Market research
How do you make customer research accessible and actionable for teams that didn’t participate in the research?
Start from the decision each team faces and give them the two or three findings that bear on it, each with a claim, how many customers it came from, and a short clip or quote.
Brief teams live in their own meetings, keep the full study in one searchable place, and end every readout with a specific change and an owner. Check a few weeks later whether it happened.
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Why research nobody attended rarely changes anything
Teams that sat in on interviews remember them for months. Teams that got a deck forget it by Friday. The question asks how you close that gap, and it scores on market expertise plus communication and storytelling, since the craft is translating one study into several teams’ decisions.
Treat it as an influence question. The research is done. What’s left is getting people with their own priorities to change something because of it.
What each team needs from a study it didn’t run
| Team | What they care about | What moves them |
|---|---|---|
| Game design | Where players get stuck or bored | Clips of players reacting at a specific level |
| Live operations | Event timing and what brings lapsed players back | A finding tied to a date on their calendar |
| User acquisition marketing | Which players are worth paying to acquire | Findings split by acquisition channel |
| Community and support | What players complain about and how to reply | Exact player phrases they can reuse |
| Leadership | Revenue and retention risk | One page with the size of the problem |
One study might produce one finding for design and a different one for marketing. Sending every team everything makes each one hunt for its part, and most won’t bother.
Research formats that travel without you in the room
- A finding card. A claim, how many people it came from, a quote, and what it implies. Cards can be shared one at a time.
- A clip reel. Two or three minutes of customers in their own voices, cut separately for each team.
- A live briefing. Fifteen minutes in the team’s regular meeting, where they can ask questions.
- One searchable home. Every study tagged by topic and date, with a one-page summary on top.
- An open seat. An invitation to sit in on the next round of interviews.
A player-research readout, spoken
“At a mobile puzzle studio, I ran twenty-two interviews with players who’d stopped playing around level forty. Three teams needed different things from that study, so one deck was never going to work. I asked each lead what decision was coming. Design was about to rebalance the mid-game, live ops was planning the spring event, and user acquisition was reviewing which ad networks to keep. For design, the finding was that players quit after two levels in a row that needed a paid booster, and I cut a ninety-second clip of players saying so. For live ops, lapsed players said they’d return for an event only if it didn’t depend on progress they’d lost. For acquisition, most of the early quitters had come from one ad network, which the retention data confirmed. I presented each finding in the team’s own weekly meeting for fifteen minutes and ended with one ask, such as testing a free booster at level thirty-nine. The full study went into the shared research folder with a summary on top. Three weeks later design had the test live and acquisition had cut spend on that network. Live ops hadn’t moved, so I went back with two more clips.”
Going back to the team that didn’t move is what separates this from a distribution plan. Following up on a specific ask shows cross-functional influence as well as communication.
Ways research sharing stalls
The broadcast is the most common version. A polished deck goes to a big channel with an offer to answer questions. People react to the post and change nothing, because no one was asked to do anything.
The repository-first answer spends most of its time on a tool. Tools help new hires find old work, and they won’t get a design lead to rebalance a level. Mention the tool in a sentence and move on.
Sending an uncomfortable finding to everyone at once is the riskiest move. If a study says a team’s recent change hurt customers, show that team first, privately, and let them respond before the wider readout.
Follow-ups on sharing research with other teams
| Follow-up | What they’re checking | A good way to answer |
|---|---|---|
| What do you do when a team ignores the findings? | Persistence without nagging | Find the decision they care about and reframe one finding around it |
| How do you handle a finding one team won’t like? | Tact | Show them first, privately, and include their response in the readout |
| Would you invite other teams to interviews? | Openness | Yes, as silent observers, with a short debrief after each call |
| How do you stop old research from misleading people? | Care for the repository | Date every finding and mark the ones a newer study replaced |
More questions in this category
Frequently asked questions
- Should I name a research repository tool in the answer?
- Only in passing. Interviewers care much more about how you shape findings for each team and get a decision out of them.
- How long should a research readout be?
- Fifteen minutes live or one page written, with the full study linked for anyone who wants depth. Busy teams will read a page and skip a forty-slide deck.
- What if I’ve never shared research across teams?
- Use a smaller example, such as passing customer interview notes to sales or support. The same principles apply, and a real small story beats a hypothetical big one.
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