The power of customer research repositories.

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Are your R&D, product, and marketing teams working in silos? Now's the time to prioritise open communication and shared knowledge among your teams to foster innovation and drive customer-centric decision-making. 

User research is vital in understanding user needs, but its true value lies in accessibility and utilisation. This is where research repositories come into play. In this article, we'll explore what a research repository is, highlight the benefits of having one, and provide practical examples of how to create and maintain a robust research repository. To help you start your user research journey, we've also included a free Notion template designed to help you capture and organise your insights.

What is a research repository?

A research repository is a centralised location where businesses can store, organise, and share user research insights and findings across teams. It serves as a comprehensive and easily accessible knowledge hub that consolidates valuable customer insights, enabling teams to refer back to research findings, stay aligned, and make informed decisions.

What are the benefits of a research repository?

1. Common understanding: By sharing research findings through a repository, teams can develop a shared understanding of user needs, pain points, and preferences. This promotes empathy and ensures that customer-centric thinking becomes a fundamental aspect of decision-making across your business.
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2. Avoiding redundancy: Research repositories prevent duplication of efforts by enabling teams to search and access existing insights before embarking on new research projects. This ensures that resources are used efficiently and that teams build upon previous knowledge rather than starting from scratch.
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3. Collaboration and cross-functional insights: Research repositories foster team collaboration, encouraging interdisciplinary knowledge sharing and cross-pollination of ideas. When research insights are readily available to various departments, such as R&D, product, and marketing, it promotes a holistic approach to problem-solving and innovation.
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4. Informed Decision-Making: A well-maintained research repository equips decision-makers with up-to-date and reliable insights. When teams can refer to research findings during the decision-making process, it minimises biases, encourages evidence-based choices, and ultimately leads to better outcomes for your business and customers.
   

Creating a research repository.

To establish a practical research repository, here are our top tips:

1. Decide how to categorise your insights: Defining tags to classify your insights is the most crucial part of making the knowledge accessible. Depending on your business, some examples of categories could be device type (mobile, web, hardware), topic (onboarding, support, a specific feature) or research type (survey, observation, user interview).
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2. Select a format: Notion, a versatile and user-friendly collaboration tool, can be an excellent starting point for creating a research repository, particularly as it has a free plan. Its flexible structure lets you organise and present information in various formats, such as tables, databases, and pages. 
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3. Set clear guidelines: Define guidelines for documenting and organising research findings within the repository. Establish naming conventions, tagging systems, and standardised templates to ensure consistency and that you don't forget to include essential information.
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4. Update regularly: Consistently updating the repository with new research findings is crucial to maintain its relevance and usefulness. Assign responsibility to team members for adding and curating insights, ensuring that it remains a living resource rather than an archive.
   

A Notion template to get you started.

Getting started can be the most challenging part, so we've put together a free Customer Insights Hub template on Notion that you can use today. 

The template has three pre-defined categories - topic, type and device - that can be customised to suit your business structure and help you locate insights quickly. And we've also included a research entry template with prompts to help ensure your team adds all critical information. The prompts include: Who?, Why?, What and Where?, Key Insights and then a space for all the raw data.

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Click here to access the Customer Insights Hub template. Once it's open, click 'Duplicate' near the top right of the page. You'll be asked to sign in or create a free Notion account. Then follow the steps, and the template will be yours to customise! If you have any issues, please reach out to us at hello@bostudio.nz. 

Don't let your valuable user research go to waste. 

Research repositories provide businesses with a powerful tool for capturing, storing, and sharing valuable user insights. By breaking down silos and encouraging communication, these repositories enhance collaboration, decision-making, and overall customer-centric thinking. Today is the perfect day to start building your research repository.