Research Repository: Everything You Need To Know

Technology is not created independent of humanity. If we want our designs and digital products to be human centered, we need access to information about the kinds of digital products and services people say they want and need.

Human-centered UX practices at scale churn out hundreds of insights each month but research artifacts are often scattered in individual and shared team drives, files and folders across the organization. Often, there’s no way for other teams to know what information exists, let alone search for it when they need it.

So, what are aspiring human-centered UX teams to do? How can you harness the human insights you already have to create ever-more-usable and useful digital products and services, and house a growing body of information and feedback from clients and business partners to power the next generation of digital product delivery?

Research repositories bring together UX research and reports into a searchable online database that makes it easy for team members from across the organization to find the information they need to power their design and development processes.

According to Nielsen Norman Group, research repositories can help UX teams achieve several goals such as:

• Ensure that all teams start their design and development process with a shared understanding of their users
• Create a searchable and accessible hub for all research studies
• Prevent duplicate studies
• Encourage nondesign teams to get involved in the research process
• Provide UX team (designers, developers and product team members) with information about what has been done before to allow them to quickly iterate in new directions, improve current designs and avoid repeat past mistakes
  

A research repository enables everyone, regardless of their role, to access an organization’s research insights, which creates more user-focused designs.

Now that you know what a research repository is, how do you know when you need one? What’s the right time to create a research repository in your organization? While there are many reasons to adopt a research repository, if your team is experiencing the following issues, it may be time.

1. Research reports are lost and scattered amongst tools and in several different storage places.

One issue you may be facing is a lack of organization of studies. Logistically, medium to large size companies have trouble managing and organizing research which can lead to problems with access to the information when it's needed most. Creating one centralized, tagged and managed library for research can help solve this problem. In addition, it can also alleviate the need for tedious back-and-forth chats on where to find reports and how to access them.

2. Lack of searchability and standardized taxonomy.

This is a common issue within design teams, and it couldn’t be more frustrating to have to dig for relevant insights applicable to your project. A standardized taxonomy can help surface information and lead designers to insights they are looking for by tagging and thorough management. Standards can be encouraged and to some degree enforced with a repository. With the standards now set, the outcome is more uniform artifacts. This will set the stage of understanding for both researcher and nonresearcher to create and understand learned outcomes.

Each team will tackle the process a little differently but there are some overall steps for creating a research repository. Here’s how we went about doing this at Rocket Companies^®:

1. Create teams and hold an initial kick off meeting.

Aligned the team on what the research repository is and what kinds of information it should hold.

2. Co-create a shared taxonomy.

Discuss the kind of terms used in your organization and some of the common topics or themes that tend to appear repeatedly in your UX studies. These terms form the backbone of your repository taxonomy that makes it easier to search and find the research you are looking for when you need it.

3. Supply clear documentation.

Provide templates and instructions to make it easy for those completing research studies to upload their findings into the repository. Provide a complete list and definitions for all terms in your repository search taxonomy that are not in common use or self-explanatory.

4. Ensure good governance.

Good libraries are always reviewing their collection to remove out-of-date materials to make room for all the shiny, new information. Do the same with your research repository! Set a schedule for reviewing all the materials in your repository and have a plan for retiring out-of-date research!

To recap, a research repository is a great tool to organize and house all your research reports to ultimately improve the daily processes of human-centered UX teams. Adopting such a tool can minimize unnecessary tasks, contribute to the maturity of your team and help jumpstart projects across the organization. Here at Rocket Companies, we like to think of our research repository as a launchpad, propelling all our teams to take the next big UX leap to the stars!