Synthesize your findings

Once you're done analyzing qualitative and/or quantitative data, it's time to synthesize your findings and come up with insights. Synthesis helps researchers turn the identified themes into something meaningful.

Don't confuse findings with insights. A finding is a fact or a statement drawn from user research. For example, the statement that 70% of users abandon their shopping cart at the checkout page is a finding.

An insight is a conclusion about human behavior or user motivation based on this statement. An insight from this example can be that the checkout page is too confusing or that it contains certain distractions that prevent users from making a purchase.

How do you synthesize findings?

• Prioritize findings and select the ones that seem the most relevant based on your research objectives.
• Organize your themes, findings, and insights using sticky notes, whiteboards, or any other system you prefer.
• List the most important insights in a document.
• Share them with your team and brainstorm together what can be learned from these insights.