Journal
Research
8 min read
Research you can do in a week
You don’t need a research team or a quarter to learn something real. Here is the five-day plan I use with early-stage teams.
Founders often tell me they would love to do research, “once there’s time.” There never is. So I started running a fixed, five-day sprint that fits between other work and still changes decisions.
The week
Monday: write down the three assumptions that would hurt most if wrong.
Tuesday and Wednesday: five conversations, 30 minutes each, no slides.
Thursday: a rough prototype of the riskiest idea.
Friday: three more sessions with the prototype, then a one-page summary.
What makes it work
The constraint is the point. Five people will not give you statistics, but they will reliably show you where you are wrong. And a one-page summary gets read, which is more than most research decks can say.
Run it twice and it becomes a habit. Run it monthly and your roadmap starts writing itself.
Written by Maya Lindqvist
Independent product designer in Stockholm. Say hi at hello@mayalindqvist.com.
Read next →