Key takeaways
📋 A research intake form is a powerful tool that can bring structure to the research requests that are coming from the entire organisation.
💡 Research intake forms can help you manage competing requests and create more value through your UX research efforts.
🔦 A user research intake form is a structured and standardized way for stakeholders to request UX research support.
🔍 These forms typically include key questions about the UX project in question, including the project overview, main research goals, as well as logistics and timelines.
🍯 A UX research intake form might look like a simple, templated document, however, it is of quintessential importance for the smooth operation of any user research team.
Without a clear, structured way to process research requests, UX teams struggle to plan out meaningful studies that bring actionable takeaways. And this is where research intake forms come into play.
A research intake form is a powerful tool for streamlining the request process and fostering shared understanding between researchers and stakeholders.
Whether you are just getting started with your research or you already have robust research operations, research intake forms can help you manage competing requests and create more value through your UX research plan.
Let’s dive in!
What is a user research intake form?
A user research intake form is a structured and standardized way for stakeholders to request UX research support.
These forms are usually digital documents hosted on tools like Google Forms or embedded into project management tool platforms like Jira.
They typically include key questions about the UX project in question, including the project overview, main UX research strategy, as well as logistics and timelines.
Research intake forms can be in the form of short free text fields, dropdowns, or even checkboxes, depending on the operations of your UX team.
This way, research intake forms help UX researchers understand the scope of the projects and make informed decisions on how to support the request.
Rather than collecting project details through emails or scattered Slack messages, an intake form offers a standardized approach.
It helps researchers gather all the information needed to properly scope and prioritize research work.
💡 Pro Tip
Regularly update your intake form based on feedback to ensure it stays aligned with your team’s needs and captures the most relevant data.
Why is a UX research intake document important?
A UX research intake form might look like a simple templated document, however, it is of quintessential importance for the smooth operation of any user research team, and here are the key reasons why:
✅ It creates alignment between researchers and stakeholders
Researchers often blame stakeholders for vague requests, while researchers are accused of incomplete research studies.
Research intake forms can come to the rescue as they can solve these bottlenecks simply by enhancing communication between the UX team and the other cross-functional teams.
How? Intake forms educate stakeholders on how to think critically about what type of support they need and why.
This reduces confusion, saves time massively for researchers, and ensures that research is meaningful and in alignment with the goals of the business.
✅ It enhances the effective prioritization of research requests
It is not a secret that demand for research keeps growing, leaving the UX teams feeling overwhelmed by the number of requests coming in.
Intake forms can be a game-changer for effective prioritization of the incoming requests as the UX team has all the necessary information to scope out the requests based on impact and decide what will be prioritized.
Also, this is a great way to weed out duplicate or overlapping requests, ensuring that UX teams always focus on impactful projects.
💡 Pro Tip
Use intake forms to spot duplicate requests and focus your team’s efforts on high-impact projects with clear priorities.
✅ It promotes scalability in research operations
UX research intake forms are an invaluable tool not only short term, at the project level, but also long term, as they can help promote the scalability of your team’s research process.
Research intake forms can help with the standardization of the entire intake process, reducing unnecessary hassle and ensuring that all projects are getting the same treatment from the very beginning.
In this way, UX research can scale smoothly as your organisation grows.
With UXtweak, it’s easier to keep your research intake standardized and scalable, thanks to built-in tools for managing participants, running usability tests, and analyzing insights — all in one platform.
When should research intake forms be used?
Our advice is to utilize research intake forms throughout the product development cycle. Here are a few key scenarios where using a research intake can be beneficial for your organisation:
📍 Scenario 1: Building a new product or a new feature
Research intake forms are a great tool to deploy when starting to build a new product or feature. This is because this is the point in product development where it is critical to understand user needs deeply. As
David Travis aptly summarized:
You get inside your users’ heads by doing good UX research: research that provides actionable and testable insights into users’ needs.
Hence, a research intake form can help the team make early-stage research more targeted and focused by offering a single source of assumptions or research ideas.
📍 Scenario 2: Assessing existing features or products
Another key stage when a research intake form can prove to be extra handy is during the evaluation of existing user experiences.
Having an intake form can help guide requestors to provide all the necessary information about the support they require, focusing on the impact that their request will have on the organisation.
📍 Scenario 3: Managing and prioritizing items on your user research roadmap
Most mature UX research teams plan their work by creating a user research roadmap. In this context, intake forms can provide a reliable and structured stream of projects that can nicely feed into the user research roadmap.
On top of that, during the planning, the UX research team has a unique opportunity to bundle together overlapping or similar requests and work more efficiently.
📍 Scenario 4: Efficiently tackling requests from cross-functional teams
Another scenario where processing UX requests with a research intake form can come in handy is when non-product, cross-functional teams have research needs.
Hence, those intake forms can really help the UX team tackle those requests efficiently and offer support to those teams promptly.
💡 Pro Tip
Context matters more than you think.
In our interview with Odette Jansen, she talks about being a neurodiverse UX leader and explains why aligning your research intake form with your organization’s communication style is critical for success.
Questions to include in a UX research intake form
Crafting an effective UX intake form that strikes the balance between structure and flexibility can be a tough one to crack, so these are some essential questions to add on:
👉 Give me a brief description of the request.
👉 Who is submitting this request (name, role, and team)?
👉 Who are the key stakeholders involved?
👉 What is the problem you are trying to solve with this request?
👉 Are you making any hypotheses about the solution to the problem?
👉 What is the main purpose of this request?
👉 What are the key research questions?
👉 How will the results of this study be used?
👉 Who are the users you want to study?
👉 What assumptions are you making about the users?
👉 Do you have any other supporting data for this request?
👉 Have there been any similar studies in the past?
👉 What research method do you think is best suited for this study?
👉 What is your desired timeline?
👉 What are the deliverables you are expecting?
👉 How will this research be used after it is completed?
💡Did you know?…
According to Reddit users, long, complicated research intake forms often get ignored.
👉 Teams favor direct conversations over complicated submission processes.
👉 Efficient, streamlined forms help maintain collaboration without creating bottlenecks.
👉 Flexibility in research operations can protect teams from organizational changes.
UX research intake form template
If you are still unsure how to produce your first UX research intake or you are looking to optimize your existing one, check out our tried-and-tested template.
Note that this is a flexible outline that can be easily turned into a Google Form or any other type of digital template tool you decide to go for!
📥 Download Google Docs
How to share the user research intake form?
To get the best out of your intake forms and be able to maximize usage, ensure that they are easily accessible to the whole organisation as well as well-integrated into your core processes and workflows.
Here are our pro tips when it comes to effective ways to share your user research intake form:
✔️ Add it to your internal WIKI or Confluence space.
✔️ Pin it on your UX research Slack channel and other key channels.
✔️ Include it as onboarding material for cross-functional teams.
✔️ Embed the form in your project management tool, such as Jira, Asana, or Monday.com
Wrapping up
Crafting and implementing a UX research intake form can truly be a game-changer for your research operations.
This low-effort, high-impact tactic is a great way to improve the strategic value of UX research in your organisation, and it encourages stakeholders to treat research as an integral part of the decision-making process.
Whether you are a UX research team of one just starting out or an organisation with a mature UX team structure, a research intake form will strengthen communication and improve the efficiency of your team!
If you want to take your UX research process to the next level, UXtweak is your all-in-one solution for conducting usability testing, user interviews, A/B testing, and so much more.
Ready to make research easier for your team? Try UXtweak for free and see how effortless user research can be! 🐝
