3 Steps to Scope Your Broad Research Study

Imagine you have two teams. Team A sets out to understand the full customer journey. It sounded ambitious, and everyone wanted to learn everything, so they didn't worry to break this down any further. But two weeks in, new questions got added, timelines got stretched,

and the insights felt disconnected. There was lots of data, but not a lot of direction. On the other hand, Team B had the same goal at first, but they scoped it to one slice. How do repeat customers reorder through the app?

They didn't solve every unknown, but they finished on time, everyone was aligned, and their findings led to an actual product change.

One team tried to learn everything, and the other team learned what mattered most. Overly broad studies blur alignment, stretch timelines, and often leave you with findings that sound insightful, but don't drive action.

Scoping helps you to see these tradeoffs early, and it keeps your research tied to the decisions it's meant to inform.

So how do you know when your scope's too broad? And how do we fix a study before it's too broad? Luckily, I have a couple red flags for you. If you're seeing any of these, your study probably needs re-scoping. First, vague goals.

Things like understanding our users or explore the full experience are goals that sound inspiring, but rarely lead to decisions. Next, too many questions.

You're trying to learn about motivation, usability, and satisfaction all in one round, which usually means you'll only scratch the surface of each. And third, mixed methodologies.

You're blending generative and evaluative methods, asking open-ended why questions while testing a prototype, which makes it unclear what kind of data you're collecting and how to interpret it.

There are three lenses you can use to bring focus back to your study. The three Cs. Context, clarity, and constraints. Let's start with context.

Before moving forward with your research goals, you need to understand the context of the research request.

Talk to your stakeholders early and surface what they think. In other words, what assumptions or hypotheses are already shaping their view? What do they know?