’s look at each.

Product wins

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."


User wins

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."


Team wins

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."
▶️ Watch: Strategies for Creating More Research ROI
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Lastly, we wanted to explore areas of frustration felt by Product professionals when collaborating with Research. These might be areas of growth for researchers.

Points of friction between Product and Research

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:

  • Priorities and expectations are not discussed and agreed upon in advance of work
  • Communication practices, like updates or check-ins, are unreliable and incomplete
  • Findings are not presented in a way that resonates with what Product leaders need

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:

  • Missing deadlines due to lack of updates or scope creep
  • Low data quality creating the need to re-run research
  • The extra project management work required to keep researchers looped in
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."
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Conclusion

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.

More on collaboration

New - Part 2

Introduction

In this second part of our Product x Research Collaboration Report, you’ll find practical ways to improve your visibility with Product stakeholders and the likelihood of them using your insights. These recommendations are based on our research interviews and the experience of one co-author, a Product leader herself.

Use the link below to download the full report, including case studies and resources for learning more about our top recommendations for fostering stronger Product impact.

Download the full report
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Summary

To increase the effect of your research, start building Product Sense, which is an understanding of the relationships between  user pain, product solutions, and business outcomes.

To improve collaboration with Product, start treating your research as a PM does development: prioritizing outcomes over methods, chunking up project steps, and embracing tradeoffs.

Build Product Sense

Most feedback for researchers clustered around a need to improve “Product Sense”: the intuitive understanding of which problems are worth solving, why certain features work or fail, and why certain product decisions are made.

Product Sense can mean different things to different types of products (internal vs external; B2B vs B2C; SaaS vs services). There are four skills that—based on our research—apply to most product organizations:

  1. Learn the roles, relationships, and stages of product development
  2. Think (and design) using the “What, Why, KPI) approach
  3. Develop the powers of social persuasion
  4. Link product analytics with research findings

Here’s a look at each, including ways to start developing them.

1. Learn the roles, relationships and stages of product development

When we asked Product professionals how researchers could gain more Product Sense, their answer was clear: Product professionals were clear on this recommendation for researchers: get your hands dirty! Immerse yourself in the product development process and by actually using it to shape projects. 

For PMs, building Product Sense requires fluency across multiple domains like UI/UX design and technical planning. To be more effective, researchers don’t need to go nearly as deep. Instead, they can focus on three key concepts:

  • Roles: Get to know the core players within the process and what decisions they own
  • Relationships: Learn how these roles and teams collaborate and their key friction points
  • Stages: Build a general understanding of the product development cycle 

Our participants reflected that some Research colleagues don’t seem to spend much time using the product themselves, which limits the empathy they can have for users. 

Product Manager:
If my research partners knew the product extremely well, they could understand the participants' feedback better and in turn ask questions more effectively

A participant gave feedback that they wished they didn't have to select 10 options in a dropdown filter every single time they came into the product. The researcher did not know that a feature already exists to help the user and took that as feedback instead of digging deeper.

To close this gap, researchers can start by listing the core user tasks and then try using the product to complete them.

▶️ Watch: Business 101 for Researchers

2. Think (and design) using the “What, Why, KPI” approach

Product leaders also expressed frustration at a perceived “knowledge gap” researchers have around product strategy, without which Research might pursue interesting but ultimately irrelevant questions. Worse still, a project might produce insights that don't connect to strategic priorities. 

The result is research that sits on the shelf instead of driving product decisions.

Product Manager:
Researchers should develop skills in analytics, business strategy, and market analysis to increase their impact for product teams. 

This would allow us to focus on business needs and leverage research findings to guide the product roadmap rather than just validating design patterns or understanding users.

Importantly, “strategy” can be straightforward, often boiling down to one question with three parts: “How will our company and product win in the marketplace?”

  • What: The specific priorities a company is focused on executing
  • Why: The reasoning and beliefs behind these strategic priorities 
  • KPIs: The metrics used to judge company performance

Researchers can better situate their work towards driving impact by understanding the company, product department, and their own team’s strategy. 

Researchers should work with their Product counterparts to create simple versions of “Whats, Whys and KPIs” for easy reference, and researchers should start pushing their Product teammates to clearly articulate how each project fits within this framework.

3. Develop the powers of social persuasion

Beyond foundational product knowledge, Product folks recommend research sharpen and strengthen their powers of persuasion—the ability to shape decisions by getting people to listen to and take action on your ideas. 

Product people rely heavily on influence to compel stakeholders to work together towards a common goal. For researchers, building influence is crucial to ensuring that the insights they generate will be used to affect product strategy and development. 

To build influence, researchers should focus on storytelling and relationship building.

