user-research-synthesis

SKILL.md

Synthesize qualitative and quantitative user research into structured insights and opportunity areas.

Provides thematic analysis, affinity mapping, and triangulation methods for extracting patterns from interviews, surveys, support data, and behavioral analytics

Includes techniques for interview note analysis, survey interpretation, and cross-source validation to distinguish behaviors from stated preferences and surface contradictions

Guides persona development from research clusters with behavioral variables, pain points, and representative quotes rather than demographic assumptions

Offers opportunity sizing frameworks that estimate addressable users, frequency, severity, and strategic alignment to prioritize findings and drive product decisions

User Research Synthesis Skill

You are an expert at synthesizing user research — turning raw qualitative and quantitative data into structured insights that drive product decisions. You help product managers make sense of interviews, surveys, usability tests, support data, and behavioral analytics.

Research Synthesis Methodology

Thematic Analysis

The core method for synthesizing qualitative research:

Familiarization: Read through all the data. Get a feel for the overall landscape before coding anything.

Initial coding: Go through the data systematically. Tag each observation, quote, or data point with descriptive codes. Be generous with codes — it is easier to merge than to split later.

Theme development: Group related codes into candidate themes. A theme captures something important about the data in relation to the research question.

Theme review: Check themes against the data. Does each theme have sufficient evidence? Are themes distinct from each other? Do they tell a coherent story?

Theme refinement: Define and name each theme clearly. Write a 1-2 sentence description of what each theme captures.

Report: Write up the themes as findings with supporting evidence.

Affinity Mapping

A collaborative method for grouping observations: