Design Ops Handbook/Chapter 04 of 06
Research & Insight Operations
Research rarely fails because the study was bad. It fails because six months later nobody can find what it said. Insight ops exists so that what you learn compounds instead of evaporating.
Section 01
Where Insight Goes To Die
The studies are usually fine. What breaks is everything after the readout. Here is the attrition, and it is worse than most teams believe until they count it.
Section 02
Who Can Run What
Democratized research is not everyone doing everything. It is a clear line between the methods where a good template protects you and the methods where it does not.
Section 03
The Participant Panel
A panel you maintain is the single biggest multiplier on research velocity. Recruiting from scratch costs about a week per study. Recruiting from a panel costs a day.
Section 04
The Repository & The Insight Atom
Storing reports does not work, because nobody reads a report to answer a question. Store atoms instead: one observation, with its evidence attached, tagged so it surfaces when someone searches the problem rather than the project.
Section 05
The Research Calendar
Three rhythms running at once on different clocks. Most teams run only the middle one, then wonder why they keep rediscovering the same things every eighteen months.
Section 06
Insight Health
If only one of these ever gets measured, make it reuse. Everything else in this chapter exists to move that number.