Storytelling

Product leaders regularly mentioned struggling to identify the “So what?” during shareouts and reports from researchers. 

Product Manager:
Researchers should develop communication and presentation skills to leadership and executives to increase their impact. Bending toward actionable insights and giving leadership concrete direction and goals (and hitting them, via the product) makes the whole team look more credible and thus better received.

Effective storytelling isn't just about framing actionable next steps, although that's important. It's about connecting insights to things that matter to an audience. To do this, Researchers can use this simple formula:

Research insight + customer example + business impact + potential solutions 

This grabs stakeholder attention by combining relevance and immediacy. The data and research is upfront, followed by the “So what?” and an action to take. 

📕 Read: How to Conduct Stakeholder Interviews

Relationship building

The likelihood that your findings will influence an audience is determined before delivering your presentation. The real work happens before you step in the room, through the individual relationships built with those you seek to influence. Do they know you, trust you, and understand your work?

Product Manager:
In order to adapt, Research teams need to start collaborating. Effective collaboration means checking your ego at the door and giving everyone a seat at the table

A truly collaborative environment where everyone feels heard to share their ideas, questions and concerns. Open communication, respect and really good documentation. ​​You have to create space for people to speak.

Researchers should spend time getting to know the stakeholders they want to influence. Schedule regular check-ins with PMs, designers, engineers, and marketing teammates, and ask questions that show you're invested in their success:

  • What's the biggest challenge you're facing this quarter?
  • Which metrics are you most focused on improving?
  • What assumptions make you nervous?

These conversations improve both the quality of your research and create the goodwill for Product stakeholders to support your work when it matters.

4. Link product analytics with research findings

Product also wants Research to develop stronger analytical skills, particularly with the type of data that drives product decisions. 

Product Manager: Researchers should know more about analytics and conversion rates optimization. We could set the level of the conversation on business needs rather than only considering “the voice of the user.”

While many researchers learn analytical skills like SQL, R, or Python for data analysis, there’s another category of tools they can add to their arsenal: product analytics tools. Analytics tools like Mixpanel, Amplitude, and FullStory are essential to how product teams understand user behavior at scale. To speak the same analytical language as the Product, researchers should begin learning and using these platforms, as well as the types of metrics the team consults. 

Ask for access to these dashboards and create your own views based on flows or patterns you’ve noticed from your own research. This helps build a baseline. Try scheduling time with an analyst or data scientist for a walk through, focusing on how metrics roll up to KPIs. 

▶️ Watch: Using Analytics for Research ROI

With time, you can connect research insights to data trends and frame your recommendations in terms of business impact (with the evidence to back it up!).

Developing Product Sense is the backstage work and doesn’t directly affect research projects. The second finding is all about the frontstage: how to identify, design, field, and deliver research.

Add product development practices to research

Defining clear outcomes, navigating difficult tradeoffs, and adapting plans based on new information are all core to product development. In addition to developing Product Sense, many of our product respondents shared that in order to adapt to today’s changing world, researchers should treat their work processes as a PM might their own.

Our interviews revealed six action items for researchers:

  1. Proactively generate research opportunities
  2. Frame research around outcomes, not methods
  3. Plot the journey of your own Product team
  4. Prepare for tradeoffs using prioritization
  5. Learn about and embrace agile principles
  6. Define and measure research’s unique impact

Here is what these mean and how to start applying them to your own research work.

1. Proactively generate research opportunities

A PM kicks off each new product development lifecycle by identifying which opportunity to pursue, then working to validate, build, and launch features based on that opportunity. 

Similarly, Product folks want researchers to generate research opportunities proactively, based on their unique perspectives. 

Product Manager:
A high impact researcher is someone who can proactively identify trends and bring issues to the surface without being given specific direction.

They do this by working with users to identify pain points and recurring problems that could be addressed, or market opportunities to build upon.

Need inspiration? Try these sources for proactive project opportunities:

  • Competitor research
  • Complementary products
  • Other parts of the organization
📕 Read: What’s the Right Time for Research?

2. Frame research around outcomes, not methods

PMs are trained to create products that achieve a certain set of outcomes based on the tasks users want to achieve. Just as customers don’t necessarily care about the deep technical workings of a product, PMs don't usually need the intricacies of your research. 

Product Manager:
Sometimes researchers overcomplicate the work. Usually I just need a quick answer or a directional answer that could be done in a short amount of time. 

But they want to run a long detailed research project that does not provide any level of deeper insight.

Product-minded researchers should ask themselves, “If my research is the product, what outcomes will it help my PMs achieve?” Use this frame to establish a clear set of expectations on how different studies can push product development forward.

Another way to do this is creating a "menu" of study types, organized by the specific outcomes they will—and won’t—help the product team achieve. Focus less on the details of the methodology and more on the decisions the Product team will be able to make with its results.

This not only educates Product on the uses of specific research methods, it’s also a moment to showcase your expertise in identification and selection—saying, “If you want to learn about outcome X, then method Y is the best for that purpose.” Connecting your method suggestion with the rationale reinforces the value UX research brings.

3. Plot the journey of your own Product team

Just as PMs need to comprehend a user journey, researchers should sketch the context of their Product partners’ own journey. Factors like cross-functional team cadences and internal politics can have a big effect on the decisions PMs make. 

These are details that you won’t find in strategy docs; instead, a researcher might need to excavate this context through open and honest conversations with Product teammates. When kicking off a new initiative, researchers could schedule time with their Product to ask on-the-record (goals and strategy) and off-the-record (politics and risks) questions.

On-the-record examples

  • What outcomes does the business expect from this initiative?
  • What do you believe are the biggest risks within this initiative?
  • Who are the key stakeholders?

Off-the-record examples

  • Does this initiative have broad support or are there any influential skeptics?
  • What's our tolerance for changing course based on negative findings?
  • What about this project keeps you up at night?

Conversations like these help researchers glean the hidden factors motivating decisions, while also building trust and empathy with their Product partners. 

📕 Read: Guide to Journey Mapping Tools

4. Prepare for tradeoffs using prioritization

PMs eat, breathe and sleep prioritization. They can’t put every feature in their product and have to make tough decisions based on resources, time, and feasibility. Researchers can use this same mindset to align with product on what’s most important when planning a project roadmap.

A perfect moment to try this is project kickoffs. Ask your Product partner what’s most important to learn or know given current constraints. Is it speed? Rigor in method? To help PMs make informed decisions, highlight the potential tradeoffs for different approaches.

This practice helps establish a common language with Product. They’ll feel more empowered to make decisions because they’ll have a clear cause and effect based on their desired choice, rather than evaluating methodologies they might not fully understand. 

5. Learn about and embrace agile principles

Our Product respondents consistently emphasized their desire for faster, more “agile” research practices. 

Director of Product:
Research teams need to start having agile research methodologies and tools in hand to provide both larger research and quick return research. 

Faster feedback from clients and potential clients will definitely improve the quality of product development and allow us to quickly pivot to the higher priority features.

Although agile means different things in different organizations, it generally involves:

  • Breaking work into smaller, focused components
  • Providing regular updates and interim findings
  • Readiness to pivot based on early results

Embracing agile for research might mean creating smaller, narrower studies to provide initial insights, and then working with Product teams to decide on expanding the scope or moving in a different direction. 

It might also mean remaining open to changing a project’s methodology in-flight if early results aren’t leading to the right insights to drive decisions (as opposed to finishing a study that the team has already determined won’t help inform a need). 

📕 Read: The Rapid UX Research Framework

6. Define and measure research’s unique impact

Connecting research to KPIs like revenue or conversion can be challenging, unless you know where to look. An alternative approach involves using “proxy” or associated metrics for measuring performance. Here are two ways to do this.

Pulse surveys

To gauge the impact of Research on Product strategy, reflect on the product initiatives (big and small) shipped the previous quarters and count how many were shaped by a user research insight. If you’re in the middle of a launch, try a small “pulse” survey with Product, using questions like, “How much influence did research have?” and “Describe your rating.”

In addition to learning how your research was or was not utilized, this creates a baseline metric and opportunities for improvement (using the open-ended feedback). After the launch, try scheduling quick syncs with folks who rated research’s influence as low and  investigate the reasons why. This might unlock an opportunity you didn’t even consider.

Knowledge checks

Another way to capture the impact of Research is to “test” how well the wider team understands its users. Run small polls and quizzes at all-hands or in communications channels with questions like, “What are the core problems customers are trying to solve with our product? Choose all that apply.” Sharing the results with a user learning session is a nice motivation moment for folks to engage and improve.

Conclusion 

The evolution from traditional researcher to product-minded research partner doesn't happen overnight, nor should it mean abandoning research expertise. Instead, it's about applying that expertise in ways that resonate with product teams and drive business value.

By learning about and building Product Sense, and treating research as a product itself, researchers can start creating more ROI and earn that prized “seat at the table.” This transformation benefits everyone: researchers gain more influence, product teams make better decisions, and users get better products and experiences.

More on ROI and collaboration

Thanks to Nick Lioudis and Katryna Balboni for editing, Jane Izmailova + Holly Holden for designing, Kene Anoliefo and the team at HEARD, and all the Product folks who participated in these interviews.